Asus set to mass produce and launch $199 EEE PC

Asus set to mass produce and launch $199 EEE PC

Cheap computing machines surely are becoming popular amongst the hardware manufacturers. OLPC is one of the major initiatives in this direction and now Asus has announced their plans to begin shipping the ultra low-cost EEE PC in September.

The company said that the 3 Es in this PC name stands for:

Easy to learn
Excellent Internet
Excellent mobile computing experience

Asus is aiming to ship up to 500,000 of these systems in 2007. This is expected to further rise to 3-5 million units in 2008.

The device would be made available at several price point ranging from $199 – $369. The more expensive models are likely to be sold in developed nations like the US market.

The basic configuration of this product is likely to be:

7″ LCD Display
900MHz Celeron-M ULV (Ultra Low Voltage) 353
Intel 910 Chipset
512MB DDR2-400 RAM
4, 8, or 16GB solid-state storage
ASUS-customized, Xandros-derived Linux OS
Dimensions: 225×165x21-35mm
Weight: ~2 lbs
Colors: White, Black

The price range is likely to differ with the amount of solid state storage drive to be delivered with this machine.