Video: Eee PC 900 processor is NOT Atom, multi-touch trackpad demonstrated

Oh man, the rumors were true. Asus' EeePC 900 -- the 8.9-inch model -- is still plodding along on that same 900MHz Celeron M processor as the original Eee PC 701. Good news: it does run at the full 900MHz without the 630MHz cap of its predecessor (pre-overclocking, that is). Bad News: it's not the Intel Atom proc promised at CeBIT. A potential bottleneck when loaded with the relatively CPU heavy XP instead of the Linux-based OS. Still, we're hoping this is a limitation in the early-launch, Hong Kong / Taiwan models only, and things will get corrected when Atom launches in June. The video after the break clearly demonstrates the multi-touch trackpad (3:50 in) which Engadget was first to discover in the FCC filing.

[Mark @ Apr 15th 2008 1:38AM]

Sweet. I can't wait to get my hands on this little puppy. The Celeron M is good enough as it probably performs better than the Atom, despite being at a lower clock speed. Any idea of battery life?

[nerdtalker @ Apr 15th 2008 1:45AM]

I agree, after that story about Atom performance earlier today, putting one in the EEE might not be the best of ideas until the platform matures a little.

Honestly, a Pentium/Celeron-M 800 Mhz is a bit under modern standards, but keep in mind that this thing is clock-per-clock faster than the P4 northwood of the time back in XP days. Honestly I think 800 MHz of Celeron M will perform basic tasks in XP quite acceptably.

[Ramifications @ Apr 15th 2008 1:38PM]

I have a 1.86Ghz Pentium M dell laptop who's AC adapter is malfunctioning...so when plugged in I get the message, "The ac adapter type can't be determined. You're PC will run slower and battery will not charge". Anyways, the point is...it only runs at 800Mhz and I can run windows XP quite well. All the graphical options are on and I only rarely get slowdowns. I can even play Warcraft 3 (which is key) although there are slowdowns when alot of stuff happens on screen.

So ya 800 Mhz should be plenty. Anyone know how to prevent my laptop from throttline down btw? When on battery it runs at the full 1.86Ghz. Setting it to "always on" doesn't fix it. Any help would be appreciated :)

[Chebwa @ Apr 15th 2008 1:40AM]

"CPU heavy XP?" Have you guys ever done ANY optimization on an XP machine? I've had it running smoothly on 500mhz, as I am sure many others have as well.

[Thomas Ricker @ Apr 15th 2008 1:46AM]

You can't selectively quote. I said, "Relatively CPU heavy XP instead of the Linux-based OS." Go ahead and purchase now if you want, but we'd wait until June.

Thomas

[shawnmos @ Apr 15th 2008 2:43AM]

I was able to get XP running smoothly on a P2 266MHz laptop with 256MB of ram. It also only had a 2gb hard drive.

[Chebwa @ Apr 15th 2008 2:48AM]

I know you said "relatively," but I feel it wasn't even worth mentioning. That sort of makes it sound as if XP is going to be a slouch on the current 900mhz compared to the Linux OS, which it isn't at all. I have had experience with both on the current Eee, and I actually found the Linux OS to be less responsive (I'm sure I'm not the only one).

But I won't disagree about the Atom. Buying a UMPC right now seems a little... stupid.

[Alan Strangis @ Apr 15th 2008 9:26AM]

I don't see a problem at all. I installed XP on my 4G EEE about 2 weeks after getting it, and it runs just fine, only slowing down when I had 8+ heavy sites open, as well as a CBR reader and Open Office.

Once I ran liteos to clean out unneeded bits of XP, it performed even better, and boots from cold in about 26 secs.

As for the video, I DO have to say that the boot time on the new 900 blows away that number.

The only way I'll ever get rid of my EEE is when they announce an EEE with a tablet convertible form factor (or someone beats them to the punch at the right price point).

