Asus Eee PC Gets a U.S. Price and Release Date

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We finally know the price and availability date of the Asus Eee PC for its U.S. release. Look for the Eee PC 4G to be available Thursday, November 1st for a price of $399.99.

The Sales Kit for the Asus Eee PC sent to resellers has a slide indicating availability of the three models coming to the U.S. this year, below is a screenshot of this slide:

(view large image)

This site actually has an Eee PC 4G in hand at the moment and you can see video and a first thoughts review of it here. There's no indication on how many units Asus will have on hand to sell, but given the $399 price point it probably won't sell as fast as they'd hope. Asus this summer dangled the carrot of $199 to people but instead we now see a $399 price, a similar price to budget Windows laptops, so that sigh you just heard is one of dissapointment.

You can see on this sheet the Eee PC 2G (a 2GB version with lower specs to the 4G) will have a $299 price point, but nowhere on the map is there a $199 or even $249 model.

Related Articles:

• Asus Eee PC Full Review
• Asus Eee PC Hands on and Video Review

 

Sure you could just get a budget laptop for $399, but would it be 7"? Still, Asus seems to be disappointing as of late and not just in the EEE.

 

7" is pretty small to do much more than watch movies and surf the net for a short period. for word processing it might strain your eyes.

it also does not offer the value for money that budget laptops offer, such as a good deal of RAM and drive space.

sadly the price is just not competitive enough but is probably enough to encourage ppl to buy it as a gimmick. probably its best feature is that it is light but this really depends on how heavy is too heavy and how small is too small for the average person.

This is a nice machine but i wonder how much interest there is in the market for such a small but limited device.

 

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/134344



Is this a real pc , Or is it a suped up PDA... can this device actually run xp???

 

that price is way higher than expected, you could actually get a real laptop with similar specs for ~$500.

 

for 400 they could of made the battery last longer than 3hrs, thats pathetic.

my sz gets over 4hrs on battery saving settings with wifi on, and its specs blow away the eee

 

I think you can't and I am not talking about the size -- which new budget notebook still uses a 900MHz Celeron M ULV 353 anyway???

Eee PC bring ultra-portability to the sub-$500 range, but the inherent design trade-off of an ultra-portable when compared to a main-stream laptop is not going to change. You have to need or value the portability much, much higher than performance for it to make sense.

 

I agree, but I would imagine that most people on a tight budget wouldn't be looking for how small and portable the notebook is. They are more likely to be looking at how powerful the notebook is at a certain price. People looking at the budget category of laptops are looking for the best bang for the buck, and I would imagine that by "bang for the buck", they are looking for the most powerful notebook at a low price, not the most portable.

 

Seriously for that price, I'll just get an Inspiron 1501 if I want to be truly mobile and have a semi-powerful laptop.

 

And it still is twice the size and almost triple the weight.

 

yea the 1501 is pretty heavy. not that portable

 

This is perfect for college students and taking notes in class.

Perfect for people on a budget who want an ULTRA portable.

Granted a 10" screen would be better IMO at that price point but 7" may not be bad.

 

i think the keyboard will make it hard for the typical adult to type with good speed. the screen may also be too small for long usage.

probably more suited to the under 10yrs category who you dont want messing with your expensive rig

 

Ugh, it keeps on being pushed back and back. Does Nov. 1st even technically qualify as the end of the month release date they were aiming for? I'm even starting to doubt we'd see the EEE refresh next year.

 

well ebuyer says 12th november if you look at the link on the first page and id trust that

 

199$ for surfing / office / media on the go was great .

299$ still acceptable .

399$ will be oh so close to the new competitively priced fully speced 12"/14"ers as the low end thin & light market will have to adjust .

But as Asus will lower the Eee price/raise specs ( as it probably will ) , other brands will have to bend more and more , so even if you don't plan to buy the Eee its a win-win situation ... for us at least

 

Why would anybody pay $400 for a kid's toy when one can get a used Dell D410 (i.e. a real ultraportable laptop) for around $500?

 

because this is even more ultra portable


or get a sony tz, or a tx

 

Hmm, I wouldn't mind paying up $400. I've been wanting a laptop that I can carry around for a while now. The only thing that's been bothering me is the 512MB of RAM, and I can't change that, right?

And what happened to the 8GB SSD one?

 

The ram is upgradable, up to 1gb. There's a slot on the bottom of the notebook.

And you guys have points about dissapointment over the increased price, lower specs than initially stated, but I still feel this will sell pretty well.

