Asus Eee PC 900 to start around $499 next month

So it looks like that larger screen on the Asus Eee PC will cost an extra $100 here in the United States. That's the expected price of the 8.9-inch model, aka: the 900 series, based on a LAPTOP magazine interview with my best bud remote acquaintance, Jonny Shih of Asus. $499 will get you the new model, which is expected to have 8 GB of flash storage with Windows XP or 12 GB to 20 GB of storage with Xandros Linux. Like the Everex folks and their CloudBook, Asus is considering the Intel Diamondville platform for future Eee PCs; that's a no-brainer to me as Intel certainly won't continue to make 900 MHz Celeron CPUs forever.

At $499, we start to bump into the fuller featured notebooks, but one feature they don't have is the smaller size of the Eee. Pending what we see out of HP with their 2133 / Mini-NB device, I'd probably trade up to the new Eee PC for the larger screen with 1024 x 600 resolution.

(via Eee Site)

Comments

[vance]

Any guesses when we'll have more information, ANYTHING, about the HP device?

[Nate]

For 350, I love my 4G Surf. I don't know that I would at five hundred.

[kujyht]

"In the beginning of April we will be releasing the 8.9-inch and then May and June we will provide another feature for each one."

whats that mean?

[Hinrick]

for $100 extra & you get 8.9" 1024x600, 8GB, XP that is damn impressive. i would have paid that just for the better screen alone.

[Travis]

$499 is what I paid for my 8G from Newegg.com so I'm hoping for the EeePC 900 Xandros model to have the 12 or 20G SSD and then I will put my XP on it and restore the old one to Xandros and sell it.

[dave]

how hard or easy would it to be to put an OEM copy of XP on the 20GB with linux?

[nomo]

A very positive step forward. It seems Asus is addressing a number of li'l Eee's shortcomings while maintaining the same footprint. This should be a big advantage over the much larger HP 2133 (~11" x 7"). It will be interesting whether Asus can maintain a relatively low price while adding features (WWAN, tablet, etc). Depending on some of the physical and architecture constraints, this new computer might be a good platform for aftermarket modifications ("Pimp my Eee").

Fujitsu has been a long-time leader in ultra-portable notebooks; I'd like to see Fuji reach into this market with a stripped-down, low-cost version of the P1600 series. In the meantime, there are P1610s on eBay...