Now THAT would be some UMPC goodness

[Wisam @ Apr 15th 2008 12:41PM]

Alan Strangis, I totally agree with you. The only thing holding me from buying a Eee is the lack for tablet form factor. I bought a laptop as a college student and Tablet Eee will let me read my eBooks, scientific articles, presentation slides and eventually will replace my laptop. This will be a perfect students dream! Till that day happens or someone beats Asus on that I will hold my money.

[Shogmaster @ Apr 15th 2008 1:41AM]

I hope you guys realize that Atom needs to be around 1.3~1.4GHz to compete with the 900MHz Dothan Celeron in the Eee PC. Atom is an In Order Execution processor and is per clock no where as capable as Out of Order Execution processor like Dothan and every other Intel CPU since the original Pentium 1.

[Rollins @ Apr 15th 2008 2:00AM]

Hell, according to the one benchmark I could find, even a 1.6ghz Atom lags behind the 900mhz Celeron M.

http://laptoping.com/intel-atom-benchmark.html

That's rather sad. I hope there's something I'm missing, because otherwise Atom seems like a lot of misplaced hype. That test shows performance that makes the Via processor in the Mini-Note look decent.

[saq @ Apr 15th 2008 2:26AM]

The big deal about the Atom is its very small package and VERY low TDP.
The Dothan (Celeron-M 900 in your example) is a 5w-25w TDP processor (with a large range), which for its time wasn't too shabby.
The Atom is a 0.5w-4w processor depending on the processor speed. That is a gigantic difference.

[Josh Warner @ Apr 15th 2008 3:04AM]

Just to be exceedingly obvious about it as saq didn't explicitly state it:

Since the Atom will consume roughly an order of magnitude less power, you're going to be looking at an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE more battery life.

I'd take 25 hours of batt life and a slight performance hit over 2.5 hours and a bit better performance - but that's just me.

[Rob @ Apr 15th 2008 3:22AM]

More importantly, that's an order of magnitude less power going into HEAT, which (in the original eee) makes the case hot to the touch even when the fan is buzzing away.

[YoYoYo @ Apr 15th 2008 8:12AM]

Order of magnitude my ass. It's not like this thing has an E-ink display or something. Does the Eee even use 40/50% of its power on components replaced by Atom, and what's their total power draw? I'm tempted to go ahead and grab the celery.

[sashad @ Apr 15th 2008 10:33AM]

The Celeron used is a ULV rated at 5W TDP. While the slowest Atom (800MHz) is rated at 0.65W TDP, the 1.6GHz and others are at 2W TDP.

I also don't know how many other components the Atom does away with, further reducing power consumption.

Also, 64bit won't matter much. 32bits limits you to 4GB RAM which I don't think you can physically exceed on the EEE and you're probably not going to be running Crysis on it...

The reality is that we need to see some real-world benchmarks on the Atom. While I suspect the Celeron will be close or even faster, I don't generally find myself calculating Pi to the 4 billionth digit in day-to-day tasks.

[Moo2 @ Apr 15th 2008 8:36PM]

http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-4801-view-Intel-atom-1.6-Ghz-benchmark.html

what about those benchmarks? =D

[Moo2 @ Apr 15th 2008 8:41PM]

sorry, forgot to add...
whats the 900mhz (or 800mhz, for that matter) celeron M get in cinebench? i cant find it on google =\

if its slower, i may just pick up an eeepc today lol

[JAmerican @ Apr 15th 2008 1:46AM]

I'll wait for Black EEE Atom. I use the EEE 701 now and always have it clocked at 900MHz because anything else causes my EEE to lag on XP.

JAmerican

[StomperGames @ Jul 3rd 2008 12:47AM]

nah 900 only necessary for videos, games and the like. normal web surfing is fine on stock for me with XP

- http://www.stompergames.com

[felix @ Apr 15th 2008 1:48AM]

i think its cool a "pc" has multi-touch finally

[ethana2 @ Apr 15th 2008 3:20AM]

You mean a non-apple pc.
There is nothing special about macs. Being reclusive about an OS doesn't make it better.

