I guess it will appeal to those who liked the "retro" look of the 701...

It seems the Eee has succumbed to the standard IT product lifecycle:

1) Produce something cheap, clever and well-positioned that everyone wants.

2) Add bloat (a.k.a. enhance the feature set) until it's fat, useless, overpriced and nobody wants it any more.

3) Repeat from 1 ad nauseum.

... sounds like a bad idea to me. Not only are they getting bigger, more expensive, and Windows-contaminated, but they seem to have dropped the coastal serving suggestion.

Still, it all serves to push down the prices of the smaller ones.

Let's make a small cheap computer whose major selling point is that it is - um - small, and - er - cheap.

Now, how can we improve it?

I know - let's make it *bigger* and *more expensive*

Doh...

(Paris because she'd probably want something bigger and more expensive...)

don't do it! remember where you came from asus...think cheap and small...the others already do big boy notebooks very well.....

I'd say the bigger problem with the EEEpc product lifecycle is the fact that they don't seem to be able to go a month without telling everyone that a better one is coming out soon.

Maybe next they could add a 14.1" screen, a 250GB hard drive and a Core2Duo processor!

They could charge £350 for it and call it a laptop!

The way forward would be to make the 901 like the 701 only with bigger HDD and better specs (chip, ram, bluetooth etc). instead of a bigger screen and bigger keyboard and moving parts inside (full HDD).

Keep it small cheap and simple, and newer models have better screen resolutions and more features. Instead of just dragging their customer base upto the normal size variants

So it's bigger, more expensive, and back to the silly "screen doesn't fit bezel look"?

Sod that.

Asus have officially gone completely insane.

I can only assume that their fine engineering dept created the first Eee, then the retarded imbeciles in management and marketing sprang into action, and now are attempting to milk that poor cow for all its worth.

A crying shame, they'll be bankrupt in a year at this rate.

Make a bigger machine just to be able to fit a bigger keyboard is not a good idea unless you want to appeal to users that mainly want to use it as a portable typewriter.

Now these users do exist (I personally know one), but they constitute a much smaller niche compared to the users that simply want the biggest screen in the smallest form factor possible (for a reasonable price).

Launching this as a side product to the 901 and targeting aspiring writers and secretaries may be an idea, but replacing the 901 by this would be suicide, as it wouldn't be able to compete with the acer one and the dell E in the consumer space.

"A crying shame, they'll be bankrupt in a year at this rate."

No they won't - they make the hardware for Sony and Apple, among others.

Not just laptops. Anybody remember when the VW golf was a small/cheap hatchback?

Has anyone actually taken notice to her expression?

You can tell she is looking at the old EeePC... "urrgh, my eyes are burning" (from the poor resolution). That or she has the shits.

The 701 is still the king of the bunch for me.

I bought one last week for £200. I bought it because it was tiny, and because it was £200. The only thing I would change about it is the fact it could do with a slightly larger drive, say 10gb to not have to butcher xp, and the atom processor with bluetooth. Add those, and I'll have one. Until then, my EEE PC does what it says on the tin, and does it in the true spirit of the EEE PC.

Alien, because ASUS is on another planet on this one...

..it's 1st of July, anyone know of any 'actual' stock of the 901 in the UK?

Paris, 'cos she'd have had it in already.

Quite funny these release cycles. I didn't buy a 701 or 900 'cause i knew i wanted a 901 instead. Now i need to get it before the 904/905 bloated version comes!!