Here at last
Having found no trace of the much anticipated Asus Eee PC 901 two days after it was officially launched, HEXUS.channel was able to get to the bottom of the matter by contacting one of Asus’ distributors – Interface Solutions.
We spoke to Eugene Mitchell, the Asus product specialist at Interface, and he revealed that the 901s are finally arriving. "We’re getting our first delivery of 901s today and we’re sending them all straight out,” he said. This means they should be available to buy tomorrow.
On their late arrival Mitchell said: “Apparently they were shipped from China last week but there have been delays. We’re expecting another delivery in five days and we could shift three times as many as we’re getting. We’re going to have the 904 and 1000 within the next couple of weeks.”
Ah, the 904, the source of much rumour but little confirmation. According to Mitchell the 904 is a larger chassis model but with a Celeron processor and an 80GB HDD to keep the price down. It looks like it’s essentially a 900 in the body of the 1000, with an HDD.
The 901 and the 1000 are the Atom based models and they will also be the only ones to have Bluetooth and 802.11n Wi-Fi.
Here’s a breakdown of the full Eee PC family
- 701 2GB Linux - £179. End of life
- 701 4GB Linux - £199
- 701 4GB XP - £299
- 900 - £269 with either OS. End of life
- 904 - £269 with either OS and 80GB HDD
- 901 - £299. Either 20GB SSD + Linux or 12GB SSD + XP
- 1000 - £369. Trade price
Mitchell was keen to stress that Eee PCs in general are experiencing heavy demand. “We finally started seeing a good supply of stock towards the end of May as the battery shortage ended,” he said. “We turned over £1.3 million last month on Eee PCs alone.”
It’s not all plain sailing, however. “They’re a more difficult sell now that they’re above £300 but we’ve seen a massive slowdown in the low-end full notebook market,” said Mitchell. “It will be interesting to see what consumers make of the 1000 at that price point. High end notebooks – £800 and above – are still marching out the door.”
Finally we asked if he knew about any other additions to the Eee PC family. “I don’t know anything about an Eee PC Monitor but I am expecting a two litre ultra quiet living room PC from them soon,” said Mitchell. “Asus appears to be pulling out of the UMPC market in favour of Eee PCs; they have opened a lot of doors for both Asus and Interface.”
