Asus exceeds expectations, ships 350k Eee PCs in one quarter

We're not exactly sure why, but we never really had a feeling that Asus wouldn't be able to move a copious amount of these things. Nevertheless, DigiTimes has it that Asus actually sold through 350,000 Eee PCs in a single quarter, beating industry expectations by a solid 50,000 units. Also of note, the report mentions that Asus is planning to launch the little bugger into Best Buy stores in the US while also kicking off sales in Japan next year, so there should plenty of opportunities to grab one if you've somehow missed out thus far.

[webon @ Dec 22nd 2007 10:19AM]

man I live in Japan now, but leaving next year, going back to my 4th world country where Ill never see an eeepc, damn.
Guess Ill have to settle for an OLPC bought to a corrupt government official.

[Scott Culp @ Dec 22nd 2007 10:28AM]

I want an Eeepc terribly but with the amount of interest this has created it is clear there will be plenty of others jumping into this business in the New Year and competition is very good.

The price is...fair....but not amazing for the specs and I can't wait to see what happens when manuafacturers try to win over users. It will either mean better prices, better expandability, or that "sweet spot", 10" screen is just around the corner.

It's a good year for the protable P.C. Can't wait!!

[Michael Brow @ Dec 22nd 2007 2:32PM]

yeah, i really thought about buying one. but im waiting for a 2nd gen with a larger screen. it has to happen.

[SteveS @ Dec 22nd 2007 4:21PM]

With it doing so well, Asus probably has no motivation to improve on it or lower the price any time soon. When Engadget starts posting "EeePC sales figures way below expectations for this quarter" is when you will see Asus make any moves...

[Jah @ Dec 22nd 2007 4:25PM]

The EEE PC is a 'game changer'. Now every person can have their own PC, no need to share on over powerful Windows PC in a household. Bloody amazing little thing and I am learning how useful Linux based apps are - M$ better be careful.

[Derry Quinn @ Dec 22nd 2007 11:20AM]

I don't know what the fuss is about...4GB is how much ram a computer should have, not storage capacity

it would never hold all my pirated movies i bought legally...

[Isaac @ Dec 22nd 2007 3:33PM]

You have done a good job totally missing the point of this device.

[Derry Quinn @ Dec 22nd 2007 4:57PM]

No, No I get it

I just can't understand how it has such a big amount of people who want it...

[ethana2 @ Dec 22nd 2007 7:07PM]

I'm looking at a compaq laptop here with a 3.5GB hard drive and 256MB of RAM.
The second I get the LAN working under xubuntu, I'm going to love this thing.

..but once Dell offers Ubuntu across their entire lineup, which they have full intent to do, I'm likely to buy one-- but I'm torn between a tablet and the XPS laptop..
-gotta have that webcam, but I also gotta have the touchscreen...
This asus laptop doesn't have near the screen resolution I'd be looking for.

[letstakeawalk @ Dec 22nd 2007 7:11PM]

My 4G Eee, a 500 gig media server connected to my cable modem, and Orb. Winning combo. Works around the world, or in my living room.

[brad @ Dec 22nd 2007 11:33AM]

good to see them going into retail...things are selling like hot cakes

[JTM @ Dec 22nd 2007 11:51AM]

Do you even know how many hotcakes were sold last quarter?

[SuperPrime @ Dec 22nd 2007 12:15PM]

In Europe they've been selling in retail from day one. Why is it different in the US?

[JoeT @ Dec 22nd 2007 12:15PM]

if only it had a widescreen...

[Lein @ Dec 22nd 2007 12:24PM]

It doesn't?

[JoeT @ Dec 22nd 2007 12:45PM]

*wider screen

stick the speakers in the base and stretch that sucker out

[futurepastnow @ Dec 22nd 2007 3:37PM]

The screen's size isn't the problem, its resolution is. 480px isn't enough vertical resolution- most operating systems and apps aren't designed for it, so things get cut off (like the "OK" at the bottom of dialog boxes).

