14 DAY TRIAL // Taiwanese PC vendor Asustek plans to release two thirds of their Eee PC production, which will come with a pre-installed version of Windows XP. The decision has been made after the incredible success of the Windows XP version of the tiny Eee.
The previous version of the Eee PC used to come with a 7-inch screen and a limited resolution of 800x480, which had some shortcomings in correctly displaying the Windows XP desktop. The new machines will come with higher resolutions (1024x768) and will be priced around $390 to $400.
"About 60 percent of (the Eee PCs) will have Windows XP operating system," Asustek Chairman Jonney Shih said.
The Eee PC set a new trend on the mobile computing market and Shih claims that Asustek is still pitching at the previous estimations of selling 5 million units this year, as compared to the 300,000 units shipped in 2007. Lillian Lin, Asustek's head of marketing, states that the device sold best in Europe, followed by Asia Pacific and China.
"There is a huge untapped computer market out there, and we want to get into the next 10 billion consumer market (with these lower cost computers)," said Davis Tsai, President of Microsoft Taiwan.
Analysts claim that the introduction of the Windows XP-based Eee PC will dramatically boost sales, because Microsoft's operating system is more appealing than the Linux-based distribution used by now. Alvin Kwock, analyst at JP Morgan, claims that people are not used to working on Linux-based operating systems.
The Windows XP-based Eee PC systems have just been introduced on the US market. However, given the fact that Microsoft is going to stop selling the Windows XP operating system as of June 31, we are left wondering what would happen with the Eee PC after the end of June. Asustek refused to comment upon our questions as of the moment of writing.