Asus chairman Jonney Shih sprang a surprise during Intel's Computex keynote today with the announcement of a $189 laptop.
The notebook measures roughly 120 x 100 x 30mm (WDH) and weighs only 900g. We saw the notebook boot in 15 seconds from its solid-state hard disk. The huge auditorium then burst into applause as Shih revealed the astounding price tag. Dubbed the 3ePC, Shih claimed the notebook is the 'lowest cost and easiest PC to use'. As the crowds rushed the stage, we sneaked off to the Asus stand to take a closer look.
The notebook uses a custom-written Linux operating system, much like the OLPC, though unlike the OLPC, Asus has chosen a more conventional interface. The
desktop looked fairly similar to Windows and we saw Firefox running on one 3ePC. A spokesperson from Asus told us that the notebook would come with "an office suite that's compatible with MS Office", though he refused to confirm or deny whether that meant OpenOffice.
He claimed the 3ePC would be available in all areas of the world, not only developing nations.
The low price comes from some interesting design choices, primarily the flash-based hard disk. A disk of today's standard capacity would cost more than notebook itself as we saw with the 32GB Samsung disk, but Asus uses a 2GB disk. We were not allowed to touch the 3ePC so couldn't tell how much of this is left after the bespoke OS is installed.
The CPU also remains a mystery, though Shih said the version on show did have 512MB of RAM. Another version will be available for $299, but nobody could tell us what the difference between the two models is.
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This is a good idea for school districts and the like for providing notebooks for students so they get familiar with computers. From a consumer perspective I can see it being bought by people who only use the computer for web surfing and email. I really can't see people that know a lot about computers buying this one though.. probably very bare-bones. But hey, it is a good idea!
pretty cool. sucks for the olpc guys though, everyone else is trying to get to that market first now... and all they were trying to do is help people, seems like asus and intel are just trying to expand their markets.
i'm glad there will be competition though, will make make the manufacturers try to one up each other in some aspects i'm sure. i would guess that's why not many specs about this were released.
using a sshd is an interesting choice though if you ask me. usb makes storage expandable though.
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