ASUS EEE PC: whole concept out of control?

First came the ASUS EEE PC 70x series. It was a huge success. Cheap and portability were it’s chief keywords.

Now, design engineers at ASUS are loosing sight of the whole EEE PC concept. Why all of a sudden am I saying all this?

Because of this. ASUS is preparing ASUS 904 and 905. Huh? What am I so angered about? They will be using the ASUS 1000’s body for the ASUS 904 and 905.

The whole concept of the ASUS EEE PC was to be cheap; have great portability and small. Instead of coming out with coming with something smaller than 700 series with the same screen size, they went on coming out with bigger models. Wish to have an idea, how big the EEE 1000 is?

The EEE PC 1000 is “waaaay” bigger than the 900 and 700 series. One of the major complaints of the original EEE was it’s small keyboard and it’s small display. Original EEE(700s) had speakers surrounding the screen.

As you can see, it wasted a lot of space. ASUS made a wise move and came out with 901, which used the space originally taken by the speakers in the EEE 700. Nice job, ASUS. :) The size increase from 700 series to 901 was marginal, which was great.

Now, I’m going to whine about the new 904s. ASUS had no competitors in the begining of this NetBook market. But, that is not the scenario now. It is a cut-throat competion and ASUS are in panic now. 9″ screen in a chassis meant for the 10″ EEE. Funny isn’t it? :P It gets funnier when you come to know that the EEE 901s have not even been made avaliable everywhere so far!

If a guy wants a bigger keyboard, it would make sense to include a bigger screen too, which the EEE 1000 provides. But, I don’t get the whole point of EEE 904 coming into the scene.

EEE PC 901s are priced at ~$600 and the 904s will cost even more. I bet, it will be close to ~650-700. That even blurs the price gap between the 901s and 1000s.

Your thoughts guys?

*sizeeasy was used to compare the raw sizes.*Thanks to blogee.net for the EEE 904 image.