ASUS Eee Top touchscreen PC zombie hands-on
By Thomas Ricker 
posted January 11th 2009 11:31AM
posted January 11th 2009 11:31AM
posted January 11th 2009 11:31AM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
I am sooooooo stealing that "touch me" sign...
KUDOS to Asus for making this. Looks great - I'd even buy one.
But, my question is, why didn't mac make a touchscreen like this? I remember back in the 80's my aunt (a mac hardware engineer) brought home a touchscreen clip on for her mac and I thought it was pretty cool.
Now Apple has the iphone UI - if they blew it up to the size of a computer, it would be just as good as one of these all-in-one family "kitchen" computers...so why not? A 15 inch touchscreen screen with a slot loading DVD drive - with the same internals as a high end mac mini would be so trendy I think.
I ll also am thinking of buying one too..
It's in the right price for sure, in comparison with the most touch-screen able systems (of course there are some exceptions but NOT many) that cost the earth FOR NO REASON AT ALL.
Forgive me for my bad English..
I 've heard that there will be a version that will have an ATI 3450 ? Can anyone confirm that ?
why didn't Apple* make a touchscreen like this? my aunt (an Apple* hardware engineer)...
@Flashpoint:
Because Apple was busy working on the MacBook Wheel
Evidently Apple has figured out better and easier ways to rip off the suckers who buys its products.
Apple will only sell the thing from which it can squeeze most profit out of the members of its sect.
The ET1603 will have the ATI Mobility Radeon HD3450
http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/02/asus-finally-details-et1602-et1603-eee-top-all-in-one-pcs/
The only thing missing is a HDTV tuner and a Bluray player. Hopefully they can be dongled in....
Check the vid - He headed all you "Can It Play CRYSIS?" commenters off at the pass.
But can it run Linux?
Dude, shut up. My cieling-lamp can run linux.
At $599 if it could run Crysis in Very High at 17 inch monitor speeds, I'd buy one. But I doubt you'd catch me in the kitchen playing Crysis.
that looks really good for something at that price.
i am liking this.
"he1\l0 everyone!
I have a fujitsu lifebook tablet (vista), and the handwriting recognition still isnt quite there.
Hopefully the angle is adjustable.
Also, they should add a cheap Aero capable graphics cheap and make one for 7.
chip...I meant chip.
The Eee Top looks both functional and pretty stylish. Awesome. I might pick one up when they come out.
I wonder if it would be able to play all the h.264 videos I have, with integrated graphics, or should I possibly wait for the rumored Radeon 3450. (if anyone happens to know that would be great!)
Yes, very very nice.
I'm afraid I will also end up buyng one of these (maybe the Shuttle with the atom duo); but the maximum screen size for a touch screen interface is no more than 15/16 inches , otherways you'll end up standing to close to the screen and hurting your eyes.
I'm even more intrigued by asus eee k-board with included touch screen PC, I absolutely want one of these to steer my HTPC set up.
not quite an iMac.
try harder.
Not quite a smart comment.
Try harder
I will probably purchase one of these as soon as they are offered. I need to replace my computer at work, that I have had since 2000, which is used primarily for word processing and Internet. Due to the age of my current computer this will be huge upgrade. Additionally, it will be compact, take up a lot less space on my desk, eliminate the tower by my feet and have a touch screen too boot, all for a very reasonable price.
My only complaint, it appears all of the USB ports are on the back of the machine. It would have been nice to have one located on the front or side for easier access, as I use a thumb drive on a regular basis.
I like it
does it have multitouch?
The problem with touchscreens is getting to the very edge when there is a bezel. The new macbooks would be a great example of a touch screen that would work because there is no plastic bevel at the edges.
I currently have a touch screen in the kitchen running OS X off of a Mac Mini and while the Mac lends itself to better touch screen than XP, the bar at the top is difficult to press...
I need to know cost.
Cause I can build something similar, yet not as sexy for $300.
If it costs anything close to that, I have to cancel some ebay bids I have currently.
All I want is a nice touchscreen ui like the iphones to act as a center console for controlling music to my living room home theatre system... If the interface for scrolling through music is good than I am sold.. So will this play nice with itunes?
The interface looks kinda clunky, but I might be because it is sitting on top of windows xp. I would much rather just have the cleaner interface on top of nothing.
i agree. there is a lot of awesome software written for the nothing platform.
This looks promising, but far from perfect. Why, for instance, does selecting the notes program bring up a clock first? I would think that if someone's touching that icon, they want to write a note, not know what the time is.
And the virtual keyboard's capitalisation mechanism is unnecessarily complicated - why not simply press and hold to capitalise? If it presented other options for the letters, accents and so forth, then I can see the utility of making the user select something after holding it down, but if it's just for capitalisation, it's completely unnecessary, and, as the video shows, hard to use.
The rep's spiel about touch being easy to use and good for older people is right - I'd love to give one of these to my grandmother, but with some seriously counter-intuitive software design, I don't think I will be.
Crysis! LOL!
Oh but Auditorium? That would be beautiful... More so if you connect this baby to an Audio System
Now, getting to the nitty gritty... Does anybody know if this thing will come out with Linux? (I mean, it could make it less expensive than $599)
I bought one for my Mum in Germany for Xmas, hung it up on the kitchen wall and she simply loves it.
For HDTV support (once they will be emitting HDTV signals via TDT) I bought the Asus MyCinema U3100.
So far the only disadvantages I can see are that you cannot easily customize the Easy Mode that Asus Built in. In order to change links and the icons and descriptions for extra programs I installed, I had to meddle 1. with the registry (for the links), 2. with the files on the hard disk (for the icons) and 3. with a hex editor on the coded configuration file. And the thing is, that this configuration file suggests that ASUS has a tool that automatically creates these files for the easy menu, so I wonder why it's not available to the community...
Apart from the menu probs, the machine ocasionally "forgets" that it has a wireless card and sometime forgets the Opera settings. Both can be taken care of by a reboot and I cannot say whether this is a production series problem or just our EEE Top.
Don't let these two comments fool you though, the EEE Top is a fantastic little device, that makes computing so much easier especially for those that didn't already have a Commodore 64 in their crib. Skype video telephony, TV, Email, webbrowsing, all works with the ease of touching a (large and easily visible) button. Plus it's stylish and easy to move and gives a real value add e.g. in the kitchen.
Is there an optical drive in the base?
No but there is enough USB ports to connect a thin portable one and with XP it should be plug and play.