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ASUS Eee Pad Slider priced in Portuguese catalog, manhandled on camera (video)
ASUS first showed off its Eee Pad Slider what seems forever ago. That was way, way back at CES, amongst the deluge of tablety announcements. The keyboard-hiding Honeycomb device is finally on its way, having been given an August release date in the UK and recently hitting the FCC in the States. The 10.1-inch tablet just popped up in the August catalog for the Phone House (the Carphone Warehouse's brand outside the UK) catalog in Portugal, priced at €349 ($497) under contract with ZON -- that's down from €479 ($684) without contract. The forthcoming tablet also hammed it up for the camera recently -- video of that after the break. [Thanks, Zack and Pedro]
ASUS Eee Pad Transformer and Eee Slate EP121 get official UK pricing
We've heard a fair amount of rumors and speculation about the impending release of ASUS' latest and, perhaps, craziest new slates, and now its giving us the real details -- for the UK at least. The wildly unique Eee Pad Transformer, the first of its kind rocking Honeycomb, is up for pre-order now, with an official release date of April 6th and a price of £379 for the 16GB version and £429 for the 32GB version, each on its lonesome -- you can get the 16GB iteration with the docking keyboard for £429 . Its less flashy companion, the Eee Slate EP121, sporting Windows 7 and an Intel Core i5 processor, hits Britain April 10th for £999, and is ready for pre-order exclusively through Amazon UK through May 1st. Unfortunately, we're still not sure when they'll cross the pond or how much they'll cost when they get here, but we're still fairly certain the Transformer's coming sometime next month.
ASUS CEO: netbooks will outsell tablets, Eee Pad to run 'Microsoft software'
ASUS CEO Jerry Shen sure is making the rounds this week talking up the company's upcoming entry into the tablet arena, but before giving up some more Eee Pad details he clarified that he doesn't anticipate tablet sales surpassing that of netbooks. The latter category is for personal computing while tablets are based on consuming content and Cloud computing. Shen said something similar when we spoke with him at CeBIT, but this time he also added that without Apple the tablet category would have been slower to ramp up. We'd say he's on the money with that one, but still he plans to launch an Eee tablet in early June at Computex. And though he mentioned there being a few versions, he revealed the "first phase will use Microsoft software." We don't know if that means the tablet will be Intel powered and run Windows 7, or pack a Tegra 2 processor and boot some version of Windows CE like we saw at CES. Regardless of what happens, we'd say Microsoft's happy to hear this all after this week's news.
ASUS EeeKeyboard PC hands-on (slight return)
Has it really been almost a year (to the day!) since we last gave some first-hand thoughts on ASUS' audacious Eee Keyboard PC? Given the recent news of an apparent April release date, we thought we'd give the perennially-delayed machine another walkthrough, albeit via the touchpad only since it wasn't connected to an external display. The software is definitely still in need of some work -- we managed to crash the sucker within minutes, but the startup to Windows XP (the full version) was quick and admittedly pretty interesting to witness -- maybe at some point we could get a miniature game of Peggle going. When working, the menu was pretty smooth. None of the shortcuts were working, unfortunately , as the internet was down in the booth. As a keyboard, it feel pretty strong, resilient, and most of all clicky. Live through us vicariously, via still shots and moving pictures below. %Gallery-86976%
ASUS Eee PC 1018P, 1016P and 1015P prepping for a CeBIT debut
Looks like there won't be a shortage of new laptops and netbooks next week at CeBIT, and if Blogeee is to be believed ASUS will be showing up with at least three new 10.1-inch Eee PCs. The most exciting of the bunch seem to be the executive-aimed 1016P and 1018P, which will both apparently have an aluminum chassis and 14 hours of battery life. The .7-inch 1018P is said to be the thinnest netbook ASUS has ever created, and sport an integrated fingerprint reader and USB 3.0. Uh, USB 3.0 in a netbook? We don't see why not. Finally there's the 1015P, which seems to just be an refresh of the 1005PE with a matte display and a wider touchpad. It sounds triple E exciting, but we promise to find out more on these little guys next week when we are live in Deutschland.
ASUS EeeTop ET2010PNT hints that NVIDIA Ion 2 is GeForce G310
We were a little disheartened last week when we didn't hear a peep out of NVIDIA about Ion 2, but Pierre of Blogee has dug up some dirt on the next-generation graphics. The ASUS Eee PC ET2010PNT's got a pretty nice looking 20-inch HD multitouch display, but it's also powered by the new Intel Pine Trail D510 processor and NVIDIA GeForce G310 graphics -- which according to the document is being dubbed as Ion 2. Sure, we already knew that the next version of Ion would be compatible with Intel new Atom platform, but we didn't know that they'd be tossing aside the GeForce 9400M for its G310 graphics card (which is apparently just a rebranded G210). As we thought, it looks like this will be a discrete solution, and it appears (if the benchmarks are accurate) that the G310 will be considerably faster than the current Ion platform. We're just hoping the 589MHz 16-core CUDA chip has been tweaked for better power efficiency when it comes to cramming it into netbooks. No word on when the ET2010PNT will be available, but given the initial hold up we saw with Ion 1 we aren't overly optimistic that it will be any time soon.
