PopularitEee champ ASUS to launch 8.9-inch Eee PC

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 05 March 2008 06:00

Opinion and Analysis

If you’ve been eyeing the Eee PC but wished you could get one with a larger screen, ASUS have just showcased the Eee PC 900 at the CeBIT technology show in Hanover, Germany, but they won’t arrive in many countries (including Australia) for around six months yet and perhaps longer.

The ASUS Eee PC, originally intended for children, but having enjoyed great popularity with adults too, thanks to its small size and small price, it about to grow up into the model many likely wished they could have purchased in the first place.

Previewed at the CeBIT technology exhibition underway in Hanover, Germany, the new model is dubbed the Eee PC 900, comes with 1GB of RAM, an 8.9-inch LCD screen, larger storage of ‘up-to’ 12 GB, and will be ‘Windows Ready’. Pricing is set at 399 Euros, with an ASUS press release providing scant details, although they do say it will arrive in 'select countries' without going into specifics. We have asked ASUS locally but are yet to get a response.

This means it likely also comes with the same Xandros Linux operating system that can be upgraded to XP if you have a valid XP license and CD.

Trusted Reviews suggests the Eee PC 900 could well be powered by Intel’s new Atom processor, which might make it more Vista compatible than the Celeron processor in the 7-inch Eee. This is likely because ASUS promises the new Eee PC 900 will have ‘enhanced performance’.

Trusted Reviews also says that aside from a slightly thicker chassis and a larger mouse trackpad, the keyboard is the same size, something that might disappoint users with larger fingers who would prefer a full-size notebook keyboard.

ASUS have just upgraded their current 7-inch model which retailing at AUD $499 and runs Xandros Linux, to a new Windows XP configuration, having XP pre-loaded, and costing $80 more at AUD $579.

That means a Windows XP license will cost consumers AUD $80, and given the fact Windows is not free and would need to be manually loaded onto an Eee PC through a separately purchasable USB CD or DVD drive, $80 may prove cheaper and easier for many than doing it themselves. The new XP model is due in stores in the 2nd week of March 2008.

We've also asked if the XP Eee can be easily re-loaded with Linux, and whether the Xandros Linux OS will be free to download, but we haven't had an answer yet.

That said, a number of readers to our previous article, which had comments (in the article) from Microsoft on the Eee now coming with Windows XP, wondered what this would mean for future XP-based Eee PCs, as Microsoft is planning to discontinue sales of XP in mid-2008 – and the Eee PC was not designed to run Vista, although some enterprising Eee owners have figured out how to run it anyway.

So, what else do ASUS have to say about themselves and their new model? And what are the two new 'e' experiences that ASUS have added to 'easy to learn, work and play'? Please read onto page 2.