[w00fy @ Apr 15th 2008 1:56AM]

My backup laptop is a 5 year old Compaq EVO 600c 1.06Ghz Tualatin P3 w/ 512k L2 on a 133mhz FSB. RAM is 512MB of PC133 with a 30GB 4200RPM HDD.

It'll never play Crysis but it certainly holds its own running Windows XP Pro and Office 2003. A 900Mhz Dothan Celeron will do just fine IMHO.

On a sidenote, I miss the days of strudy business laptops. This little Compaq is a champ. The battery still holds a 3 hour charge and does not show any signs of wear and tear from various business trips around the world on everything from big jumbo jets to little pond skippers. It's travel weight of 5lbs (includes all accesories and AC adapter) is acceptable.

[The New Guy @ Apr 15th 2008 9:33AM]

Dude, u need to tell your work to replace the laptop now. It's been 5 years!!! They can't be that far behind!

[w00fy @ Apr 15th 2008 10:15AM]

Heh heh....
That laptop was given to me when I left the job three years ago. Since then its has been the "beater" laptop.

Currently have a Macbook.

[Striker @ Apr 15th 2008 1:05PM]

If you want a sturdy business laptop, then get a ThinkPad lol

[Sim @ Apr 15th 2008 3:54PM]

I'm currently typing on that, with less ram (though 50 GB's more space)..

And agree totally. A 1 ghz (or 1.2, another one of these i had...all free excess from technicolour, cheers) PIII-M runs XP absolutely fine, even on 256mb ram, and can multitask firefox, WMP, messengers, and office, basically all anyone using a tiny portable laptop will want to do, with no trouble.

Yes it takes longer to start up than your average, yes it's a little sluggish. But equally it is approaching a decade old and has a bright 14.1" screen with nearly no bezel, is no thicker than a lot of modern laptops, great keyboard, and looks as good as new. For comparison the only mildly more portable MSI's my school pressure sold most of the year cost £930, fall apart, and generally are for no good reason incompatable with everything.

Why don't they build quality into computers any more?

[Cal @ Apr 15th 2008 1:58AM]

is this physically the same size as the previous version but just with more screen and less bezzle?

[ridestp @ Apr 15th 2008 2:02AM]

Pretty much; it is 5mm larger in depth, but the same width and height.

[Sean @ Apr 15th 2008 2:02AM]

Sweet news story.. lots of interesting stuff...
...
..
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HOW MUCH DOES IT COST!?

[hoohoo @ Apr 15th 2008 2:03AM]

your link to the promised atom at cebit says it will have it in may. is it may? this is the 3rd article i have read today and everyone is saying bad news no atom. they have said all along they will upgrade to atom when available.

[ridestp @ Apr 15th 2008 2:05AM]

I really want to run mmtool on the new BIOS to see what processors it supports. This may tell us what processors may be in the future...

[Josh @ Apr 15th 2008 2:06AM]

Not to be negative, but it seems this hasn't met much of the "rumors" that have been stated thus far. Such as...

-No Atom (not sure if that really matters a whole lot)
-No touch screen (would have been really nice)
-No GPS (again, a very nice addition. especially if a touch screen was included)
-No 3G/WiMax/whatever

That being said. It does seem quite a bit nicer with the larger screen, and more importantly the higher res. But I can't help but wonder if that is worth the expected $500 price tag. Seems like a lot for so little. The price is just going up and up. At this rate it seems like the price will break the $1000 mark in no time.

Will it still be made of plastic when it does? ;)

[sockatume @ Apr 15th 2008 4:55AM]

Those were all lined up for future versions of the Eee, and they're not rumours, they're things that Asus themselves have stated future versions of the machine will have. The 900 was never going to have those at launch.

Of course, that would mean that Engadget have to look something up, instead of just assuming the other blogs are accurate.

