Does anyone know anyone or anyway I can buy a sample of the ASUS eee PC 701 that was launched at Computex recently?
event.asus.com/eeepc/
handhelds.engadget.com/2007/06/0 … th-a-bang/
eeeuser.com/2007/10/25/its-w … pressions/
Anyone know where we can get one of these in Taipei this week?
You can’t, TMK. Too new. I didn’t see it at Guanghua yesterday. The stores there don’t know about the ASUS R2E, either.
Someone is selling them on EBay (US) and the seller is based in Taiwan. Price is a bit higher than what was promised, though.
Aren’t they on sale in Carrefour & RT Mart? Just under 12000NT?
Jeez…with the 8 gig HD and 1 gig of ram I may just have to get one of these little buggers.
Good looking tool with some very good user comments.
That can’t be the right amount; I paid more for my PHONE.
A friend of mine got one of these and I played around with it for a bit. It’s a pretty neat device.
One pain in the arse thing you must do is change the localization. It easy to do actually, but you must search around the web for the right command. I forget how he did it off the top of my head.
The GUI is a modified version of Xandros (a linux distribution). I quite like it. There is also an expert mode where you can get a standard KDE interface. It has Openoffice for office apps, which runs pretty slow. You can install Abiword or Gnumeric for a lighter-weight word processor and spreadsheet. Chinese input is done through scim/skim packages, which work well.
You can possibly download and install another distribution if you want. But good luck in having all the hardware properly configured and recognized. There seems to be some independent projects out there where people are developing alternative s. So if your into this kind of thing, it sounds rather fun. Personally, I’d like to see SLAX come out with a version that supports this device.
I think the only one you can buy now is the 4gb, which I think is way too small, but they will be coming out with an 8 and 16 gb one soon from what I’ve read. Also they will have different colors than white as well. I can imagine white will get dirty fast!
I’ve heard some of my students complain about the price. It’s cheaper to buy it in the US than in Taiwan! I am not sure if this is accurate information, but it sounds right.
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Jeez…with the 8 gig HD and 1 gig of ram I may just have to get one of these little buggers.
Good looking tool with some very good user comments.[/quote]I think it has flash memory instead of a hard disk, doesn’t it?
Anyway, if I were you I’d wait until spring when the next model, with greatly improved battery life, is supposed to be released.
They are available at nationwide.com.tw 
even though several people (including one who checked with friends who work in ASUS R&D) told me they are sold out everywhere
I’m picking mine up tonight! :discodance:
If you like, they can change it to XP English or Xandros English for you
I’m so excited :yay:
[quote]I think it has flash memory instead of a hard disk, doesn’t it?
Anyway, if I were you I’d wait until spring when the next model, with greatly improved battery life, is supposed to be released.[/quote]
Yea it’s flash memory. And thats a another good reason to wait. Their isnt enough of it. 4gb is just enough for the apps that are installed, barely giving you enough memory for storage unless you add a large capacity SD or usb. A friend of mine was complaining that he couldn’t download from the web to his SD storage either. I think this can be changed if you edit the user privilages, but apparently this was overlooked in the default configuration. I think you can skinny down the default system if you choose to install your own distribution with XFCE, Fluxbox, or one of the other lighter weight desktop or window managers. Apprently you void your warrenty if you do something like this… but I am not clear on this issue.
I’ll grab one when the 8gb or 16gb version comes out.
eh? sold out nationwide?
i see them everywhere! RT-Mart, Carrefour, Tpe Main Station Nova. Around 11000~~
Did anybody install Ubuntu and get it all working?
[quote=“frokky”]eh? sold out nationwide?
i see them everywhere! RT-Mart, Carrefour, Tpe Main Station Nova. Around 11000~~[/quote]
That’s good to know. It wasn’t what I was hearing last week from friends on the street and from friends of friends who work INSIDE ASUS (in R&D, however, not commercial)
There was also Dan’s article here:
FWIW, Nationwide.com.tw does not have any problems getting them for you, and configuring it how you need it (English or Chinese, XP or Xandros). I’ve been playing with mine since yesterday - very cool
And how is it? I’d love to get one, but I haven’t been able to get uptown since the launch last month.
… Too bizzy, I guess.
Kenneth
it’s a blast. the small keyboard takes a bit of getting used to, but you’re buying it for the convenience of connecting on the road. I have an Ipod Touch that can barely be used anywhere to go online. While the eee PC? It’s useful!
If making the time to get uptown is your problem, then contact Nationwide.com.tw - they’ll deliver it to you in Taipei, or ship it over to wherever you are. i was in town for a very short and unexpected trip last week. I was planning to hit Guanghua, but several then told me not to bother since the eee was sold out anyway. But Nationwide came through for me, and saved me the effort
I saw one at Carrefour last night. I didn’t realise what i was looking at until I read this thread.
It’d be good if you can give us a informal review, Gus.
Hey Gus, I’m curious to know which operating system you went for. Did you stick with Xandros?
I installed Ubuntu.
Cant belive it was sold out anywhere in Taibei.