Ion netbooks head-to-head: Atom, overcharged?
It's been more than a year since NVIDIA announced its Ion platform, promising to bring HD video and gaming to the underpowered Atom CPU. After all the hold ups, we started to wonder if we'd ever see the platform packed inside a netbook, so imagine our surprise when no less than four Ion-based machines launched in the past few months. With bigger screens, better specs, more graphics muscle and, of course, the resulting higher price tag, each of these Ion machines promises quite a bit, but which one lives up to the hype? We got them all together and spent the past few weeks testing the ASUS Eee PC 1201N, Lenovo IdeaPad S12, HP Mini 311 and the Samsung N510 -- follow on past the break for our complete faceoff. %Gallery-81099%
ASUS Eee PC 1005PE review
By our count ASUS has released -- at the very least -- 20 Eee PC netbooks since 2008. Some had 8.9-inch or 10-inch displays, some ran Xandros Linux or Windows XP, and some packed hard drives instead of flash storage. But common to virtually all of them was an Intel Diamondville 1.6GHz Atom N270 or N280 processor. That all changes with the 10-inch Eee PC 1005PE -- one of the first netbooks to feature the next-generation Intel Pine Trail platform, which features a 45-nanometer Pineview Atom N450 processor that integrates both the memory controller and GMA 3150 graphics onto the CPU die. The newly compact package promises improved performance and power efficiency, but will you notice the difference? Does the $380 1005PE blow past the Diamondville Eee PCs of late? Read on to find out in our full review. %Gallery-80648%
ASUS Eee PC 1201N review
Six months ago netbooks all had 10-inch displays, fairly cramped keyboards, and couldn't manage to play a 1080p video even if they trained with the best of marathoners. The world's a lot different now: the King of Pop has passed away, the unemployment rate has dropped, and netbook manufacturers have realized 11- and 12-inch displays provide a more comfortable experience -- especially when paired with more powerful hardware that adds multimedia prowess. We'll stop there with the Netbook 101, but looking at the past is necessary in realizing what a game-changer the ASUS Eee PC 1201N really is. The 1201N's dual-core Intel Atom processor, NVIDIA Ion graphics, Windows 7 Home Premium, and 2GB of RAM make it the most powerful netbook to ever grace the purchase pages of Amazon. But does the $500 machine fix all the issues and frustrations we've ever had with netbooks when put to the test? Can it make us forget about cramped keyboards, strained eyes and sluggish video performance? Find out in our full review. %Gallery-80538%
ASUS' Eee PC Seashell 1101HA gets hands-on treatment ahead of European launch
Make no mistake, ASUS knows it's onto something with the sleek new Eee PC seashell form factor. We've seen the 1101HA and its 3G-equipped fraternal twin 1101HGO before, and now Trusted Reviews has managed one more glimpse before the netbook goes on sale in Europe later this month. The biggest selling point for this over the other seashell models like 1008HA or 1005HA is gonna be the 11.6-inch screen, but beyond that, it looks like you're getting slightly gimped right shift key, but on the bright side, there's also a removable battery. As the site notes, this particular model happened to have the ASUS logo displayed on the back of the lid, which is in stark contrast to the typical Eee branding we see in its place. Still no word on an US release, but we're holding out hope it'll follow suit pretty quickly after the overseas launch.
ASUS's little netbooks go big-box; Eee PCs expected in Walmart by year's end
Last year upstart Acer stole the netbook crown from ASUS, a sales stat that might have been helped by the ability to buy an Aspire One at your local neighborhood Walmart. While you can already pick up an Eee at places like Target and Best Buy, from what we hear at wholesale mixers you're nothing until you go Supercenter, and that's just where the company that started the netbook craze wants to go, said to be planning its own push into the biggest of big-box retailers. If this report is correct, expect to be able to pick up a little Eee with your groceries (and shame) sometime in the latter half of this year.
Switched On: Following in the Eee's wide footprints
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment. In a year in which the OLPC foundation turned attention on its child-optimized OLPC stateside and Palm's backbone curved as it contracted Foleosis, an unlikely ultraportable rose to capture enthusiast praise.Arriving late and at twice its original touted price of $199, the Asus Eee has succeeded in the muscle-driven PC market with modest screen size, processor, RAM and storage specifications and solid (but not outstanding) battery life. Its name and design philosophy take unabashed cues from Nintendo's Wii. And like its inspiration, it's been a budget-conscious blockbuster.Reuters reports that Asus is now shipping 20,000 of the 2 lb. mobile computing quasi-appliances every month. The Taiwanese manufacturer has been so encouraged that it has raised its global forecast to five million Eees by the end of 2008 as it aims at becoming the fifth largest notebook PC company by 2010. Those are the kind of numbers that could make the top four take notice, setting off a frenzy of melodramatic pound-shedding to rival The Biggest Loser.
