ASUS' sub-1kg Classmate PC will retail for £199 - the perfect Christmas present?

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ASUS will be releasing its Eee PC, a direct derviation of Intel's Classmate PC. £199 buys you a sub-1kg notebook with integrated WiFi, a solid-state drive, and a 7in TFT. Sounds good, doesn't it?

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I like the concept but i can't help but feel it's a bit pricey - for not very much more you can have er.. a whole lot more ;)

Indeed. 200 quid for a machine with 2Gb of storage and a 7 inch screen doesn't seem very good value. For only about a hundred quid more you can get a proper laptop.

Its a shame that they haven't put a slightly bigger screen i.e. about 8/9 inch as the speakers seem to dominate.

Places are taking preorders on the 4Gb model with webcam for £240 ish

It's not bad, and good for taking notes on but otherwise I don't see much use...

Ian

I quite like this as a concept. Looks perfect for photographers wanting to have a quick looks at shots on the move etc

there is also this but it costs more Packard Bell launches £350 EasyNote XS ultra-portable based on Via NanoBook

I still prefer both of these to the HTC Shift which i think is way too expensive.

£200 will struggle to get you a pda these days so it really isn't a bad deal. Very tempting I must admit.

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Originally Posted by colincliff

I quite like this as a concept. Looks perfect for photographers wanting to have a quick looks at shots on the move etc

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Given the size and quality of the display on any decent DSLR now I'd say this gives next-to-nothing for the photographer.

I can see it having some uses - a kind of affordable ultra-portable - but there's too many limitations in my mind for it to carve itself out a decent market - certainly not until solid-state drives are the norm.

Its a sub-notebook.

£100 more will only get you something much bigger.

So the question is, is the size important?

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Originally Posted by TheAnimus

So the question is, is the size important?

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Given that I spend £1200 on a laptop 2 years ago so I could get something under 1kg to take to uni every day then to some people yes, yes it is :)

agreed, bought one of these the other month:

SAMSUNG's Digital World - MobileComputing | Q1 Ultra

makes tube journies seam less long!

Well - it does give me an excuse to dabble with Linux :)

There seem to be two, not necessarily linked, features to this: price and size.

The respondents jimbouk and The Animus were prepared to pay for portability, but their systems will far out-perform the Eee PC. There are other, even more portable options they could have considered so there were clearly a number of factors aside from portability borne in mind when making the purchase.

Regarding price The Animus makes the point that £100 more will get you a full laptop. So I think this product just slots into the spectrum of portable devices available at the bargain basement end. If you want portable web surfing there's the iPhone or pocket surfer or other smartphones. If you want cheap computing you can get a £349 Acer laptop with your beans at Tesco: Acer Aspire 5310 15.4" Laptop - Tesco.Direct.

So this machine is less portable than a smartphone or UMPC and less powerful than an entry level Acer. I guess the positioning has to be 'ultra entry level'. It will be interesting to see whether Tesco catches on to this and whether is puts further downward price pressure on vendors like Acer.

I think that the concept (and seemingly the implementation) is brilliant.
I was very interested in PDAs for a long time (and love my Sony Clie TH55) and was very keen to consider a Samsung Q1, mainly for the ability to play games and watch films / TV etc. I also agree that the new iPod touch also has many of these overlapping qualities and although different, could target the same market for some people.

The idea of a keyboard, a (relatively) high res screen and an x86 CPU is very appealing in a form factor similar to a small paperback book.
And no optical drive - who these days doesnt have a USB stick? I'm sold.

personally, i think this is better One Laptop Per Child -- XO Giving

Might well be, but the one-for-them, one-for-me only applies to the US.

Im getting one, even though I don't really need one, was talking with a chap that will sell these in his shop a couple of weeks ago and asked him to put one by for me , to do the same as David dabble with linux on a lappie