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£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.

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Reader Comments

£200?

Twice as expensive as it is in America. Nice to see us brits get ripped off even more than usual.

Posted by Richard, 14 Jun 2007

Not so bad..

The $199 is for a 4GB model. 8GB was $299 and 16GB $399 (off the top of my head). So 200UKP for the $399 model seems fair.

Posted by Peter Elliot, 25 Jun 2007

Resellers?

Does anyone know who's going to be stocking these babies? I want one!

Posted by Gemma Hadfield, 24 Aug 2007

what about the cheaper versions?

While i'm pleased to see the £199 version is the $399 one what about the cheaper machines? I want mine primarily to throw in my suitacase when I go away to use the wifi function. The $259 version was perfect for me

Posted by Matthew Anderson, 30 Aug 2007

Okay, where are they?

It's 16 weeks now. Don't tell me you got suckered in by vaporware again?

Posted by Tim shepard, 09 Oct 2007

   

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