Asus Sets Eee PC 900 U.S. Launch for May 12th

Asus informed us this evening that the Eee PC 900 will hit the store shelves in the U.S. on May 12th. The Linux and Windows XP loaded version of this 8.9" version of the Eee PC will both cost $549.

The Eee PC 900 has already been released in both Europe and Asia, the U.S. is left as the second fiddle in this release party. The basic specs for the Eee PC 900 are as follows:

• Display: 8.9" 1024 x 600
• Color: Pearl White, Black
• CPU: Intel Mobile CPU
• Chipset: Intel Mobile Chipset
• Memory: DDR II 1GB
• Graphics: Intel UMA
• Storage:
  • Linux sku:20GB (4GB on board + 16GB flash module)
  • XP sku:12GB (4GB on board + 8GB flash module)
• Web Cam: 1.3 M
• Dimension: 8.86"(W) x 6.69"(D) x .79"mm~1.33"(H)
• Weight (kg): 2.18 lbs

(view large image)

At $549 the Eee PC 900 bumpsup againstthe price of a budget 15.4" screen notebook, but it is still far lower in price than other ultraportables out there, which typically start at around $1,000. Of course, some sacrifices are made such as with thebuild quality and keyboard qualityto get the price down, but reviews so far from Europe and Asia indicate the Eee PC 900 is worth a look and should be equally as popular as its smaller brother, the 7-inch screen Eee PC 701.

 

Who is going to pay $550 for this thing? At this price wouldn't most people rather spend a little more and get something a lot better?

 

Is the flash module just a SD card? If so the XP version seems like a great deal. XP alone will run you $150

 

Awww dang... ah well, $550 is still a good deal for this lil guy.

 

$550 is not a good deal for this, but many will still buy it.
At this point, I'd rather get a Dell 1525 or HP DV2700t than spend that on an EEE PC.

 

Over $500? K, I'll wait for Dell. Thanks Asus!

 

XP for the equivalent of 8GB of flash memory is getting competitive. Let's hope this is the start of realistic pricing across the whole Windows range. Microsoft must be starting to feel the pain!

The display real estate is starting to become enough, but those pixels are small - slightly smaller than 1680 x 1050 @ 15.4" (but the same size as the previous Eee).

John

 

Such a sexy little laptop, but $499 would have been a much more attractive price point. However, if I was in the market for an ultraportable I think it would be this.

 

what kinda processor are we talking about! is it Intel Atom? or the same old celeron! or is it Via'S new processor!!

 

Says intel , But figers crossed its the Via Isaiah.

 

Love the Eee concept but for $549......meh.

For that kind of $, I'll just wait for a better clone.

 

Always the same reactions to the higher price: who's going to buy this when you can get a better specced 6lbs 15" Dell or Acer or whatever for the same price.

Listen up: the Eee is made for people who consider small size and low weight a feature, not a bug. Show me a much better specced competitor with comparable size and weight before you whine about the Eee getting overpriced.

 

at $549 i won't buy it. i can get a neo ultraportable at $650 and its damn powerful t7250 160 gb 2 gig ram.....

 

Which one is that? I haven't seen anything under 3.5lbs with such prices and specs.

 

here it is http://www.neo.com.ph/products/vivid.html

 

If you've read the half a dozen Eee PC 900 reviews out there already, you'd know that it's still using the same 900 MHz Celeron-M processor.

 

Its actually a great price if you were looking for a new ultra-portable, however there are better notebooks to be found on eBay for that price. Any P-M ULV will rock this.

 

That thing is about 80% bigger and heavier than the Eee.

 

For a person entering the market for the first time, the $549 price may look a little steep, but compared to competitor offerings, such as the equivalent HP 2133 ($549 - 1.2GHZ C7-M ULV, 1GB RAM, 120GB HDD), it's not far out of line. You get a better performing system overall, but less hard disk space (but really, I'd probably rather 20GB of flash memory than 120GB of mechanical storage for something this small).

This almost hits the target I've set for buying a sub-notebook. Now all I need is better battery life (at least 4 hours with the default 4 cell). Hopefully Isaiah/Atom will bring that.

 

Interesting that the Linux and XP versions will cost the same. No wonder why Asus expects the XP version to outsell the Linux one.

 

People are complaining about the price, but I've seen plenty of "$400" 4G units where people have popped in a 8GB SDHC, Windows XP, a gig or two of RAM, and possible an external optical drive to load the new OS.

Suddenly $550 doesn't seem so bad when you get a larger screen and don't have to upgrade anything out of the box.

 

It is the same Celeron procs used in the 701. Its already out in Taiwan and HK. I doubt they will change it for the US market in May.

 

I agree with the sentiments on the price point being $549 and if you're looking for a notebook that suits your daily needs then you'd go with a 15.4-inch budget machine if you want to stay under $600, but this is still the cheapest ultraportable on the market. Though you could spend about $300 more and get a low end ThinkPad X61 with use of a coupon code. Or head to ebay and by an older ThinkPad X40 for around this price.

