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Some people thought Asus was downright crazy when it said it was building a $200 netbook. That's not a whole lot more than an eBook reader, and it's certainly cheaper than most tablet PCs that are supposedly cannibalizing the netbook market. Well, Asus is proving the skeptics wrong with its $199 Eee PC X101, an ultrathin netbook that now has an official product page.
Getting to that price point requires some sacrifices, and chief among them is the operating system. The Eee PC X101 runs MeeGo, an open-source mobile Linux OS designed for netbooks, entry-level desktops, nettops, and other devices. It's also saddled with a single-core Intel Atom N435 processor (N455 also available).
Other mostly lightweight specs include a 10.1-inch LED backlit screen, 1GB of DDR3 memory (upgradeable to 2GB), 8GB SSD, 0.3MP webcam, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, audio jack, memory card reader, and 3-cell battery good for up to four hours of run time. Designed for maximum portability (minus the battery life, apparently), the X101 boasts a profile that's less than 0.7 inches and weighs under 2.03 pounds.
There will be an option for Windows 7 Starter that will cost more, though pricing hasn't yet been announced. The baseline model will ship with MeeGo and and the Asus App store where users can go and download apps from the cloud.
Image Credit: Asus
Comments are closed on this article
Annoyance
July 29, 2011 at 2:31pm
Never will I buy ANYTHING from Asus again until They update there Slow ass Website NEVER AGAIN!
dzagbag
July 29, 2011 at 4:01am
Meanwhile in europe, a netbook like this cost easily 219€, this is, 313$. Fu$%&/($(/%$k%&·$/%/ers!
xXSINS OF WARXx
July 28, 2011 at 2:22pm
Newegg has been offering The Acer Aspire One and the MSI Wind Netbooks for $200 + free shipping for quite some time now, They both come with win7, way more hdd space and somewhat better specs overall, which makes the Eee PC X101 in my opinion kind of pointless.
PCLinuxguy
July 28, 2011 at 10:26am
I'd try meego but I'd probably switch to jolicloud. though if it could be done, upgrade to a 40-64GB ssd and load a non cloud based distro on it like linux mint or debian with xfce.
I Jedi
July 28, 2011 at 7:49am
This is great! I may look into this for college! Great article, Paul.
