Computex 2011: More Asus Eee PC X101 Specs Unveiled

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Asus unveiled at Computex what it calls the “next generation” in netbooks in the Eee PC X101. The starting price is supposedly $199, which is a great price for a netbook. But, there’s a catch!

At first glance, $199 might too good to be true for a 10-inch netbook with an Intel Atom N435 processor and the usual netbook goodies (two USB ports, 1024×600 display, integrated GMA graphics). It seems like Asus is somewhat resurrecting its old netbook concept of small space and battery size, which might not be too exciting if you’re a road warrior who wants all your files, music and media on your device.

The Asus Eee PC X101 gets starting specs of 8 GB SSD and a 3-cell battery. And I’d bet the SSD won’t be the fast kind you find on MacBook Airs.

That seems pretty anemic when compared with modern netbooks, with bigger storage space (albeit disc-based hard drive) and battery capacity. With Asus’ other offerings giving you a whole workday’s worth of battery life, 3 cells would probably give you just 3 to 5 hours tops with Intel Atom.

Now the saving grace here is Asus’ use of MeeGo in the base X101. Yes, the $199 price quoted is for the MeeGo-only variant (no dual boot here). Whether MeeGo can hold its own in today’s competitive mobile OS market has yet to be seen. But since it’s based on Linux, we can expect it to be lightweight on resources and space. And so if you would be using the Eee PC X101 mostly for web browsing, email and cloud apps, then 8 GB would be fine.

Windows is such a storage space hog that you’d have to shell out more for the X101H variant, which comes with a 250 or 320 GB hard drive, and will cost a bit more (price yet to be announced) and add to the netbook’s thickness. Sure, you can bump up the specs with more space,  a bigger battery and more memory. But that would add to the $199 price tag, which will also include the Windows 7 license. This might defeat the purpose of buying an inexpensive netbook in the first place.