I'm guessing it's an Asus discount, but as soon as the EEE 900 was on sale locally, the street price of EEE 701s dropped by at least $100.

Is anyone interested in the basic 701 model at under $300 now that the bigger, better ones are here or on their way?
I thought my sub-$300 (USD) deal last week was good until I noticed retailers and etailers had dropped price this month to the low $300s!

Has anyone found news of the 701s being retrofitted with larger screens?

The other interesting news is the new-found support MS has discovered, in defending these low-cost 'laptots' from Linux alternatives. :D

I picked up a 7" 4GB ASUS a few weeks ago in Thailand for 10500THB, or appx $317USD. It came with XP and runs great.

Thanks to those here for their reports. Mine seems to live up fine to any expectations I had too.

The C7 is not that underpowered, and it can easily be upgraded to the new VIA Nano which blows away the ATOM CPU, I expect a refresh pretty soon that will have this included.

Thanks. Looks nice. All the articles basically claim an August release.

-David

You could have done better having acted earlier this month in Computex Taipei 2008. The EEE PC 1000 were going for TWD $15988.

It's also projected another price cut on all the 7" models by the end of June.

It's all here:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/12/d...n-one-fell-sw/

This EEE (701 Linux) is the easiest laptop Ie ever found for quick internet connectivity!

Impressive. ^

Finally I have an EEE here on FT :)
 

Hey all,
Here are my impressions of the surprise (:D) pressie for Mrs B... (so far she likes it...):

First Impressions:
- EXCELLENT connectivity (built-in settings for Huawei 3G adapter, vodafone 3G)
- Keyboard has a good feel, but is poor compared to the much larger HP 2133 keyboard
- Tiny shift key is the most problematic for touch typing.
- Screen is pretty good, though 9¨ is worth it if it gives more resolution vertically

Interesting and a bargain for $300!

Thanks. Even more info. Yes, they look interesting.

-David

Next week I'll be ordering myself an MSI Wind :D

http://www.amazon.com/MSI-Laptop-Int...3753522&sr=8-1

$479 with 1Gb ram, Atom CPU and 80GB HDD. Also has Bluetooth and Gigabit Ethernet!

Looking forward to your review, Scott.

-David

Scott, will that be with a 3-cell battery? I read that the wind was slightly delayed, with a smaller battery and lower price at the outset.

I'm impressed with the reviews already out there for this class of notebook (inc EEE 901, 1001) at the sources listed above. Looking forward to reading your update and blog.

Did you consider the EEE 1001? Each of these models looks pretty good!

I agree with the above. Scott, please make sure you know which battery you will be getting for that price before plunking down the plastic. Then tell us how you like it. I'm interested, too. :D

Great info in the past few days on the EEE and alternatives. There was a review of the MSI Wind here at laptopmag.com. There is news there on the Wind delay (and smaller battery/price cut) as well as a review of the Wind's target, the EEE 1001 with the same hard disk. Exotic.

I'm getting used to the EEE keyboard but a bigger shift key would be nice.

Is anyone here happy with a specific OS for their EEE? I'd like to get off the intro shell, at least.

Putting the stock Xandros OS into "Advanced Mode" is a big step forward, but I'm using Mandriva 2008.1 with great success.

The only problem with the stock Xandros OS is that it contains some outdated toolkits which are very difficult if not impossible to update and which limit the software that will work on the machine. It's easier just to install a whole new OS.