ASUS said to be holding off on Eee PC 900 orders in anticipation of Atom

It's only just barely made it out into the wild, but DigiTimes is now reporting that ASUS has already stopped taking orders from resellers for its 8.9-inch Eee PC 900 in anticipation of the now imminent launch of the Atom-based Eee PC 901. That word apparently comes from some unspecified "industry sources," who also claim that the Eee PC 900 was only ever a "transitional product" to begin with, which ASUS pushed out the door with a plain old Celeron M processor in order to get an 8.9-inch model out ahead of its competitors. Certainly a reasonable conclusion to draw, but a quick glance of online retailers shows that there's still plenty of Eee PC 900s out there for the taking if you're not sold on this whole Atom thing.

[Pochi @ May 29th 2008 2:31PM]

"...if you're not sold on this whole Atom thing."

read: mental

[iofthestorm @ May 29th 2008 9:24PM]

Not really, Atom might have better battery life but performance wise it's even more pathetic than the 900mhz Celeron in the original EeePCs.

[LongshotX @ May 29th 2008 2:33PM]

They sure aren't holding off on price...these laptops just keep getting more and more expensive.

[Hellios @ May 29th 2008 3:01PM]

That's just the EEE, started at the promised $199, it now costs $600, and the price will only increase with the Atom.

But that's okay, other manufacturers still understand the concept of a subnotebook.

[David @ May 29th 2008 3:08PM]

The less Asus sell, the higher the price they can sell them for. Other manuafacturers would do exactly the same in Asus' position, it's just profit maximisation.
The other manuafacturers will have to offer lower prices to gain sales, and in time this will reduce demand for the Eee, forcing Asus' to lower their prices.

This isn't about misunderstanding the concept of a sub-notebook, its about exploiting first-mover advantage.

[CosterMonger @ May 29th 2008 5:39PM]

what's this costing more crap, you can still purchase the EeePC 2G Surf,
you just don't like the fact that cheap beer doesn't taste like good beer.

RACE to the bottom this June!

[TechDummy @ May 29th 2008 2:46PM]

Can anyone tell me if these micro pcs (forgive me if this is the wrong terminology) can use the wireless broadband cards that are similar to ones provided by Sprint and AT&T?

[coffee @ May 29th 2008 2:49PM]

I think most of those cards are ExpressCard, none of those slots on these subnotebooks that I've seen, so the answer would be no, not that I know of.

[Howard @ May 29th 2008 3:37PM]

The only one I've seen with an ExpressCard slot is the HP 2133.

[BrokenMonkey @ May 29th 2008 5:33PM]

I don't see why a Verizon USB EVDO modem wouldn't work. At least if you're running XP or Vista. Don't know if it works in Linux at all though.

[batmon @ May 29th 2008 2:53PM]

They have USB broadband "card" so "YES", it works with eeePC. For sure works with XP, not sure if your card has Linux driver for Linux OS tho...

[jon @ May 29th 2008 3:00PM]

do you think that the celeron based 900's will sell at a discount now?

[Julian @ May 29th 2008 3:04PM]

If they sold at a discount, I would be the first in line. It's overpriced as it is, who knows how much the 901's will be.

[jon @ May 29th 2008 3:56PM]

yea.. I think that the atom might be too expensive (at least marketed, not manufactered) to put in the lower end electronics. The "new" processor gives companies a reason to up the price on anything with the "Atom" name in it. Its a shame, but its business.

[Hackius @ May 29th 2008 3:25PM]

I wonder isn't the pricing an effect of the weak dollar?

[ManoloDF @ May 29th 2008 3:36PM]

Yes, I do believe that plays a big role, just like the wii shortage in USA had to do with a weak dollar, they are selling just fine in the rest of the world, EU, UK, AU etc, though to us it may seem a bit expensive, but remember the dollar has devaluated about 25% in a very short time.

We can all thank a brilliant administration for that, Good Job Guys!

[lewchenko @ May 29th 2008 3:39PM]

Id really like to see some definitive benchmarks comparing the 900 and 901, along with associated power consumption. I have a feeling that the Atom isnt going to be all its cracked (hyped) up to be.

[BdgBill @ May 29th 2008 3:49PM]

Does anyone know if the eee's come with the instant on Linux OS that ASUS is building in to all it's motherboards?

This would be most cool.

[The Joker @ May 29th 2008 3:59PM]

Pfffff, don't really care what ASUS does now. The MSI Wind is looking better and better everyday. CNET just put up a video preview of the device:

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/video/0,139101587,49297131,00.htm?play=true

[ManoloDF @ May 29th 2008 4:06PM]

That MSI Wind Definately Looks very nice, I wish these had biometric fingerprint scanners built-in, its not that hard to do and convenient for passwords.

[Karl @ May 29th 2008 5:09PM]

The major disadvantage to the Wind is its mechanical hard drive. It's also bigger than the Eee 900.

[The Joker @ May 29th 2008 5:28PM]

But it also has a larger keyboard -- the small keyboard is one of the big drawbacks of the Eee PC.

And I'd rather have a standard 2.5" 5400RPM SATA hard drive that I can upgrade myself instead of a soldered on SSD and a proprietary SSD expansion card as on the Eee PC 901.

Besides, you can always upgrade to a 2.5" SATA SSD as the prices come down...

[Karl @ May 29th 2008 9:13PM]

Hope you never drop it ;)

[iofthestorm @ May 29th 2008 9:26PM]

@Karl: I should hope you never drop it, it's not like people go around dropping their regular laptops all the time now is it? Idiot.

[Karl @ May 30th 2008 12:22AM]

I'm reminding The Joker of the possibility that someone could drop their laptop. You're suggesting that no one ever drops their laptop. Which one of us is the idiot?

[jon @ May 30th 2008 11:11AM]

i have had my laptop for a couple of years, and i have dropped it many times, and the hard drive still works fine.

[James Cameron @ May 29th 2008 4:23PM]

Will be waiting.

[Julian Bond @ May 29th 2008 5:16PM]

There's just never a good time to buy, is there? But this year it's getting ridiculous. 3 month product lifetimes anyone?

[saucienta @ May 29th 2008 6:23PM]

I can't get excited about the looks of the eee 01. the eee 900 is over priced. All Asus had to do was make the screen bigger on the eee 700 and maybe add blue tooth and atom as options. Thank goodness for competition

[saucienta @ May 29th 2008 6:25PM]

I meant eee 901. It looks too much like a toy with bits of shinny plastic

[qrius @ May 29th 2008 8:04PM]

I played with a friend's EEE and it felt like a toy... the keyboard felt a bit flimsy.

[Laughing Man @ May 30th 2008 2:38AM]

Why would they stop taking orders? That is just plain stupid. They shouldn't let all these clone minis get a chance to get any customers. They should just sell both Atom and non-Atom at two different prices. Or just stop making the current bread, when the Atom is actually in their hands.

[Darren @ May 30th 2008 2:14PM]

Just get some product on the shelf. Hopefully next round will have more than just a few per store. None of the big Etailers have the 900.