Eee Top – top in touch but top in price, too?

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 28 January 2009 13:14

Opinion and Analysis

The touch revolution arrived long ago but has been getting refined ever since, and while the iPhone has shown the way, the Eee Top aims to bring touch screens to the masses at a price that’s cheaper than HP’s touch screen computers but still expensive compared to netbooks. Given the Eee Top uses an Atom processor, can we expect similar pricing for touch capable netbooks, too?

Touch is one of the essential human experiences that has come to computing slowly, and has taken a while to really take off.

Just as HP is doing, Asus also hopes to take advantage of the maturing touch computing marketplace, and is launching the Eee Top in Australia with touch screen capabilities before it brings Eee PC touch netbooks to market.

The model number for the Eee Top is the “ET1602”, and comes with a 15.6-inch LCD touch screen (works with finger or pen), an Intel Atom 1.6GHz N270 processor, 1GB RAM, a 160GB 5400 RPM SATA-II drive, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Windows XP, Express Gate (for quick access to browsing, media etc), a keyboard, mouse and the usual assortment of Ethernet, USB, audio and other ports.

Priced at AUD $1299, it’s almost double the cost of a non-touch screen netbook PC, and comes with very similar specs, with the main difference being that the Eee Top is an iMac/HP Touch “clone”, with almost everything built into the screen.

As Nick Broughall at Gizmodo notes, this is only a few hundred dollars less than a 20-inch iMac at AUD $1549, albeit without any touch-screen capabilities, but with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor rather than the weaker Intel Atom processor.

Given that AMD is busy making chips that will deliver around Core 2 Duo power but at Atom-level pricing, and believes the netbook category will disappear, something that even Intel wishes would happen so it could sell more profitable Core 2 Duo (and i7 chips instead), the Eee Top is definitely a machine for 2009 while the Atom processor is still hot.

And Asus aren’t promoting the Eee Top as a computing powerhouse, but as a touch screen computer simple enough, and powerful enough, for anyone to use, with the touch screen being the big “unique selling point” at prices that are still a lot cheaper than competing touch screen models.

Future touch computers will clearly have more power, and touch screen user interfaces are getting better with Windows 7. Linux distros will no doubt have more touch capabilities added, and Apple will surely have to release a touch screen Mac at some stage, too.

For a bit of history, please read on to page 2, with a fuller list of Eee Top specs on page 3.