14 DAY TRIAL // There have been many leaks, rumors, reports and official announcements regarding netbooks lately. With Intel having unleashed its new Atom chips with support for DDR3, companies are wasting no time in putting it to good use. ASUS itself has at least one such device in store, not just netbooks that employ the NVIDIA ION GPU. The second quarter is now coming to an end, which means that PC makers are gearing up to unleash yet another collection of products.
One of the machines that PC supplier ASUS will be quicker to release is the Eee PC 1018P which, like most of the other entry-level mobile PCs released thus far, is built around the Pine Trail platform. Unlike these predecessors, however, the newcomer has a stronger chip at its heart, either the 1.66Ghz Atom N455 or the even more powerful N475, with a frequency of 1.83GHz.
The 10.1-inch screen has a native resolution of 1024 x 768 and receives video input from the GMA (graphics media accelerator) 3150 integrated graphics. The configuration also features 1GB of RAM and a 250GB hard disk drive, whose storage space can be complemented by 500GB of ASUS web storage.
As for connectivity and I/O, the electronic has all the 'standard' parts, such as 10/100 LAN, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, a multi-card reader and a 0.3-megapixel webcam.
Basically, this netbook will be one of the first next-generation, higher-tier entry-level laptops that OEMs have been meaning to create for months, but couldn't because they lacked the necessary hardware. Two versions will be available, with prices of 399 Euro for the N455 option and 429 Euro for the N475, which will have a pair of USB 3.0 ports and a fingerprint reader as extras. Each machine will be fueled by a 4-cell battery, will be pre-loaded with Windows 7 Starter and will start selling in the third quarter.