 

I wonder if the SSD is user changeable?

 

Oh nice. I'll buy it then, if I have money. Will dump the 1GB from my laptop onto that and get a 2GB for my laptop

@ jedisolo: Not that I know of. AFAIK it's soldered onto teh mobo.

 

I believe I did say the buyers would have to need or value the portability. "Bang for the buck" is the best value, not necessarily best performance. I agree that current budget notebook buyers tend to try to maximize performance with what they can afford, but part of that is because there is nothing else they can try to maximize, either. There is just no other choices out there.

Currently, for people really value portability but on a really tight budget, there is no choice but to 1. not buying 2. raise budget 3. make do with other choices like PDA or accepting lugging a 15" laptop. These people are what Eee PC is targeting and it's not hard to see they don't really overlap with your stereotypical budget laptop buyers -- these people have a different set of requirements and more often they would end up with something other than your stereotypical budget laptops.

The simple fact here is that you cannot have a demand for something that does not exist, so of course if you look at the demand for current laptops Eee PC makes absolutely no sense -- kind of like talking about demand for air travel before Wright brothers built the first airplane. What Eee PC is trying to do is convert the desire to demand with a new product and only time will tell whether there is demand out there. However, when it does capture market demand, the demand will come from more than just those who currently purchase a budget laptop.

 

Yes, its dissapointing that the Eee is coming in quite a bit higher than enticipated. However I can see the application that this is targeted for.

Mobile sales units, that just need a cell phone and a simple (and very lightweight) computer to check email and minor presentations. That said, the battery life is dissapointing.

As an admin, I could see practical deployment posibilities. Not every small-mid sized company can justify a fleet of ultra portables that is at a higher risk of getting damaged and lost.

This is definately not for the power user nor for the budget user.

At this price point (or more accurately the intended price point) you can get a simple, highly reliable and long life cell phone with the Eee and be more cost effective than a regular Winmobile PDA.

 

The EEE PC has no chance to compete against the budget windows laptops coming out this Christmas for $300. The only advantage the EEE PC has is in size and battery time. Otherwise, the budget regular notebooks are several steps ahead when it comes to features and flexibility.

Sorry Asus, but you dropped the ball on this one. $400 is excessive. $300 is excessive. $200 or $250 is competitive.

 

If that $399 model were actually $250, I would definitely be sold. At 400 though, not so much. There are some other 400 dollar gadgets that I'd rather have before the Eee.

 

I'm not sure I understand why people are discounting the size as an important factor in this laptop. It seems like everyone is comparing it to the kinds of standard laptops you see selling for $400-600, but those laptops are usually fairly big.

I would think the more appropriate comparison here would be laptops like the Sony TZ....... there are people who buy the TZ solely because they want something as small as possible, and are willing to pay $2000 to get that.

But for people who don't need some of the extras the TZ has (the optical drive, the larger HD, etc.), a $399 Eee PC seems to be a pretty nice alternative. And honestly, it's not like these kinds of laptops are suitable for much beyond basic office work, web browsing, video playback, etc.

I think the most disappointing thing to me would be the comment in the initial hands on that the keyboard is very bad, as if I were to buy a machine like this, it would be to have a cheap and ultraportable word processor.

-Zadillo

 

if i'm right, directron.com is carrying one of those with 4gb now for 399$.

 

Am I remembering correctly that the keyboard for the Eee is being compared to the 700M keyboard? I loved that keyboard, lol.

 

I agree. EEE is not comparable to standard laptop. It seems to fall more in the UMPC category. If you compare it to other UMPCs, it really stands out.

Well seriously, if someone is looking for an ultraportable they're not going to find one for less than $2000. Eee is still the lightest, cheapest funtional PC.

 

I was skeptical at $399 for what the believed specs are. This is far more disappointing. Forget it. Half the ram and storage as we thought? Bleh.


EDIT: Ok, I've thought about it more and considering it's 'new' and uses SSD, I'm willing to be more forgiving. I'm just....I'm underwhelmed, honestly. I feel like they pulled a bait and switch on this one. Both on price ($200 higher than promised? ) and specs.

 

its too expensive for a toy! which is what it is.

 

people are paying ~$3000 for tz's with ssd's

 

Yes. And the thing is, if someone was buying a TZ with an SSD just for speed while word processing, etc. the Eee would accomplish much of the same.

Personally I can see the appeal; I've been interested in something very ultraportable like the TZ, but all I would really use it for is writing, which doesn't require a ton of power or storage space.