7" is good. Keep the Eee as small as possible.

[Ian @ Dec 22nd 2007 12:29PM]

What I like about this machine is it's super portability, non use of HD and it's range of included freeware. In fact it opens up the door to a lot of people trying the open office software etc. I am keen to try this and see if I can live with this instead of Mr Softy products, or perhaps alongside.
What I am less keen on is the very average battery life.IMHO it should exceed 5 hours as a minimum and somehow a larger screen needs to be retro fitted. I do like the idea of opening it up and increasing RAM and getting larger flash drives.
Overall this is a stellar product marking the start of really portable full function micro laptops.
I wonder is Asus will morph quickly to the newer intel mobile chipsets which will be rolled out perhaps in January? This might well solve the poort battery life problem. I guess it would be too much to hope that one could retrofit the new chipsets...?

[Nick Spacek @ Dec 22nd 2007 1:10PM]

I guess I should just check it out myself, but is battery life really that bad? I have a crappy Vostro 1000, and the battery on it can last for 6+ hrs with just basic use (not playing games or whatever). Is it just that people judge battery life by how long it lasts under maximum usage or something?

[Darryl @ Dec 22nd 2007 1:21PM]

Sweet Earth! Can't wait to see these IRL. Also, please get version 2 out soon Asus.

[KyleK @ Dec 22nd 2007 1:51PM]

I was wondering: did iSuppli do one of its famous cost calculations for the Asus Eee? I'd be rather interesting to see whether they have revenue margins comparable to those of Apples iPhone.

[mike @ Dec 22nd 2007 1:52PM]

Does this PC come with windows?

[BigBirdUK @ Dec 22nd 2007 3:00PM]

Hey! I ordered a cheeseburger!

[John Bailey @ Dec 22nd 2007 7:11PM]

Where it is going to get really interesting is when they start shipping these with Linux and with Windows. Somehow I can see the Windows versions doing very badly in the reviews at least. Do you want a crappy Windows sub notebook, or a nippy little Linux box that will be fine for light surfing and note taking. Think of it as a beefed up PDA, not as a cut down laptop.

Should be very interesting next year to see how the other manufacturers bundle the low powered processors into small portable cheap units. There is a hole in the market between laptops and smart phones that these little gadgets fill quite nicely. Not as fiddly as a PDA, but not as bulky as a laptop. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if these cheap PCs became as common as cell phones. Now all we need is free or low cost wireless broadband hot spots as common as cell phone masts.

[ethana2 @ Dec 22nd 2007 7:18PM]

Why the heck would you want to run windows on this thing? The only thing windows is good for is high end vendor lock-in, like DirectX 9+ games and photoshop, neither of which this hardware is good for.
Just use WINE.

[Karel Jansens @ Dec 22nd 2007 2:14PM]

I think I'll hold out for a Pandora:

http://craiginator.bluwiki.com/

It looks like it's going to be much more fun.

[Isaac @ Dec 22nd 2007 3:32PM]

I have my EEE PC under the tree right now.

[Jeff Lewis @ Dec 22nd 2007 3:49PM]

I bought one of the 4GB full units and was going to keep it - but a couple of things lept out at me.

- the NAND Flash has a limited lifespan
- there isn't much of it
- the display is only 800x480
- the battery life is surprisingly bad for this kind of device.

NAND Flash has a lifespan of 300,000 to 1,000,000 writes (depending on whom you're reading). The Xandros Linux and upcoming Windows XP are both tuned to eliminate the swap file, which is the biggest danger for this device, especially for WinXP which *loves* its swap file. Without the swap file, this device should last at least 3 years in normal use, but my concern is that just one badly written application could trash the device by hammering memory. Remember, you can easily do a million writes in a second...

Still, for most people this really won't be a problem. It just makes me nervous.

I like the 8GB unit better for two reasons: 8GB SSD - and it's on the PCIe card - so if it dies, you can pop it out and replace it.

But that unit is $500... and I can get a full function (albeit heavy) laptop for $500... with a screen that's going to be XGA or better.

