Asustek and Intel join the low-cost notebook fray with Eee PC

The low-cost PC from Ausutek Inc, the Eee PC, is turning out to be the star at the Computex 2007, grabbing attention with its high computing power and low price. What is really good about the Asustek Eee PC is that it is really small in size and this small size does nto detract from its computing power.

The launch of the cheap PC, Asustek Eee was announced by Jonney Shih, the company's chairman, and Sean Maloney, executive vice president and general manager of Intel Corp's sales and marketing group.

This time Intel has teamed up with Asustek, world's largest maker of motherboards, to develop cheap laptops for the developing world. The Eee PC will sit alongside the Intel Classmate PC which is also meant at the developing countries.

The Eee PC from Intel and Asustek, will be priced at USD 199 onwards, depending on the size of the flash memory. The Eee PC notebook is likely to hit the market in August or September 2007. Asustek is planning to sell models with 4G bytes, 8G bytes and 16G bytes of flash, but that could change as the PC goes up for sale.

Measuring 22.5 centimeters wide by 16.5 cm deep, the Eee PC 701 is 3.5 cm thick, and weights just 890 grams. Other major features of the Eee PC are a 7-inch monitor, a 300,000-pixel camera, 512M bytes of DDR2 (double data rate 2) memory, and Wi-Fi. Asustek is planning to launch a new notebook next year, which features a 10-inch monitor.

The Eee notebook from Asustek and Intel will run for three hours on battery. But the notebook does not offer an extended-life battery for the Eee PC. Because of the small size of the Eee PC, the keyboard and the trackpad are quite small in size. This could be a worry when one has to type for long hours.

The Eee PC runs on Linux instead of the Windows operating system. The Eee PC from Asustek and Intel will have Xandros for the operating system, the Open Office applications suite, and a Firefox browser. The good thing about the Eee PC is that it boots in just 15 seconds.

Both the Eee PC and Intel's forthcoming mass produced Classmate will be in direct competition with One Laptop Per Child 's (OLPC) robust green and white machine, which although known as the $100 laptop will initially sell for $176 (£88).