-Zadillo

 

I don't see it; it has Firefox and OpenOffice preinstalled, it's still a full Linux OS, and you can in fact install XP and Office if you like.

I don't see what makes it a "toy".

-Zadillo

 

Hey, this computer will be about the size of two DVD movie cases stacked on top of one another with an AC adapter smaller than most cell phone chargers. It will run Firefox, skype and open office with only 2-4Gb of total storage. It will be running a super stable and small footprint linux OS. It has built in networking and works with USB 2.0 hard drives among other peripherals. Lastly, it will startup in 20 seconds and shutdown in 9 sec.

No other current computer even at twice the price of the EEE even comes close to its portability and performance. I'm looking forward to this first iteration, but the update that is expected in middle of 2008 will probably be the a super hit around the world.

 

I'll still buy one. Hmmm... ~$500AU, sounds reasonable.

 

It's popular over here in Indonesia too. I'm not so sure *I* would want one, but I can see where some others might. Sucks that the price was bumped up $200 more, because I would of jumped on it otherwise

 

I wonder why people are complaining this much.

A standard fair UMPC or a higher end smart phone/PDA will cost even more and no one is complaining.

This thing cost 1/2 as much (even with the price hike) as my HP 6528 PDA-phone. I would have gladly get a cheap nokia or motorola, and carry this full function pc.


;p

 

$399 is overpriced. You can get a refurb Inspiron 1501 with an X2 CPU and 1GB of RAM and like an 80 or 120GB HD. I may still consider the $240 model (since I'm in Taiwan). But If I bought it, it wouldn't be much more than a toy for me. Perhaps I'll sell my PSP to justify buying one of these new toys.

Also, Asus has already stated that $199 will be fore high quantity orders and will be available at a later date.

 

Yes, but what I meant by that was, the price seems to me, to be a bit outrageous for what you get. Personally I'd get something like a 1501 for only $100 more. If I really want mobility, I would get a pda. Guess it's just personal taste. I'm just disappointed that the Easy PC is priced this high.

 

It's true that you can get a better notebook (read: more powerful, more heavy, more bulky, etc etc) for the price you are paying for the EEE (UM)PC. But, like Zadillo said most of you are missing the point of this device. It's designed to be

• More portable

• Lightweight

• A 'puter that is actually a 'puter, albeit handicapped (somewhat; it depends on what *you* want to do)

• ~1/6 of the price of it's competition. And at such a big price slash, there has to be some kind of compromise. The Asus compromise isn't all that bad, really.

It's true that Asus couldn't deliver a 100%, but I think they delivered 70% of what they promised. At least they are trying to do what no other brand has done before. Come on, give them some love here.

 

Would that be the Inspiron 1501 that weighs around 6 and a half pounds?

Again, I'm baffled by these comparisons to larger 15" cheapo laptops. Yes, we get the idea that for the same amount of money you could buy a big cheap heavy laptop.

The appeal of the Eee PC is the same appeal that UMPC's and ultraportable notebooks have, and that has typically demanded a heavy price premium.

Seriously, this is like looking at a Sony TZ and saying "But I can get an Inspiron that has better performance for a quarter of the price".

-Zadillo

 

I was simply price comparing. Zadillo. The Inspiron 1501 might be 3x the weight but it is also 3x the power. If I was in the market for something small, I'd get a PDA with a keyboard. That would be like 1/2 an lb. I'm more disappointed about the price for the specs on the EEE PC. I think $240 (in Taiwan) is a great deal for the 2GB / 256MB version. But I do not think it is reasonable to charge $400 for the 4GB / 512MB / Webcam version. ~$300 would be more practical.

 

Agreed. Although the point may be about portability, does the price tag of $399 truly justify this point? Personal tastes, ofcourse, but I don't feel Asus is ripping people off, it's just that by pricing it like that, most people will simply pass for something 3x better for only a little bit more. The added weight becomes a minimal factor since the EEE is overpriced at $399.

 

Ridiculous. Asus really botched this one. At $400 it is an overpriced novelty item now.

 

How much is the 4GB/512MB model in Taiwan? And, want to post me one? I'm in Sydney, so it's cheap.

 

Isn't the Toshiba Libretto as small?

 

wow... $399.... the price jumped A LOT!

damn,,, i am going to just wait until next year and get the 10inch one

 

Oh, and someone clarify this for me please:

http://www.eeeuser.com/2007/10/23/asus-posts-launch-dates-for-eee-pc-models/

Does that mean the 8GB is coming mid November? If so, how much is that going to be? $499? =^O