 

It pains me to say the pricepoint may have pushed me to wait another month or 2 for the competitors to release their ultra-portables -- or at the very least to wait on the Atom powered EEE.

Not that it's unaffordable but it's no longer a "nice to have, not necessary to have, but hell why not it's cheap" type gizmo. At $549 as many have mentioned it's pushed itself very close to new competition.

As for wishful Canadian buyers, a $549 tag in America could feasibly mean a $599 tag in Canada.. PLUS a further 13% in sales taxes, making it almost a $700 purchase if that was the case.

 

Honestly, the EEE was a great idea at $299. They're pricing themselves into irrelevance.

 

A used Thinkpad X40 comes with a bigger screen, real CPU, real hard drive, longer battery life, and a bunch of real ports, for the same price and often less. Why pay $550 for a lesser midget?

The 9" EEE isn't too much different form the 7" EEE. The 9" screen definitely is not $150 more expensive than the 7" screen.

Asus priced it out of its category. Greedy bastards.

 

Supposedly they'll come out with an Atom refresh at the end of July. I don't think Atom will be a very good improvement (in speed) since it uses such an old-school architecture. On the other hand, battery life will definitely get a nice bump with the new processor.

Don't know if it's reputable or not but these people spoke to some woman with Asus. She could be lying or not in the know but it's cool to speculate.

 

checked the other specs at all? 8GB extra space and windows XP, or 16GB extra space.

its still worth it in my opinion, and you can't really say the smaller EEE was worth it and this one isn't, since unless you are in the market and need a UMPC, buying a UMPC in itself is completely pointless.

and priced itself out of the competition? last I checked its the same price as the competition and performs faster. The fact is, if you need a UMPC for around $350 the Asus EEE is the best on the market for now

 

Did you see the price for the 9" one? It is $550. That is $200 above your $350 target. I said it is not worth it when they jack up the price to $550.

 

Id have to agree with most of the people on the high price point.
Personally $550 is out of my budget for a simple internet use laptop for skype and trillian.
However in my opinion at $400 without the extra SD card or XP license It would be perfect.

and to those saying its cheaper than the competition?

HP 2133 anyone? which has...
WXGA Screen
120GB 5400rpm Hard Drive
for the same price ($50 more for vista basic)

 

I love how people compare when the fact is that they are in two separate categories.

Is it smaller then half a piece of A4 paper? Check
Is it under 3lbs? Check
Is it usable for basic tasks? Check
Is it under $600? Check
Does it have a decent amount of space? Check

It will sell, maybe not to you, but do they really care? Hell no, they saw a niche, tested it and is now rolling around with it. Not everyone wants to play games, run photoshop or do coding on a 9" subportable notebook. Even if ASUS DID put a Pentium M ULV 1.6ghz, 2gb of RAM and 200gb HD for $600, why would anyone in their right mind do such tasks on a 9" screen? Obviously ASUS used common sense and though to themselves that its best off left for people's desktops or larger notebooks. For this 2lb 9" notebook, its meant for surfing the web, watching videos, streaming movies, playing solitaire, and not about crunching serious numbers.

Go ahead, buy that 14", 6 pound Dell, or HP, or Acer. Sure it may be the same price at triple the specs, but you sure all that gaming, encoding and traveling will do good with a Celeron CPU and 1gb of RAM?

ASUS may have lost customers, but it is for sure they've gained quite a few. They probably won't be able to keep up stock due to the LG battery problem as well as the screen production problem, so it'll rarely be in stock.

 

For that is the HP 2133 Mini-Note

 

As a reminder to those touting the HP 2133, it's performance is pretty bad. Let's face the truth, VIA CPUs are not on the same level as Intel CPUs at the moment. It's probably one of those only cases where the speed of the HD is comparable to the speed of the CPU in the ultraportable market.

 

• 
  
  Would someone please elaborate on this? (I've read elsewhere that eee 900s would have 12 and 20GB SSDs.)

 

He means that 4GB is soldered on to the board just like in the original EEE 701. The 900s add a modular SSD that plugs into an express slot inside the computer. In totality, the new models have 20 (4+16) and 12GB (4+8) SSDs. It gives you two drives and two physical partitions. For those that complained about having two separate drives, I know there is software that can combine the two drives into one logical unit.

 

Beat me by a minute!

A 4GB SSD is soldiered on, the other is a mini pcie card that is either 8GB or 16GB. As the price drops, you can replace your 8GB or 16GB ssd for a larger one. Even though the price is higher than I expected, I still want this, in black and an Atom processor of coures.

 

I've never really been intending or waiting to buy the EEE, but was always interested in getting something small and cheap.

