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Asus Planning to Release Touchscreen Eee PC Within Six Months
Posted by John Herrman at 9:10 PM on October 9, 2008
Asustek executive Samson Hu has confirmed his company's plans to release a touchscreen Eee PC variant for sale by Q1 of 2009. It's not known whether the devices will look like the touch panel Eee mods that have been floating around or take the shape of a tablet, but we'll see in January when the first models are shown at CES. That's not all though — further announcements indicated that the Eee line is changing is some more subtle ways.
Hu stated that Intel Atom dual core processors will start making an appearance in their products as soon as they can get their teeny tiny little hands on them. Company President Jerry Chen, apparently feeling left out, chimed in to say that there would be another refreshed Eee coming at around $US300. With an even lower low end, Atom dual-core processor models and touchscreen units it's not really clear what Eee designation is supposed to mean anymore, though I'd say "things that Asus makes that someone might actually want" sums it up pretty well. [Digitimes]
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
distantbody
Posted 10:37 PM 9/10/08
Oh, and touchsceen, yeah... cool... I bet that they'll gimp any touchscreen functionality by not making it a tablet...
distantbody
distantbody
Posted 10:35 PM 9/10/08
Look, all they have to do is use the chipset that intel designed *for the atom*... The Poulsbo chipset is nowhere to be seen since the start of the year. Poulsbo is the ying the the atoms yang. I don't want no stinkin' full-size chipset to burn my crotch and battery life when intel has Poulsbo with integrated northbridge/graphics and huge power draw.
I salivating when all the atom-based netbooks started cropping up assuming that they would be both ultraportable *and* have decent graphics and battery life, but dear god, I am just so sick of these fat and hot 945GSE/910GML etc. full-sized-laptop chipsets holding the atom --and netbooks-- back, The atom is only half the equation!
distantbody
pfister07
Posted 10:30 PM 9/10/08
I highly doubt that the $300 price point will apply to the touchscreen or the Intel Atom Dual Core models. Still excited to see what they have up their sleeves though!
pfister07
Aturayd
Posted 11:04 PM 9/10/08
coming soon: the Fff line..
Aturayd
J France
Posted 11:58 PM 9/10/08
Eeextremely over saturated, however cheap and cool.
I've given up trying to track all the models... I would have thought it'd be better to have fewer base models with configurable differences. It makes for a much easier and less intimidating selection process for the consumer, and more likely to show a general interest. Especially at their ongoing kick arse price points.
I've been wanting to get that off my chest for a while now.
J France
pfister07
Posted 11:57 PM 9/10/08
Hopefully not the Eff line...
pfister07
godwhacker
Posted 12:59 AM 10/10/08
i think that the touch screen will make the eee a better e-book reader and lightweight gamer. i know i have held off doing the touch conversion on mine so far, because i haven't been able to see one in person to check out the functionality.
godwhacker
rock99rock
Posted 12:44 AM 10/10/08
@distantbody:
Agreed, the Gigabyte version looks mighty tempting
rock99rock
theblackdog
Posted 2:15 AM 10/10/08
Ehhh, I just bought an older eee model and I am happy with it, except that Opera and Blogger are not getting along right now.
theblackdog
weatherman
Posted 2:56 AM 10/10/08
Any touchscreen model needs to be tabletable - the screen needs to be twist-n-flip. Otherwise I see little point. I'd love to see something with the old Clio format - that was my favorite form-factor from the days of the old WinCE crap.
weatherman
Stacky Botrus
Posted 5:06 AM 10/10/08
GiggerBiter Alreadyer has one'er. And someone put osx on it too, oh the funniness. I want DUAL ATOM, though.
Stacky Botrus
TheWerewolf
Posted 7:21 AM 10/10/08
@Stacky Botrus: You want OSX?
Go yell at Apple. It's their fault. The expressly prevent you from simply installing it on other PCs.
TheWerewolf
TheWerewolf
Posted 7:20 AM 10/10/08
This is soooo sad. When I read the headline my first thought was "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!" in excitement (I loves me touchscreens...)
Then I look up above the headline... :)
TheWerewolf
Bokusatsu_Tenshi
Posted 8:30 AM 10/10/08
Will wait for specs and reviews to know if this will truly deliver.
Cheap touchscreen sounds very nice, but could also be completely useless..
Bokusatsu_Tenshi
Sam_Zebian
Posted 8:22 AM 10/10/08
yea I have an eee 1000 and I'm returning it for a 1000h. Maybe I should just return it, keep the money and use it for this future eee pc... I'm going to think about it, but is 6 months without an eee really worth it.... What do you guys think?
Sam_Zebian