The Asus EeePC is the tiny laptop that could.  It is one of the best selling UMPCs the market has seen to date.  Costing only $399 with 512MB of memory, a 4GB SSD (flash-based Solid State Drive) and a 7″ display.  Granted, it’s not made to replace large laptops but made to fill in where you may not want to take your regular laptop.  The Asus EeePC ships with a customized version of Xandros Linux on it but Asus is trying something different in Japan.

The Japanese are being treated to Asus EeePC’s preinstalled with Windows XP.  These models lack any installation of Linux and instead favor Microsoft’s operating system.  Blorge.com editor, John Pospisil recently picked up an Asus EeePC and was quite impressed with it.  For a more technical review, read this post.

Asus has had trouble keeping up with demand for the EeePC and it now ships in several 2GB SSD or 4GB SSD models.  Rumors have it that an 8GB model is coming soon as well as one with a 9″ touchscreen but this remains to be seen.

It used the standard EeePC model 701 4G to preinstall XP on.  It is powered by a 900MHz Celeron-M processor but some models that have been shipped to the US report processor speed as 630MHz which could be related to power saving technologies.

The Windows XP version of the Asus EeePC is already be on sale in Japan (or will be by the time you read this) and will be known as the 4G-X.  Asus is including a 4GB SD card with the 4G-X which allows the company to claim 8GB of storage with the Windows XP model.

RegHardware says the EeePC 4G-X will cost $468.  Dead pixels shouldn’t be a problem as the company is prepared to replace any unit that shows defective pixels within 30 days.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 2:46 pm under Notebook, Uncategorized.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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