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One Year Later, Asus Eee PC Breaks $300 Price Barrier, Still Sucks

Posted 10/18/08 at 04:19:05 PM |  by Paul Lilly

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It may have taken Asus a year to get there, but the ultraportable Eee PC has finally been spotted for an ultra-affordable price tag. For a copper Lincoln shy of $300, Best Buy is currently selling the Eee PC 900A with an Intel Atom N270 processor clocked at 1.6GHz on a 533MHz frontside bus. Other goodies nestled inside the netbook include 1GB of DDR2 memory, a 4GB solid-state drive, 8.9-inch WSVGA widescreen display, integrated graphics, WiFi, and three USB 2.0 ports all running on Linux.

Kudos to Asus for finally offering a model priced in line with its specs, though Asus isn't the only guilty culprit to avoid doing so up to this point. Despite the immense popularity of netbooks in general, many models regardless of vendor have nipped at the heels of traditional laptops in terms of price, which generally offer more power, more storage space, and, well, more of everything. Asus new 900A puts some much needed distance between the two sectors, which is great for anyone looking to pick up a mini-notebook. Then again, no matter what the price, cynics will point out it's still a mini-notebook under the hood.

Image Credit: Asus

COMMENTS:
4
TAGS: 
mobile, notebook, laptop, asus, ultraportable, eee PC
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COMMENTS
avatarGet 'Em At ARGET

Submitted by cheapherk on Sun, 2008-10-19 18:53

I see Target is carrying these now- $299.  I saw them in-store earlier this week.

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avatarNetbook just below $300?

Submitted by sdcat on Sun, 2008-10-19 12:28

Netbook just below $300? Yeah still sucks. What Paul's saying was the price was still too expensive for an extremely striped down notebook. Remember EEEpc were suppose to be $199 with its cheapest model, when Asus first announced last summer.

If they offer one without the SSD? Then we might see below $200 netbook...or lower like $150 for now(looks like below $100 mark won't be a dream^^). Personally I prefer that setup instead. Of course they need to supply either download image/ISO from their site and drivers, or a hard copy of imaged dvd.

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avatarIt's not so bad

Submitted by HarmonicShadow on Sat, 2008-10-18 20:00

I really don't think an Eee PC is too bad.  If A) you can get one with Windows on it and B) one with an actual HDD, you should have no problems with it.  I've considered purchasing an Eee PC strickly for everyday things.  The integrated LAN, wireless, and Bluetooth are nothing to be disappointed of by anybody.  The one I'm looking into can have up to 2GB of RAM, if I toss the 1GB stick that came with it.  In Windows XP, it's easy pickings.  The only question would be how well would it perform in a Windows Vista Home Basic environment, because every other version of Windows Vista would probably suck up too much power to run decently.  Then again, the power isn't really there and I'm not sure an Atom processor is even supported by Windows Vista because all these Atom processor PCs have either Windows XP or Linux.

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avatarbad software load

Submitted by knightperson on Thu, 2008-11-20 19:44

I bought one from Best Buy, liking the fact that it had a full gig of memory and an Atom. The linux version ships with a customized Xandros distribution, which I've never messed with before, but it uses the venerable apt package-manager under the dumbed-down interface. As soon as you connect this thing to the Net, though, it starts downloading updates and suggested installations, eating up most of the already tiny free drive space on the SSD. Out of the box, and even after resetting, it is 95.37% full, leaving 178 Megs free! It is unacceptable to have no space on the drive when you don't have a spell-checker in the word-processor installed (did I mention that?) Good hardware on the box, but I think the team who customized the OS needs to be shot.

For what it's worth, ASUS tech support has actual English-speaking techs if you call them, but my first try got a guy who wasn't that familiar with the EEE's.

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