Laptop Magazine scored an hour-long interview with Asus CEO Jerry Shen, and while most of the details they got out of him were already unveiled at CeBIT this week, they did manage to squeeze a few interesting nuggets out of him:
- The US pricing for the Eee PC 900 will be around $499 at launch, with plans to drop the price within a few months
- While initial reports have suggested that the Windows XP model will sport a 8GB of flash memory and the Linux version will have 12GB, Shen says the Linux model might have as much as 20GB of storage
- Asus is looking into offering a hard drive option, but any units the company releases between now and June will have SSD only
- Asus is not abandoning its custom Xandros operating system
- Units with built-in WiMax and HSDPA could be released in Q3 2008
- Future models could use Intel's Diamondville processor
- More color options are coming in a few months
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7 comments:
Have we gotten a clear statement on what the native screen resolution will be ?
1024 x 600.
any word on a date other than 'q2 2008'?
Officially Asus is saying April, but I wouldn't be surprised by a May or June release. Also, it's not clear which countries will get the first shipments.
It's great that they will offer the original Xandros Ubuntu and XP as well. My problem is that I would like to have both. The $40 XP is hard to refuse, but I would like to get the 12GB SSD, which comes with Xandros. What would be the best/cheapest way to install both with a dual boot setup?
Doug: Just get the Linux version. Currently Asus provides a DVD with each Linux Eee PC that contains all the drivers you need to install Windows XP. It also includes all the files you need to restore Xandros. So you can pretty easily wipe Xandros and install XP on a 12GB model if you have an XP installation disc. Or you can partition your flash memory and go for a dual boot system or find instructions at forum.eeeuser.com to install either Xandros or XP on an SD card.
Right now I have a dual boot system with Windows XP installed on the main memory and Xubuntu on the SD card.
Thanks, Brad, that was exactly what I needed to know. Right now I don't have an XP installation disk per se, but I plan to go for the 12GB outfit with Xandros and worry about the XP later... but I will probably wait at least an extra month to find out what the promised extra features in later units turn out to be. (I'm not much interested in chic "New York City and London City" styling though :) Also to see if the price falls as Shen suggested, though I doubt that it will in the US.
In the mean time, HP and others may make the choices even more difficult.
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