Hands-on with Eee PC

Our Engadget Chinese brethren were at the official Eee PC launch event this morning. As such, they've pulled together plenty of pictures and video of an actual production unit. It's all waiting for you just over at the read link.

[Niteryder @ Oct 16th 2007 12:43PM]

Is the iPhone included in that price?

[mfed3 @ Oct 16th 2007 2:58PM]

loser

[Ben @ Oct 16th 2007 12:45PM]

So when is someone going to open this thing up so we can find out if its just a standard CF card in there for the SSD and let us know if we can just slap a 16GB in there!?!?!

[thequinox @ Oct 16th 2007 12:54PM]

I agree. The amount of space they are giving us is enough for the OS, but not much else. I don't really want to have a USB drive sticking out the side all the time. Knowing that you could easily upgrade it would help a lot in selling it.

[Fadumpt @ Nov 3rd 2007 9:52PM]

Who said anything about USB sticks sticking out?!?

This thing has an SDHC card slot in there....that means you get an SDHC card for $35 to $80 and you have another 4GB to 8GB of space sitting peacefully in the side of your computer.

Later, when mini pci express comes out, you can opt to not have bluetooth or 3g cell wifi and get a 16 to 32gig or whatever card for that slot as well.

It's all covered :-D

[Homeboy @ Oct 16th 2007 1:08PM]

Holy cow that sexy!!!! The pearl white finish look superb. Can't wait to have it in the same bag as my Zune 80 I'll be buying next month. Let's all join hands and pray that the price for the cheapest version will sell for under 300 dollars.

2008 is going to be a good year.

[Andrew @ Oct 17th 2007 5:30PM]

I personally would want the most expensive version. And considering my PDA was more than the most expensive version, I'm in!

I love awesomely inexpensive electronics. I plan to buy one of these just to have it. If it is as useful as it sounds, thats just a bonus.

[Serhei @ Oct 16th 2007 1:04PM]

The following comment on the Chinese page sums things up:

??????????????????????Windows????????????????Linux

[Roygbiv @ Oct 16th 2007 1:05PM]

To my knowledge, the SSD (essentially a CF card) is wielded to the motherboard, meaning that thumbdrives will currently be the only way to expand hard drive capacity.

[Homeboy @ Oct 16th 2007 1:17PM]

The laptop has a card reader meaning that you can expend memory very cheap. A 2GB SD car sell for around 15 dollars and an 8GB one can be had for under 100 dollars.

That will be more than enough for simply day to day software like MS office, FF, iTunes and others. The rest can be used to store some songs, one or two movies, documents and pictures.

[Ben @ Oct 16th 2007 1:41PM]

You know I almost doubt that. Being that they are releasing four flavors of this device with different storage sizes I bet they made it easy for them to pop out an SSD (like a CF card) and slap in another for the larger capacity models. A lot of time manufacturers will make universal chassis that can are designed to easily have various configurations. Take Dell laptops for example. With them you can buy the same body but in it have a $600 laptop to a $3000 laptop just by swapping universal parts.

[Dirkus @ Oct 16th 2007 1:05PM]

TinyURL to the original article through Google Translate...

http://tinyurl.com/2sk4m5

[Zarniwoop @ Oct 16th 2007 2:35PM]

"The system presumably will be slightly more or less been castrated to"

[Christian Kaiser @ Oct 16th 2007 3:32PM]

"New Netizen (If you from the Islamist views)"

...

[Ian H. @ Oct 16th 2007 7:27PM]

Let us look at hands playmate.... uh, okay?

[Argot @ Oct 16th 2007 1:08PM]

So when is this thing coming to europe? Never?

[Dirkus @ Oct 16th 2007 1:08PM]

..oh, and there appears to be a CF card reader on the right hand side, slap your 16GB card in there and boom bang, there's your storage.

I agree though, it *would* be nice to be able to upgrade the onboard storage easily as well. My surface-mount soldering skills are TEH SUX.

[bjrcboy @ Oct 16th 2007 4:46PM]

Sadly its a SD/MMC card =( see here
http://pic.xfastest.com/EeePC/Part-I/open-eeepc-42.jpg
Would have been nice though yeah? damn..

[Cagrino @ Oct 16th 2007 1:28PM]

Newegg, Best Buy: Hello??? Is anybody there? Where are the prices?

[Ben @ Oct 16th 2007 1:42PM]

Seriously, what is the hold up here???

[clement @ Oct 16th 2007 1:44PM]

Linux version unboxing

4GB, NT$12900 = US$416

http://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=233&t=422914

[Ben @ Oct 16th 2007 1:54PM]

Ah awesome! I want one!

[Alex Land @ Oct 16th 2007 1:47PM]

http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/chinese.engadget.com/media/2007/10/img_1781x450.jpg

Do chinese companies regularly hire white as snow kids to don matching polo outfits and play with electronics? I mean, isn't this a press event?

[Zadillo @ Oct 16th 2007 1:53PM]

Asus is a Chinese company? Since when?

[patsy @ Oct 16th 2007 3:26PM]

I think Asus have so completely underestimated demand for this that they won't know what hit them.

[patsy @ Oct 16th 2007 3:29PM]

> Asus is a Chinese company? Since when?

