Asus has stolen the show so far at CES by holding its press conference a day before everyone else. and we've already seen sneak peek of the
T91 and T101.
Disappointingly, there was no confirmation of the Eee Phone beyond talk about its existence at a later date, but the new additions to the Eee family, including a keyboard computer with on-board wireless HDMI, look good.
The show was very nearly stolen by Microsoft, though. Its General Manager of Marketing, Dave Fester (right), appeared on stage with Asus Chairman Jonny Shi to demo Windows 7 Ultimate running on an Eee PC S121.
The netbook, an upgrade to Asus' flagship
S101 features the world's first 512GB solid-state drive, is actually slightly lower specced than the current crop of ultra portables. It runs a 1.3GHz Atom Z520 processor, while existing netbooks have been based on the faster 1.6GHz N270.
Despite this, the demo of the next Windows looked very smooth. We weren't allowed to get hands-on with the machine to confirm the speed, but Fester switched between several Windows Live apps, including VoIP calling, seemlessly. He also showed it going into standby mode and restoring instantly.
It's good news for Microsoft – the company has been caught off guard by the popularity of Linux-based netbooks, and been forced to extend availability of the technically obsolete Windows XP for the new breed of ultra-portables which aren't powerful enough to run Vista.
Shi did confirm, however, that Asus will be continuing to develop its Linux-based EeePC range to hit “even more aggressive price points than we have so far.”
So look out for another bumper crop of netbooks this year, then....
