Asus Gets Official with $200 Eee PC X101 Netbook

Posted 07/28/2011 at 7:29am | by Paul Lilly

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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