Stories about: ASUS

I'm a big fan of netbooks -- the compact, lightweight, inexpensive laptops pioneered by Asus with its Eee PC line. Small, rugged, and yet full-featured enough for Web browsing and other light computing tasks, my Eee PC 901 has become a treasured companion for business travel. But the cost of newer netbook models has crept up, and many vendors are now offering standard-sized notebooks at rock-bottom prices, making the value of netbooks less clear.

Advanced Micro Devices is jumping into the mini-notebook space, delivering processors starting in 2009 for small laptops that can run basic applications like Web surfing and e-mail, the company said Thursday.

Microsoft may call the newest version of its operating system Windows 7, but you may want to think of it as Windows 6.5. In overall look and feel, it mimics Vista, although there are enough changes to make it far more than just a juiced-up service pack.

Netbooks equipped with solid-state drives (SSD) sporting as little as 16GB of storage capacity will be able to comfortably run Windows 7, Microsoft said on Thursday.

Microsoft has demonstrated its Windows 7 operating system (OS) on an Asus Eee PC featuring just 1GB of RAM and a 16GB solid-state drive.

Microsoft may release Windows 7 as early as next November, bloggers speculated Wednesday, pointing to postings on the company's own Web site and comments made by the CEO of Asus, the company that makes the popular Eee PC line of netbooks.

Asustek Computer's Japanese arm has alerted owners of its new Eee Box low-cost desktop PC that the machine shipped with a virus.

The popularity of low-cost PCs around the world is driving "explosive growth" for SSDs (small capacity solid state drives), Samsung said Wednesday as it announced three new models of the device.

For some users, the new generation of ultraportable notebooks comes close to embodying the Holy Grail for road warriors. Their laptop-like keyboards make them more usable for typing tasks than smart phones, but they are lighter and cheaper than traditional laptops. The original Asus Eee PC, for instance, cost about US$400 and weighed about two pounds when it was introduced last October.

Asustek Computer has turned back the clock to use Intel microprocessors first launched in 2004 in its latest Eee PC netbooks, in part due to a shortage of Intel's Atom chips.

The original Asus Eee PC took the hardware world by storm. Small, lightweight, inexpensive, yet running a full-fledged OS, this tiny device offered laptop capabilities at near-PDA pricing. Asus has since expanded its Eee PC line with models of varying capabilities, and competing devices are now arriving from other manufacturers, including Acer, Dell, HP, and MSI, among others. Collectively, these devices have come to be called "netbooks."