asus

Asus Eee PC plus Windows XP equals Best Buy

Hardly a day goes by when we don't hear some news item about everyone's favorite mini-notebook, the Asus Eee PC. While the current $399 Eee PC runs Linux and comes preloaded with most of the software you'll need for day to day computing (FireFox, OpenOffice, etc.), Asus has always talked up that fact that this little machine could handle Windows XP with no problem.

We've seen a handful of XP Eee PC samples around, but now it's getting a more formal release via big-box retailer Best Buy, according to Laptop magazine. Purportedly starting April 9, … Read more

This week in laptops

More tiny laptops, broken OLPCs, and a factory inferno causes a battery shortage. This week's summary is presented in headline format, a favorite of rushed editors worldwide. (Everyone loves a list, right?)

Second-gen Eee PC will have touch screen, GPS HP readying its own cheap mini-notebook? Taiwanese company introduces Eee PC-branded accessories First Intel netbook identified as 2go PC VIA Technologies preps an x86 chip for small notebooks How much will netbooks disrupt the PC market? Photos of a follow-up to the Classmate PC? OLPC keyboards apparently not childproof Dell announces sub-$1,000 Blu-ray laptop ...and finds a retail partner in India … Read more

Bigger Eee PC will have touch screen, GPS

The second generation of the Asus Eee PC, which we first wrote about earlier this month, will apparently include a few more features unseen on its predecessor. DigiTimes is reporting that the laptop's 9-inch display will be a touch-screen panel, and the new models may include GPS support. The presumed launch date for the next-generation Eee PCs remains May or June of this year.

While I welcome the larger screen size (it's better for Web browsing), I've never found a touch screen to be that much of a bonus outside of a tablet form factor. The possible … Read more

Factory fire causes laptop battery shortage

Have trouble finding an extra or replacement battery for your laptop? Both Dell and HP say they are experiencing a laptop battery shortage after a March 3 fire knocked out a major supplier of the batteries.

Besides Dell and HP, the fire that gutted a plant owned by South Korea's second-largest battery maker, LG Chem, is also affecting Asus, maker of the popular Eee PC laptop.

"We sell battery packs. The prices of those battery packs for people ordering extra batteries have gone up," Dell spokesman Jess Blackburn told Reuters. "The industry is experiencing battery supply … Read more

Everybody's jumping on the Eee PC bandwagon

We like the Asus Eee PC as much as anyone else, but does this $499 mini-notebook really need its own line of third-party branded accessories?

A-Data, a Taiwanese company that calls itself "The Global Leading Brand of Memory Products," is introducing two Eee-PC-branded accessories, a USB flash drive and an SD memory card.

A-Data says, "One of the limitations of Asus's Eee PC is the limited storage," and while the 8GB SD card is already double the capacity of the Eee PC's standard built-in 4GB SSD hard drive (other options are available), you could … Read more

This week in laptops

Small fries everywhere! A bunch of this week's news focused on tiny laptops of the Eee PC variety: the Intel Classmate PC will reportedly hit U.S. and European retailers; photos of a possible "netbook" surfaced on Flickr; and we saw an Eee PC competitor for the Taiwanese market (release date unknown). Meanwhile, the tiny tablet-smartphone hybrid, the HTC Shift, became available for pre-order on Amazon; we have one in hand and posted a full review today.

Phew! There's no indication of a slowdown, either, if reports of ultra-low-priced Intel Atom CPUs for netbooks are accurate. … Read more

Asus unveils 15-inch multimedia laptop

Asus is best known these days for the Eee PC, an inexpensive, small, stripped-down notebook. But Asus also operates in the other end of the laptop spectrum, as confirmed by the announcement of the M50 this week.

To begin with, the M50 is fancier than the Eee. It's shiny, with a piano black finish, and is made for the media-obsessed. It has a 15.4-inch screen, an integrated Blu-ray player, an HDMI (high-definition multimedia interface) port, and Dolby Home Theater surround sound technology. The M50's cursor pad also doubles as a multimedia touchpad. Asus also hooks these up … Read more

Classmate PC coming to U.S., European retailers

More low-cost laptops are headed to a retailer near you.

Intel plans on expanding the distribution of its inexpensive, school children-friendly Classmate PC to U.S. and European retail outlets, according to a Reuters report on Wednesday.

The Classmate will sell for $250 to $350, Lila Ibrahim, general manager of Intel's emerging market platform group, told Reuters. Apparently Intel has already been conducting pilot programs using the devices in classrooms in the U.S. and Australia.

Though the Classmate is already available on the retail markets of India, Mexico, and Indonesia, this will be the first time the device … Read more

Intel's Netbook leaked?

Through the magic of Flickr , we've all spent the afternoon pondering blurry photos of what might be the Intel NetBook, a heretofore hypothetical computer powered by Intel's upcoming low-power Atom chips.

While we've already seen details of the desktop version, called the NetTop, via some leaked presentation, but the NetBook was a less-defined concept. Until now, that is. According to the original poster (on a blogspot blog called "Tech Corner"):

"My buddy works for a US Based OEM, and showed me a sample of one of the products that will be hitting US shores … Read more