Asus is the latest PC maker to hit the market with its own line of thin, light laptops.
The Taiwanese company revealed its new family of notebooks at a news conference in Taipei on Monday. The ASUS UnLimited, or UL, laptops measure less than 24.5 millimeters (one inch) thick and weigh anywhere from 3.3 to 4.6 pounds, depending on the model.
Asus boasts that the laptops can deliver up to 12 hours of life on a single battery charge. Users can switch video mode from the dedicated NVIDIA graphics card to the integrated graphics to save battery life. The Power4Gear feature also lets people choose different power profiles and even turn off certain devices to conserve energy.
To further boost battery life, some of the models can hold an eight-cell battery versus the smaller six-cell. But the more robust battery also adds weight to the laptop.
"We hope to make this the new standard in notebook computers, thin and light with long battery life," said Asus CEO Jerry Shen at the news conference.
Asus' Web page promoting the UL family shows seven different models, from the 12.1-inch UL20A to the 15.6-inch UL50VG. As a contrast, the UL20A comes without an optical drive and can hold up to 4GB of memory, while the UL50Vg includes a DVD Super Multi drive for reading and writing to CDs and DVDs and can handle up to 8GB of RAM.
Retail prices for the Taiwanese market announced at the news conference ranged from $980 for the UL20A and $1,043 for the 13.3-inch UL30A to $1,074 for the 14.1-inch UL80VT, and $1,105 for the UL50Vg. Actual prices will depend on the configuration, as users can choose the Windows version, processor speed, hard disk size, and amount of memory.
Asus said the new UnLimited lineup will hit the stores on September 22.
Asus is just the latest PC maker to follow in the footsteps of Apple's MacBook Air by offering consumers thin, light notebooks with long-lasting batteries.
Last week Samsung announced its new ultrathin X3 notebook with claims of a nine-hour battery.
Around the same time, Dell tantalized users with a glimpse of its upcoming Adamo laptop, only 9.99 millimeters (0.4 inches) thick, while Sony announced a new Vaio X series, also less than half an inch thick and weighing 1.5 pounds.
Get ready for an Eee-book reader. Word came Thursday of Asustek's plans to enter the hopping e-book market with an e-reader marketed under its popular Eee brand.
Samsung shows off its new e-book reader, the SNE-50K, in July. It's yet another company that joined the e-book reader race this year.
(Credit: Samsung)Company president Jerry Shen said Asustek plans to launch its reader by the end of 2009 at the earliest, according to Taiwanese publication DigiTimes, which notes that another Netbook maker, MSI, is also looking into the e-book reader market.
Asustek practically invented the Netbook market with its original 7-inch Eee PC, an inexpensive ultraportable laptop that debuted to huge media attention in 2007. Since then, the Eee label has appeared on larger and more loaded follow-up machines, including the Asus Eee PC T91, a small, low-cost Netbook with a touch-screen interface and rotating display.
E-readers have become a hot ticket as devices like the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader bring the category into the mainstream. E-readers grabbed the spotlight once again this week with Sony's announcement of the new Reader Daily Edition, its first e-book reader with built-in wireless capability.
As for Asus' e-book reader, we don't have any more to tell you at the moment, but we'll let you know as soon as we hear more (Update: see this September 7 story for more details).
Here's the current state of the art for Eee PC. Next up: a touch screen.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET News)Because of their small size and inexpensive nature, Netbooks are hot items right now. Asus' Eee PC is one of the more recognizable lines available.
Users have wanted a touch-screen version of their favorite tiny laptops, and it's been rumored for a while that future Eee PCs would implement them. But it wasn't until Thursday that the general manager of the Eee PC line for Asus confirmed that they are coming--next year.
Samson Hu, the general manager, also remarked that future models would get dual-core Atom processors once they come out, and that a new lower-cost model is on the way. According to some reports, there are even more models in the works but details are scant. In all, it's a day of good news for Eee PC fans.
Asustek's 'Eee'
Amid all the talk of One Laptop Per Child and whether its machines will turn commercial after being first offered to developing nations for use by schoolchildren, it looks like Asustek and Intel are going straight to the head of the class. They've just announced a new teeny, affordable PC that's stripped-down but still pretty versatile. We've got pictures for you! With a full-size grown-up's keyboard and price tag around $200, the machine just might cause a market disturbance. Click on the image for more.
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