Asus S101 Detailed

Author	Hugo Jobling
Published	6th Oct 2008

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Asus' S101 netbook was shown off by the company's President, Jerry Shen, at the beginning of August and then for some reason forgotten about, possibly as a result of distraction by the sleek (if a little over-specced and thus over-priced) N10. A quick look at the (US) pricing and specs, though, definitely gives the impression the S101 might be worth a second look - at least if HardwareZone 's sources can be trusted.

Coming in at 1KG, and measuring just 25mm at its thickest point (about 1cm thinner than the Eee PC) and with less of a "my first laptop" feel than the first generation Eee series, the S101 is (we're lead to believe) aimed at corporate types who want the portability and practicality of an Eee PC, but need to be taken seriously in a boardroom. Graphite, champagne and (a quite stylish) brown colour options should go some way to helping with this differentiation.

Specs are yet another dose of standard netbook fare for the most part; a 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB of DDR2 RAM and 1,024 x 600 10.2in screen. Storage options, however, are up over the Eee PC with either 32GB or 64GB of SSD with a Linux-fitted S101, or 16GB of SSD and a bundled 16GB SD card with Windows XP.

Based on the US pricing of $699 (~400) for the 32GB configurations and $799 (~£450) for the 64GB system Asus doesn't appear to be charging much of a premium for its premium netbooks which is good, obviously. That we'll see a UK (and global) release before Christmas doesn't seem an unreasonable assumption.

Oh yes, feel free to throw in your reference of choice to the MacBook Air here - I'm trying to resist, myself.

Link:
HardwareZone.