Not small enough? Well, you can get the lowest end Samsung UMPC for $750 right now - and it has a 40GB HD and a 1024x600 touchscreen. It's actually smaller and lighter than the Eee.

Then there's the battery life. The Q1U UMPC has a 3 hr battery life - but it also has a hard drive and higher resolution screen. And it's lighter. The Eee should have a 4 hr battery life - and since this is a tuned OS (the Q1U runs a stock copy of Vista), I would have expected more like 5hrs.

As for size, ironically, everyone ragged on the Samsung Q1U and similar UMPCs for being *too big*... yet everyone is gushing over the Eee for being just right - even though it's BIGGER than the Q1U.

Don't get me wrong - I like the Eee and I think if nothing else, it's triggered a reaction. If they added a touchscreen and changed the design so that the user could select between a 1.8" hard drive or a 1.8" SSD module, it could reach a much bigger audience.

On the other hand, you can look at the Eee as a super-PDA. It comes in around the same price as mid-range PDAs, yet it delivers far, far more power and capability - so if a 1.9lb jacket pocket uber-PDA that has the potential to be turned into a full function mini-laptop is what you're looking for - the Eee is perfect.

In my case, I already owned a UMPC and the Eee really doesn't stack up against it - but to be fair - I could have bought three Eees for the price I paid for the UMPC.

[Reader @ Dec 22nd 2007 5:15PM]

I thought I read that the flash issue was resolved...

[Ruben @ Dec 22nd 2007 7:54PM]

It pretty much was. Flash makers place algorithms that disperses the data that is written to it accross the entire chip, as opposed to reading and writing at a single location (say, you constantly modify a single file, over all of its modifications, the file will be written to many different locations as opposed to the same one). This, in turn, increases the life-span of the flash chips greatly. Thats why they are being so heavily promoted now as replacement for standard hard-drives. They have equal or better MTBF (or in flash's case, a location that is dead) than mechanical disks.

I agree with your other points. This is a form-factor that isnt appealing. Its too underpowered to be a laptop, and too big to be ultra-portable. Even, like you said, the UMPC's are only a few hundred more and have much more power, and also can be used like a hand-held, or like a laptop with a foldable keyboard.

[Dominic @ Dec 23rd 2007 6:51AM]

Because of the load balancing, and assuming the SSD is 4GB, you'd have to write 4 quintillion bits (that's 4 times 10 ^ 18, = 4 million billion, = 4 petabit) to guarantee writing to the same physical bit of the flash a million times.

That's harder than you think. Especially considering most SSDs only write at about 550 megabit per second. With those figures, if you ran your SSD at maximum speed, just writing random bits to the disk, it would take 840 days to put a million writes to each bit of the disk.

[kimatg @ Dec 22nd 2007 6:41PM]

Eeek! the PC...

[d0g_p00p @ Dec 22nd 2007 10:16PM]

Ruben, The EeePC is to big to be an ultra portable? Have you even seen one? I have, in fact I am writing this comment on it. It's by far the smallest laptop I have ever used, other than a Libretto.

[Andrew Pollack @ Dec 22nd 2007 10:41PM]

While the Eee isn't exactly the configuration I like, I'm using similar mini-pc's (thin clients) in production. The success Asus is having will be noticed, and I look forward to a big expansion of this market.

[tenshi888 @ Dec 23rd 2007 4:22AM]

Where's the Foleo?

[Jah @ Dec 23rd 2007 4:26AM]

@Ruben, perhaps they sell different UMPCs and EEEs here in the UK. A UMPC, like the Samsung Q1 is over twice the price of the EEE and the CPU is not that different. I have a UMPC and a EEE, the EEE is much easier to use and is lighter and with Linux much faster.

[cy-borg faux-real @ Dec 26th 2007 4:52AM]

ses ASUS, we DO vote with dollars, you and a few others are starting to see that the general populace IS ready to jump into our E-Gargoyle suits and become stringers for gOS online .... Snow Crash here we come!