[iofthestorm @ Apr 15th 2008 9:43AM]

"Those were all lined up for future versions of the Eee, and they're not rumours, they're things that Asus themselves have stated future versions of the machine will have. The 900 was never going to have those at launch.

Of course, that would mean that Engadget have to look something up, instead of just assuming the other blogs are accurate."
I was just about to post exactly that. I can't believe a site with a whole staff to write stuff and fact-check can be so wrong about so many things. They've said numerous times it's not launching with any of that stuff...

[Striker @ Apr 15th 2008 2:06AM]

The Atom Eee 901 comes out in May, right? I hope everyone realizes that the Atom, despite being an In-order processor, is a 64-bit core, and the Celeron Dothan is a 32-bit core, so that should help close the gap between the two cores in the April Eee and the May Eee. I personally am waiting for the Atom in Galaxy Black for the battery life benefits that Intel advertises, and I trust Intel, I have never had a pc that didn't have an Intel core lol

[A.C.E.R. @ Apr 15th 2008 3:27AM]

And I hope you realize that 64 bit won't matter a bit.

Sure, it'll close the gap for a couple applications, but not many. I don't see people doing a lot of rendering/encoding with these things...they aren't meant to be workstations.

[Matt Keller @ Apr 15th 2008 8:49AM]

Yes, but a 64 bit processor can support a 64-bit OS, which means that you could put alot more ram into the machine.


Unless the Eee has some sort of RAM limitation.... Isn't it 1 GB on the 4G/8G models?

[Striker @ Apr 15th 2008 1:01PM]

I want 64-Bit so I can run Ubuntu 64-bit, I think that a whole 64-bit os is a little more than a few programs, and I'll also upgrade the RAM to 2GB at some point soon after I get it.

[jakep_82 @ Apr 15th 2008 1:22PM]

Some of the people that comment on Engadget really amuse me. The only current advantage of 64bit is the ability to address 4+GB of RAM. Does any sane person need that much RAM in a computer with a 9" screen and a miniature keyboard? These computers are not designed for multi-tasking or gaming. And for those thinking the Atom will be the savior, it won't. It will improve battery life and nothing more. It's an in-order processor just like the Via C7-M and early testing shows the 900MHz Celeron-M to be faster than the 1.6GHz Atom.

[iofthestorm @ Apr 15th 2008 6:44PM]

64 bit has no performance advantage on its own, and the in-order nature of Atom makes it suck ass pretty much. Atom is only worth it if you want battery life, performance wise it's a complete dud. The guy who posted above me is completely correct, there is no point to 4GB RAM in the EeePC, I don't even know if it will actually take that much RAM in the first place.

[shawnmos @ Apr 15th 2008 2:44AM]

What is the screen resolution on this? It looks to be a higher resolution that's usable. That is of course with FF in full screen mode.

[YoYoYo @ Apr 15th 2008 8:18AM]

Pretty low still. 1024x600, if I recall.

[initialxy @ Apr 15th 2008 9:53AM]

looks barely acceptable, i'd just disable all the tool bars on my browser

[JJ @ Apr 15th 2008 2:47AM]

Am I really going to the first to comment on that music? I guess I better just leave it alone.

[Nate @ Apr 15th 2008 9:36AM]

No kidding.

My wife came in the living room and thought I was watching a porno.

[Captain Crunkled @ Apr 16th 2008 12:18PM]

@Nate - for some that was a porno. I for one loved that Asus on Asus action..

[TeddyLikesComputahs! @ Apr 15th 2008 2:54AM]

how in the world was that guy in the sample video have 2 cute chicks fighting over him?!?!!?

[Ninjakamster @ Apr 15th 2008 2:59AM]

This processor kicks the crap out of the Via C7 and AMD Geode processors.

[manos @ Apr 15th 2008 4:44AM]

I got a VAIO PCG-TR3 (sadly its webcam has failed after 4 years of use). Is the Eee PC 900 smaller than the Vaio?