ASUS Eee Tablet Arrives in October

On the market of consumer electronics, there are a number of devices that have completely misleading names. The ASUS Eee Tablet can be seen as one of the top-most ranking in that category, mostly because it is not a tablet, per se, but something more akin to an e-reader. This product was first unveiled months ago, at Computex, Taipei, and was supposed to show up by early fall and at prices comparable to those sported by e-readers from Amazon, Sony and Barnes and Noble.

There are some discrepancies between that first announcement and the report made by Digitimes just a short while ago. For one, the launch date has allegedly been pushed back a month, which means that the public will only get their hands on it in October 2010 instead of September. The other discrepancy is related to the pricing. To be more specific, ASUS will supposedly sell the Eee Tablet for under $599.

Under $599 can mean a lot of things but, in such a contexts, it usually implies that the figure is almost as high. As such, one is likely to be quite surprised, considering that, originally, the device was slated to sell for between $199 and $299. Granted, the electronic does have some upsides over competing solutions such as Amazon Kindle and its E-ink screen. For one, the Eee Tablet boasts a liquid crystal display, though it is still monochrome in nature and lacks a backlight. It is faster than E-ink, with a refresh rate of 0.1s. Overall, the e-reader/tablet hybrid is meant as a solution aimed at students, particularly for its included stylus.

Basically, end-users need only snap pictures of whatever documents they are interested in, after which they can use the stylus-supporting touchscreen to annotate them or whatever other files they may have. Battery life is rated at 10 hours.

Digitimes suggests that ASUS is in talks with carriers for bundled sales, and this will possibly bring prices down to the figures initially suggested. Still, in the end, it will be the launch itself that clarifies this final aspect.