14 DAY TRIAL // For the last few months, we've been seeing Taiwan's ASUS taking really good care of its Eee brand, which has significantly evolved from the original 7-inch Eee PC that was launched approximately one year ago. Well, it looks like the company has even bigger plans for its moneymaking product lineup, as it intends to further expand its range of Eee PCs with new touchscreen-enabled portable systems and, to cap it all off, netbooks that will support Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 operating system.
In an interview with Laptop Magazine, the company's CEO, Jerry Shen, detailed some of the plans ASUS had regarding the future of its Eee family of products. One of the surprising details about the new Eee PCs, which are set to make their debut on the market sometime in the first half of 2009, is that they will come equipped with the Windows 7 operating system, a feature that the company's CEO has confirmed for as early as mid-2009. The news also comes to confirm that we won't see any Windows Vista-enabled Eee PCs coming directly from ASUS, which currently offers only Windows XP and Linux operating systems options.
As it has been mentioned on several occasions thus far, Windows 7 is expected to pack a series of multi-touch capabilities, which will also be enabled on upcoming Eee PCs. According to Jerry Shen, the company plans to unveil some touch-enabled models in the upcoming year, although not all future models will provide this feature, which comes with both advantages and some disadvantages.
In addition to detailing the upcoming Eee PC netbooks, Jerry Shen also said that the company had so far shipped 4 million of its Eee PC systems, and that it planned to achieve the initial 5 million target before the end of the year. Further details regarding upcoming Eee-branded products are bound to be unveiled during CES, in January 2009.