I'm sure glad I didn't get my hopes up for something cheap from Asus this time. Can't wait to see what Acer, Dell, MSI, and ECS finally come up with.

I'm not ready to pay over $500 (plus tax) for the new EEE.

 

Probably the best solution at this point in time.... we'll have a bunch hopefully by the end of the summer.

more competition = lower prices
lower prices = consumer wins

 

Thanks for the info, guys. This is sounding better. I guess I can assume that the mini-PCIe card is just as fast as the soldered-on memory, and maybe the separate partitions will make it a little simpler to set up dual booting.

By the way, I just noticed that the Lenovo X61, which I've been considering for ages, has the same resolution as the eeePC 900 except for a slightly greater vertical proportion: X61, 1024 X 768 and eee900, 1024 X 600. I was impressed.

 

Here is a speed comparison for the two SSD's:
http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?t=263320

 

For $550, you can get a PS3 ($400) and three games. Now that is worth $550.

This 9" little piece of ... eh.... plastic is worth $400 at most. For $550, they better toss in GPS, blue tooth, an 8 hour battery, and better keyboard.

 

Yea, if I would buy one of these things it would need ~6 hours or more of battery life cause I don't want to worry about finding plugs and carrying the power adapter around.

 

Thanks again! It looks like both SSDs are faster than the 701, which is pretty fast.

 

err, that may be true but the difference between the VIA C7-M ULV @ 1.2GHz and the Intel Celeron M ULV @ 630MHz is not noticeable ( the intel is slower in wPrime untill put to 900Mhz then its slightly faster)
but your not really going to be doing processor intensive tasks on this type of system so the difference wouldn't be perceptible to the average user

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4352

^ Handy chart to show this

 

i truly love the EEEpc idea and even more what it started.... and that i that manufactures start selling laptops with free linux instead of windows and i personally love that not that im a big linux fan but i just hate the fact they dont leave me with the choice if i want or not want windows and make me pay for it! in the end i will end up putting windows on it but i already paid like 4 times for a windows key of which i use like 2 so no need to pay a 5th time for a damn key i already have.

Beside this the EEE is a pretty clever device it does what it have to do i. you can surf the web use different office tools and perform some other basic tasks you would wane do on such small device and to be honest those tasks dont need state of the art techniques so the atom processor some people want inst really of any use the only advantage could be the better battery life other then that the 900MHZ celeron does its job!

I planned to buy one until i saw one in real life! i knew it was small but this small i couldnt type normal on it and the screen was just horrible thats small. I guess the 9" improves that but for me i dont need such small devices 11" is small enough for me and i probably just end up buying a XPS 1530 or a F8SN they are portable enough for me and are more then a word-processing and web surfing device ^^

 

PCMark seems to indicate that even the 630MHz clocked Celeron M, 512MB RAM, 4GB SSD Eee PC 701 is faster than the 1.6GHz C7-M ULV, 2GB RAM, and 160Gb 7200RPM drive. I wouldn't want to think how the 1.2GHz C7-M would do with less RAM and a slower hard disk, not to mention the chassis temperatures of the 2133 (well over 100F under load).

 

I think I'm going to be holding out for a newer processor. Perhaps the Diamondville Atom will give better performance, as well as efficiency (I know the silverthorne one does not). Either that or an ULV Core2 Duo.

Also, I remember reading that in June there's going to be 3 new chassis versions, that are meant to be "Couture" according to the Asus exec - 2 with western flavor and one Asian. Maybe a Bamboo Eee?

 

Having owned the 701 4G, $550 price tag is disconcerting. But i understand the concept makes a lot of sense for those that need a very lightweight, rebust, resonable performance, usable laptop (keyboard is small but touch typeable with some practice).

I had mine running XP Pro with a 1Gb upgrade and performance has never been an issue for what its meant to do.

The only thing I didn't like about the original 701 was the smallish screen (fixed now), right shift key (you do get used to it) and the rather poor battery life (hopefully better with the Atom).

It will be interesting what the Atom EEE will be like...and so would its competitors. June isn't that far off.

 

One factor I don't believe was previously mentioned here is the terribly weak USD. The U.S. Dollar is extremely weak at the moment, and it's not surprising to me that Asus is "forced" to price it at this price point. I work in the electronics publishing business, and Asian manufacturers are in between a rock and a hard place - their respective currency is rising against the dollar, but they also know that the USA is in a recession, so they're facing quite a marketing problem. The dollar is in the tank, and we here in the USA can expect to continue to pay more for ANY product not made in this country.

That aside, the Asus Eee PC 900 is approaching the pain threshold, as you can buy excellent condition off-lease T-series ThinkPad's for less, or new budget notebooks for $100 less, and frankly, I'd rather have either of those.

For all of us in the USA, fasten your seat belts, as we're all going to see higher prices for everything!

 

ohh. the downfalls of a global economy...