It isn’t often I find something in engadget which I immediately take a liking too but their story on Asus’s new EEE was a good cause for me to read on past the gabby title and pretty picture. I have been interested in the OLPC project since its incursion all those many, many months ago and was somewhat disappointed to find that such a cheap and affordable portable solution would not be available to any student on earth with an income of more than $1 per day. This is where both Asus and Intel seem to be bridging the gap with this new 7-inch ultraportable they are bringing to the market. Exact technical specifications have not been released yet, however it is believed that the Eee PC 701, will sport 802.11b/g WiFi, Ethernet and a modem for connectivity, along with a webcam, 512MB of RAM and a 4, 8 or 16GB flash drive for speedy, reliable storage. That may not sound much to the speed freaks amongst you however you need to remember that it is developed for students to use and as such is not needed to be extremely quick or to be able to play games. It’s simply designed for internet browsing and word processing which are the two tasks most students will be doing in class (most likely the former over the later but that can’t be helped).
What interests me isn’t just the specs or that this would be so, so very useful for me in my third year and beyond; let alone to all those hundreds of thousands of students in affluent countries. It is however the price that interests me, in accordance to the sub $200 OLPC project, Asus are going to attempt to start prices for this laptop at just $200 and you wont need to be a big government player to buy one as they shall be sold through traditional retailers. I so hope I have a job by the time these come out as I am more than likely to buy one, being able to type up notes while on the bus, train, car, aeroplane, etc is a big boon I wonder what the battery life in one of those is like.
