I’ve been waiting for Asus to come out with its own Pine trail-powered netbook for the longest time, and since the advent of Intel Atom, the Asus Eee PC 1005PE is probably the first significantly different Asus Eee PC. It’s the first one in a long time to not have the first-generation Atom 1.6 processor. Again, we know that we’re not supposed to expect any difference off the new chip, but everyone is obviously curious as to how the new processor stacks up.
The Asus Eee PC 1105PE is actually a slightly updated version of the Asus Eee CP 1005HA, and since there isn’t that big a difference from the previous iteration, we’re expecting the reviews to focus more on the new processor over the laptop itself. Now let’s see if the hype surrounding the Asus Eee PC 1005PE is indeed worth it.
According to Engadget,
So, what kind of difference does the new single-core 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 make? Coupled with 1GB of RAM and a 5,400rpm 250GB hard drive that boots Windows 7 Starter, the 1005PE felt slightly snappier than netbooks with Atom N270 or N280 chips, but not by much. We didn’t wait around for programs to launch or have any problems running Firefox 3, TweetDeck, and iTunes simultaneously. It’s possible to run Photoshop, but editing a batch of photos still requires the patience of a grade-school teacher — just like on N270 or N280 machines. The benchmarks say the same: On Geekbench the 1005PE notched 942, while the 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 powered 1008HA scored a lower 756. Either way, the performance gain isn’t going to blow you away, and keeps netbooks in line with their original purpose — light productivity and web tasks.
Okay, so do you think getting a pine trail netbook a great idea or would you rather stick to your current netbook? Tell me about it!
For those wondering about Asus’s notebook plans for 2010 after the announcement of their scaling back of their Eee PC production, Digitimes gives us a glimpse into Asus’s 2010 notebook lineup:
Asustek Computer plans to introduce three additional business notebook lineups, the B, PL and P series, as well as one series of business all-in-one PCs in 2010, according to the company.
The high-end models will be categorized under the B series, while the mid-range ultra-thin models will be listed under the PL series, and the P series will mainly be entry-level models.
The B series will feature a docking station to provide more functionality as well as unique industrial designs to attract enterprise users, said Asustek.
Asustek will also use its touchscreen-based Eee Top series all-in-one PCs to cut into the enterprise desktop market.
In additional news, Asustek has recently received a two-year purchasing order for its notebooks and Eee PCs worth a total amount of US$350 million from a China-based channel retailer.
[via]
Written by Ade Magnaye on December 28th, 2009. 1 Comment »
Filed under News.
Asus’s Eee PC T101MT passed the FCC a few days back, and it’s left everyone rather curious. You see, the “MT” part of the product name reveals it to be a multi-touch netbook.
We don’t have much details as of yet, but we’re assuming it has 802.11b/g/n WiFi, bluetooth and a 10″ capacitive touchscreen. It will probably also rock the Intel Atom N450 Pine Trail processor. This looks like a replacement for the smaller Eee PC T91MT netbook.
Asus is currently the world’s second largest netbook supplier, behind only Acer. Well, considering they invented the market segment, this doesn’t come in as much of a surprise, really. But the thing is, Samsung Electronics may actually start to surpass Asus as the world’s largest supplier of netbooks.
Asus is planning to ship only six million units of its venerable Eee PC, putting it well behind Samsung. According to Digitimes:
Despite that some of Samsung’s component partners expect the company to ship only seven million notebooks in total in 2010, others believe the company will be able to ship more than 10 million units, of which 7-8 million units will be netbooks.
Since Acer is forecast to maintain shipments of 12 million netbooks in 2010, Acer will still be the leading netbook brand; however, the fast growth of Samsung in the netbook segment is causing a significant threat toward Acer, the sources pointed out.
The thing is, Asus is trying to shift to more traditional notebooks back as the main focus of their computer department. Or they’re going to work on vacuum cleaners.
Written by Ade Magnaye on December 27th, 2009. 1 Comment »
Filed under News.
Well, at least they didn’t put it under the Eee brand.
I’ve ranted about Asus diluting the Eee brand a few months back because they seem to slap the Eee logo onto most everything these days. After the success of the netbook (and as everyone knows by now, they did invent the market segment), news came out that they created Eee-branded nettops, motherboards, e-book readers, and cellphones. Okay, aside from the nettop, nothing came out yet, but the Eee brand is indeed in danger of getting diluted if they do push through with their plans. More »
Written by Ade Magnaye on December 26th, 2009. 1 Comment »
Filed under News.
It’s been ages since I first reported that Asus is coming out with an e-book reader, and after hearing nothing about it I thought the project already died. More »
Written by Ade Magnaye on December 24th, 2009. 1 Comment »
Filed under News.
Asus needs to know how and why you purchased an Eee and what can they do to make sure that your next computer purchase would be from them (well, short of mind control, but Apple’s got the patent on that technology yet).
They’ve created a survey so they could learn more about their customers, and so they could use the information to make their Eee PCs better. More »
One of the things that had me excited about netbooks when they first came out is that this is a chance to actually put SSDs into the mainstream. And then netbooks boomed. But… they seem to have left SSDs in the dust. More »
One of the biggest concerns I had when switching from the default Linux installation to Windows XP on my Eee PC 701 is that I’m moving from a world of relative security by obscurity to an operating system targeted by virus makers and hackers from all over the world. I had to look for a free anti-virus software that will be light enough and will not spam me with ads to upgrade to the paid version.
For more than three years, Avast! has been my anti-virus of choice. What’s not to love about it? It’s free and it has an amazing detection rate. It doesn’t even muck up my system, unlike some users of Norton and McAfee that I encountered before.
However, as any longtime Avast! user knows, everytime it updates its virus database, we get a slowdown before we hear the notification “Your virus database has been updated.”
Okay, for netbooks running on limited resources (particularly the Eee PC 701 – which I own) this slowdown could mean crashes. And it has happened way too often for me.
Fed up after a bad day when all my apps just kept on crashing one after the other, I went ahead and downloaded Panda Cloud Antivirus. I’ve been pretty much apprehensive of cloud applications. Especially when it means you have to entrust your entire security to a cloud-based app.
But I went and installed it anyway. The installation was pretty quick and painless, which was surprising for an anti-virus. The initial setup was pretty simple too: sign up for a Panda Cloud account, and log in to activate the anti-virus. There was a bit of a problem with the initial connection – it looked like Panda Cloud Antivirus took ages to connect (check out the screenshot on top) but somehow it was just a bug and the UI just didn’t refresh to display that it was already connected.
After a couple of hours testing this thing (doing scans, checking out my Panda account), my system was running way lighter than before. Now I haven’t done anything heavy duty yet. I’ll get to that in my next post. For now, all I can say is that I still won’t trust Panda Cloud Antivirus with my main system, but for netbooks it’s perfect.
A more in-depth review soon.
Download Panda Cloud Antivirus here.
While the entire world is abuzz about Google’s attempt to rule the operating system market with its cloud-based linux distro, the Google Chrome OS, we all seem to have forgotten that there was another cloud-based operating system that arrived much earlier.
I’m talking about Jolicloud here, you guys.
It looks like Jolicloud isn’t going to be put down by Google Chrome OS that easily, because they just released a video that showcases the amazing boot-up speed of Jolicloud. On their official Twitter account, the Jolicloud team put up a link to a video that shows the Jolicloud booting up on a Asus Eee PC 901 (not exactly the fastest Eee PC out there). And you get to boot up Jolicloud in 13 seconds.
The video and more after the break: More »
