14 DAY TRIAL // Netbooks may no longer be in the minds of the people as much as they were last year, but they are hardly going to disappear, especially now that the likes of ASUS are branching out to more operating systems.
The tablet market has definitely put a dent in the plans that makers of mobile computers had envisioned for the entry-level laptop market.
Having grown in sales at a rapid rate until early 2010, netbooks hit a sudden obstacle when the tablet industry picked up speed.
Turns out that slates aren't going to run such products out of business, at least not in the near or mid term, though sales did slow down.
Nevertheless, if anything, the appearance of slates selling for $500 caused netbook prices to drop much lower than that.
In fact, the price of the ASUS Eee PC X101 will be in the lowest reaches, and there is also no more mystery surrounding its existence and likely appearance time.
More specifically, a report made by Digitimes reveals that this mobile personal computer belonging to the low-end segment will start shipping sometime next month (July, 2011).
The tag of $199 should get it some looks from the very beginning, although only the models loaded with the MeeGo OS will sell for so little. Those with Windows 7 will cost between $310 and $350.
Regardless, all models use the Intel Atom N435 central processing unit as the core, this being a single-core CPU of 1.33 GHz.
In related news, this particular CPU should also land inside competing netbooks from Acer, Samsung, Lenovo and others.
This isn't the only thing that ASUS is working on. For instance, the outfit is developing an ultrathin laptop of 13 inches, powered by NVIDIA. As for the tablet sector, it seems that a successor to the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer is in the works, powered by the Kal El SoC.