£199 Asus ultra-mobile in UK within weeks

Machine that wowed Computex could kickstart market for true portables

The low-cost Asus ultra-mobile that became the sensation of this year's Computex trade show is to go on sale in Britain within a few weeks for around £199, the company has confirmed.

Early reports had said the EEE PC 701, co-designed with Intel, would sell primarily into emerging markets.

It has a 7in screen and runs Linux with an XP lookalike interface – but ironically it is the first commercial machine to fall within Microsoft's target price of under $700 for an ultra-mobile.

Relatively slow sales of ultra-mobiles have been blamed on the high price tags on what are supposed to be second machines. The low-cost Asus could help kick-start the market - company chairman Jonney Shih predicted 700,000 sales for this year alone.

The 890g EE PC, measuring 22.5 x 16.5 x 3.5cm, uses an Intel chip and relies on up to 16Gbytes of Flash instead of a hard disk.

It includes 10/100Mbit Ethernet, a 56K modem, 11b/g Wifi, and a 0.3 megapixel videocamera.

A 10in version is scheduled for release later this year.