The X101 in white
Much talk has been going about on the new Asus Eee PC X101, and we’ve covered it a few times before. It is probably the most talked about netbook – and rightly so because of its extremely low price and slim size – the Asus Eee PC X101 has launched an official video starring a British woman talking about the greatness of the X101 and its MeeGo operating system. Apparently, the MeeGo seems to be pretty loaded with good software that will allow you to do most things that anyone would want to do on a netbook – web browsing, social networking, chatting and operating a suite of office applications courtesy of the pre-loaded OpenOffice.
An official Q&A is posted on the Asus Tech in Style website with the leading Product Manager, Brian Tang answering a few questions. Most pertinently to us are these two questions,
What makes the X101 different from a normal netbook?
Well, MeeGo is the obvious change. [ASUS is] the only company to really promote this alternative OS in the netbook market right now. We have found one other company that makes a MeeGo laptop as well, but they haven’t customized it like we have. Since MeeGo is open source we are free to tweak it so we have added a consolidated MyZone social networking hub and directly injected our Cloud services such as @Vibe and Cloud storage.The X101 is also the slimmest netbook we’ve ever made. We wanted to target the ultra-portable market and add another option for people looking beyond netbooks and tablets. There are still people who want a simplified system for internet and social media etc, plus the portability of the small ten-inch form factor, but they still need a full keyboard to type on.
In total, the hardware is light and the OS is light.
How were you able to make the profile so thin?
Despite being shaped like a regular netbook, the target market is more towards tablets. With this in mind we’ve taken the step to remove the VGA and Ethernet ports in order to fit the X101 into its new ultra-slim profile. If you still need those the other Eee PC’s include both, including the X101H that includes a slimmer Ethernet socket with a closing flap.We also had to design our own cooler as well. It’s even slimmer than the MacBook Air’s cooler, which measures 5.5mm, while ours is just 4.5mm.
The fact that the Asus X101 will run MeeGo proves that it is serious about the X101 being more like a tablet than a de facto netbook. MeeGo has pretty strong tablet-like features such as an App Store by the name of AppUp. It also has extremely large icons that are would lend well to touchscreens (of which the X101 doesn’t have), and a widgetised desktop.
MeeGo attempts to be more user-friendly by allowing a non-tech savvy user to install, remove and run programs without needing to resort to a guide searched off Google. Watch the following video to have a glance at the functionality of the new X101.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
