Ravikanth Nandula, Taipei
The Hindu Business Line
ASUSTek has added glitter to its successful Netbook brand Eee PC by launching S 101, an ultra-mobile, slender offering that combines on-the-go computing with a touch of style and fashion. It comes with a couple of crystals embedded in the hinges.
Terming it a milestone for Eee PC, which completes its first year as a brand this month, Jerry Shen, CEO of the company, said the worldwide success of Eee PC can be seen in the fact that over four million pieces were sold in such a short time. S 101 is the tenth variant brought out by the company in the period.
Targeted at the fashion-conscious urban individuals, the S 101 weighs a mere 1 kg and measures less than an inch at its thickest and 1.8cm at the thinnest. While being smaller than an average fashion magazine, contained in this stylish form is a substantial 10.2" wide active matrix LED-backlit TFT screen, the maximum a Netbook can offer, a shock-proof SSD (solid state drive) in three options of 16 GB/32 GB/64 GB, 1 GB RAM and a lithium polymer battery with a back up time of up to five hours.
Packed into the small frame are also 3 USB ports, a VGA port, a Web camera, a four-in-one card reader and a standard LAN RJ-45 port. Wi-Fi 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.0 provide the wireless connectivity. Running on an Intel Atom processor, it ships with either Windows XP Home version or Linux as an operating system.
A touchpad which supports multi touch and a palm-rest area that doesn’t get hot are the other features that catch the attention. It comes with Xpress Path, an innovation that enables speeds up the boot-up and shutdown processes substantially. As a bonus, the company provides every user with an encrypted 30 GB Internet storage facility known as Eee storage.
Much of the company’s effort seems to have gone into making S 101 a fashion statement: elegant and ergonomic design, eye-catching metallic colours (Brown, Graphite and Champagne) crystal-adorned hinges and a resemblance at first sight to the upmarket MacBook Air. In fact, a company press release referred to the Netbook as ‘SHE’.
S 101 is priced at $699 for the base model. While launched globally on Tuesday, it is available in stores across Asia immediately and in Europe, by the end of the month.
With this launch, ASUSTek’s efforts to transform itself as a multi-brand company has moved a step ahead, Jerry Shen told the mediapersons invited by the company for the event.
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