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Asus Rolls Out An $199 UMPC

Could it be the cheapest portable ever?

Jun 6, 2007 09:16 GMT  ·  By
Asus' Eee PC 701 UMPC
   Asus' Eee PC 701 UMPC

Probably yes. If you're not taking into account the OLPC or INTEL's Classmate laptop. Evidently since the OLPC and INTEL's own laptop for kids are not exactly fully functional machines you can't put them in the same category with Asus' own UMPC. However if we're to elevate this discussion a step further, one could say that Asus' portable is not a real laptop. Or is it?

In order to agree or disagree on that particular matter, one can only judge if it can see the specifications of the device. So let's get started, shall we? Asus doesn't say much (actually it doesn't say anything but that doesn't stop me from speculating...) about the internal CPU and the mini-motherboard that are being used to power the Eee PC 701 but what's sure is that it uses an INTEL CPU.

And since not many INTEL chips can consume so little that they will fit inside such a tiny box, the CPU is probably an A100 (600MHz) CPU paired with a 945GU mini-motherboard. Evidently the specifications of this chipset are comparable to those of its desktop brother and that means more goodies for the Asus UMPC. At least more than one might expect.

For instance the Eee PC 701comes fully packed with wired Ethernet (10/100 - RJ 45 model) but also with a 802.11 b/g module. Evidently the UMPC also boasts a rather large screen for its size (7" LCD), 512DDR-400 (probably smallest SO-DIMM form factor) and a classical 56k modem (which is pretty useless judging by today's standards).

Storage-wise, the UMPC does away with classical hard disk drives. Instead it uses a compact form of SDDs coming in 3 capacities (4GB, 8GB and 16GB). Because of the different SSD capacity, the model will be priced accordingly. However Asus has already announced that the UMPC won't cost more than $199 (I sincerely hope that's not for the 4GB version). That answers the "how much" part but leaves the "when" hanging since Asus didn't say anything about availability.

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