Asus is apparently doing something akin to the pee-pee dance while trying to get its next generation of Eee PCs out the door. On the one hand, it wants to release them before companies like HP and Acer release their tiny laptops but on the other hand, it wants to include Intel’s new Atom processors. Problem is, Intel recently announced that the Atom’s not going to be available until June.
Digitimes is reporting that Asus may be forgoing the use of the Atom processor in an effort to release the Eee PC 900 this month.
“Asustek Computer’s second-generation Eee PCs will hit the market in Taiwan in the second half of April ahead of first-tier competitors’ launches of their low-cost notebooks, according to sources in the retail channels.
Asustek’s second-generation Eee PCs will also adopt Intel’s older-generation dual-core ULV processors so that it can advance the launch to more than a month before Acer or Hewlett Packard (HP) ships their Intel Atom-based notebooks, the sources said.
Intel will ship its Atom processors, developed for low-cost portable devices, in May, and notebook vendors, such as Acer and HP, will not ship their low-cost models until June, the sources said.”
It’s believed that Asus will use Atom processors in later Eee releases. Whether that means a 2.5 version of the Eee PC 900 or an entirely new third generation is unknown. Given the relatively short development cycle, we might see the 900s come out followed by another batch of Atom-based 900s a couple months later.