ASUS Eee PC's Future, Running Windows 7 a Definite

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

For such a huge company, ASUS does a lot of things well. They build great motherboards, graphic cards, audio cards, notebooks and more... as we've seen time and time again in our own content. What they don't do too often is release a product that turns the industry upside down. Take the Eee PC, for example. It was released a little over a year ago, and look at all that has happened in such a short time span. Even companies who don't typically build computer equipment are jumping on the netbook bandwagon, and there is no chance of it slowing down soon.

DailyTech references a Laptop Magazine article which saw an interview with ASUSTeK's CEO Jerry Shen, to try to get an idea of where the Eee PC will be in one year. Some of what's said is somewhat obvious, but Jerry remains firm that the company will never release a model larger than 10", and to me, that's a good thing. It's the small form-factor that's selling this thing, after all.

Another point made in the article is almost more noteworthy than the rest, though. Jerry claims that by mid-summer, the company will release a new Eee PC that will run Windows 7. Now, a statement like that is huge, because from what we've understood up to this point, Windows 7 would not be due out until late next year or early 2010. All of a sudden it's been bumped up to next summer? I'm somehow doubtful, and hope it's not true. I thought late 2009 was early enough... shaving off another 4 - 6 months is not going to be a good thing.

When asked about Easy Mode for Vista, Shen said he doesn't believe that ASUS will offer Vista on the Eee. However, Shen says that Eee's will be available with Windows 7 by the middle of next year. Some of the Eee models running Windows 7 will offer multi-touch capabilities, one of the few details known at this point about Windows 7.

Source: DailyTech
​

 

[BlackAndy]

I too hope that those dates are way off for Windows 7... nothing good can come from an early release in my opinion...
I will say that I was impressed with my Eee's ease of use (I'm a Linux noob) when I first got it, and I hope they can continue to introduce more users to a non MS option for productivity. Ultimatly it was a combo of the small keyboard and my fat fingers that lead to me getting rid of mine.

 

[Rob Williams]

If Vista is proof of anything, it's that an OS shouldn't be rushed. Mid-2009 seems a little ridiculous, but I'm not going to assume anything until we actually see what's going on, and who knows, if they do release it next summer, it might not be so bad. An upcoming Microsoft developer conference will see attendees walking back out with the pre-beta, so it seems like quite an accelerated development cycle.

The fact is though, while Vista was a massive upgrade to XP, Windows 7 is more of an upgrade to Vista, with certain parts revamped, so it could very-well be possible that it won't tank upon launch, even if it's just next summer.

 

[Kougar]

It seems to be Windows 7 is just going to be Vista with more needed improvements, packaged with interface changes.

Supposedly it will be the first Windows OS smart enough to detect an SSD and disable all the caching and constant reads/writes XP and Vista do for high access latency drives. Currently users must do this themselves otherwise it kills SSD performance while significantly impacting the SSD lifespan. They also changed the startbar/taskbar in some way, and ya already mentioned the touchscreen element. And y'all already know most of the extra software is download-to-install, no longer prepackaged with the OS...

Plenty of cues from businesses are pointing to summer 2009 as the launch date, so I wouldn't be surprised at this. If all they are doing is starting with Vista and making needed improvements they don't need the extended QC betas, sine the underlying OS is still already "stable" Vista code.