Asus makes Eee PC S101 official, expects warm reception

Little, brown, different: the Eee PC S101.

(Credit: Asus)

Asus has big plans for its Eee PC S101. Details on the premium ($699 and up) Netbook were leaked on Monday, and Wednesday Asus officially unveiled its slimmest, sleekest Netbook yet at an odd event in Taiwan (see "wedding" photos here).

According to DigiTimes, Asus expects the S101 to account for 10 percent of Eee PCs it ships by the end of the year. That would seem to be an impressive number, given that the S101 costs double that of the original Eee PC and that Asus seems to introduce a new Eee PC model every other week. In fact, Asus will reportedly introduce two new Eee PC models, which will fall between the Eee PC 1000 series and the S101.

One last tidbit: DigiTimes reports that Asus expects to overtake Lenovo in global shipments next year, while leaping over Dell in China in 2009. At last count, Asus was eighth in laptop market share, three spots behind Lenovo.

I'm awaiting response from Asus on pricing and U.S. availability for the Eee PC S101. I will update this post with that information as soon as I get it. Until then, I will say that it's been widely reported that the S101 will be priced as follows:

Windows XP, 16GB SSD: $699
Linux, 32GB SSD: $699
Linux, 64GB SSD: $799

Update: Asus confirmed the above pricing, but it will not sell the two Linux-based models in the U.S. The Windows-based S101 will hit the U.S. on November 1 and will feature a 16GB solid-state drive and a 16GB SD card, plus 20GB of online storage.

[mmntech]

Give me a display with 1280x720 res and the new dual core Atoms and the $700 price tag might be worth it.

[Brent212]

Wow. They don't even mention the size of the frickin screen. People posting information on the internet are sometimes a little retarded. Yeah, I could google it, but that's annoying.

[RadioPictures]

I agree. In general I find the writers here to be substandard and stream-of-consciousness in method.

[Mario Yang]

Here is more photo from CNET Taiwan<br />http://taiwan.cnet.com/digilife/0,2000089053,20132306,00.htm<br /><br />and video<br /><br />http://taiwan.cnet.com/crave/0,2000088746,20132279,00.htm

[avitous]

Ummm... no Linux model in U.S.? Then I won't buy one. Sorry, ASUS! Please reconsider that abysmally stupid marketing decision.

[Fernyyy]

...Brown?

[LogicProphet]

OOk I understand the concept of diversifying your product line to make it accessible to various economic classes but this is ridiculous. They should be improving the 901 keyboard design, looking into a better processor. negotiating SSD drive costs ect. it should be 3 classes a barebones kinda net book as the one they have now, a business model with more options to connectivity , and a media model packaged to play divx hd with an hdmi port and more space most likely a platter HDD.all of whichshould be competively priced.

[dirty55409]

ssd needs to get bigger and cheaper before these little laptops will be worth a damn

[hnygrl412]

16 gigs? For 700 bucks? <br /> <br />SO not worth it.