I would guess ever since the founders, certain Misters Tung, Hsu, Hsieh and Liao, first looked into their respective mirrors (presumably as children) and said, "oh my God, we're Chinese!"

[yikeouch @ Oct 16th 2007 3:40PM]

It's a complex question.
They might think they are Taiwanese.

[Alex Land @ Oct 16th 2007 8:12PM]

Whoops, you're right. No ethnic generalizing here, I truly thought Asus was based out of China. Regardless, the point remains. What is the deal with those kids?

[bwbw @ Oct 16th 2007 5:22PM]

hey why dont you wiki it before posting a stupid comment like this. no we are not chinese and asus is a taiwanese company. seriously your comment isnt even funny it just shows how ignorant you are and perhaps you need to learn to how to search information on the net. go to a local library and learn how to use google and stuff. i hate when people confuse taiwanese with chinese, chinese people are communist they are violent and evil

[insertAlias @ Oct 16th 2007 5:57PM]

@bwbw
You know, it's also ignorant to write off a billion people as "violent and evil."

[yikeouch @ Oct 17th 2007 2:08AM]

Well, it's quite obvious.
The Eee PC is white, the desk is white, and the chair is white.
So the kids and their polo outfits MUST be white!
But can you give me other examples of Chinese/Taiwanese companies hire white as snow kids to don matching polo outfits and play with electronics?
I wanna know how regularly they do.

[Zadillo @ Oct 16th 2007 1:56PM]

I guess this shouldn't be surprising, but watching the video, it seems like Windows isn't that fast on it - seems like that took about 18 seconds for Excel to launch and be usable. The video seems to end before the webpage they load up loads up.

I guess that still isn't such a big thing...... once you've launched the app, that should be it.

I am kind of thinking that it might be best to just use the Linux OS and OpenOffice though. I'm curious to hear more about this though. Seems like it could make for a really nice portable cheap writing machine.

[tiuk @ Oct 16th 2007 2:00PM]

I'm *really* hoping that the reason they aren't telling us the price isn't because it's doubled, or something.

[ZSX @ Oct 16th 2007 2:26PM]

Great link!

Must... fight... gadget... lust...

[ZSX @ Oct 16th 2007 2:27PM]

Bloody comment system. That was directed at Clement above and the unboxing pics.

[Jkswiss @ Oct 16th 2007 3:51PM]

I'd gladly pay $100 more on top of whatever they are going to charge if they lost the side speakers and made the screen fill up more of the lid. As it is now...I'll probably still get one. A pimped out desktop and a subnotebook for MS Office, I'm set.

[Call me Kenneth @ Oct 16th 2007 3:31PM]

More hands on info (in English!) on the UK RM variant here: http://www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk/2007101197/hands-on-with-the-169-rm-asus-minibook-ultra-portable.html

[stacksmasher @ Oct 16th 2007 4:13PM]

Check out the video, Its sloooooooooooooooow.

[Alex M @ Oct 16th 2007 4:00PM]

so it DOES have windows. ok processor, good amount of ram. the hard drive is ok. just wondering will the windows media player have full capabilities?

[Macinjosh @ Oct 16th 2007 4:14PM]

"Only the back of the battery and charging only hole"

Thats the best feature. "Hey, whats that on the back of our laptop?" "Oh, that?? Thats my charge hole." *WINK*

[pt376 @ Oct 16th 2007 4:30PM]

I am probabily getting one when it comes out, since ts the only UMPC that i know of that actually have a keyboard other than touch screen.
After 3 touch screen phones and a slate tablet pc, all i can say is you never miss the keyboard untill its gone

[KPrime @ Oct 17th 2007 5:41PM]

there are a number of UMPC's with keyboards? OQO, Flipstart, Kohjinsha, Fujitsu and more, all have fully functional keyboards?

[Rainier @ Oct 16th 2007 4:20PM]

Eeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!

[bjrcboy @ Oct 16th 2007 4:45PM]

haha made me chuckle =D

[PK @ Oct 16th 2007 4:58PM]

Dear Weblogs, Inc Admins,

Can you please block this douchebag who keeps posting comment spam on all of your blogs? This guy keeps appending the same link to all of his worthless comments, trying to drive traffic to his Spymac page so that he can win money. Please delete all of his inane past comments and prohibit him from posting similar ones in the future.

Thank you,
All of your readers

[PK @ Oct 16th 2007 5:55PM]

Yay! You did it! Thanks for being so prompt about it.

Now, to all of the other comments he's laid around your network (grrr)...

[Marcelo @ Oct 16th 2007 8:43PM]

First of all I don't point anyone with a gun and tell him to enter the link I paste. I use the link as my signature.
Second Who in hell are you PK to say that my comments are worthless? have you look at yours?

[melloncollie @ Oct 16th 2007 9:41PM]

No, your comments thus far, have been fairly worthless.
Also, there's no such thing as a signature on a comment section.

Your attempted defense is pathetic at best.

[strider_mt2k @ Oct 17th 2007 6:54AM]

BAN SPAMMERS

[strider_mt2k @ Oct 16th 2007 7:20PM]

I'd love a hands on with one.