TechCrunch » Eee keyboard

Commodore knocks off the Eee keyboard, calls it the "Invictus"

Devin Coldewey — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 03:21:47 +0000

How’d we miss this weird thing? Straight into the WTF pile for you! A company we never hear from comes out with a (admittedly nice-looking) clone of a product that’s kind of weird to begin with — a product that doesn’t seem to be flying off the shelves, to boot. *boggle*

Here are the only specs available, as whispered by this forum jockey:

Ion-based
Resistive touchscreen (uses stylus)
Wireless HDMI
5+ hour battery
Is that bitch running Windows XP?

Invictus, though? That’s a bit of a pretentious name for a knockoff. Why not the Ameeegaboard? I like Ameeegaboard.

“A few weeks” is the announcement estimate. Just weird as hell. Invictus?!

The Asus Eee Keyboard is finally shipping

Matt Burns — Wed, 12 May 2010 13:00:21 +0000

My goodness. Talk about a long product development cycle. We first saw a working demo of the Asus Eee Keyboard 17 months ago at CES 2009 and it just now started shipping to customers. We’re not even going to pretend to know why it would took so long to make it from the show floor to customers. All that matters now is that the device is now shipping from Amazon to buyers. Finally.

Official Eee Keyboard specs revealed

Contributor — Tue, 04 May 2010 05:30:48 +0000

After over a year of delays, promises, and waiting, we finally know what’s going to be in the Eee Keyboard. Has it been too long? Is it too late for the poor keyboard that every wanted, but no one could get? Do we still care? I’ll admit, I like it, but I may be in the minority.

Asus put the Keeeyboard on their site this weekend, with the retail price set at $599. It’s not bad, consider it for what it is and you can see where the trade off is. It comes down to this; the Eee Keyboard is a essentially a netbook in a new form factor, with a touch screen. Right down to the Intel Atom N270 keyboard, 945GE chipset, 1GB of on board memory, and the choice between a 16GB or 32GB SSD. Battery life is around 4 hours (we’ll see). There’s two USB ports, one HDMI port, VGA, gigabit LAN, and headphone and microphone out, all located on the back.

So what do you think? Is the form factor worth the premium? I don’t know, I’d have to have a pretty compelling use to buy one. The touch screen is a great concept as well, but without a “killer app” I don’t see it going far.

[via Tom's Hardware]

Asus Eee Keyboard: It's a keyboard–no, it's a netbook.

Nicholas Deleon — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:30:25 +0000

Fancy keyboard is fancy.

It’s the Asus Eee Keyboard, a sorta PC-keyboard hybrid that pretty much blew my mind.

It’s got an Intel Atom processor, 1GB of memory, and either 16GB or 32GB or storage space, and a five-inch touch screen on the right-hand side.

The idea, nearest I can tell (this is the first I’ve ever heard of the thing), is to squeeze a netbook into a keyboard. You can connect it to an external monitor and control it like it was any old Windows netbook.

I have no idea what’s going on anymore, but this is neat. $600 neat? That’s for you to decide.

Asus Eee Keyboard available for pre-order at Amazon

Devin Coldewey — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:30:34 +0000

It’s been a long time since we first met, Eee Keyboard. You’ve changed a lot. Well, not that much. But you’re not quite as compelling as you were in early 2009. HTPCs are being integrated with our HDTVs now, and our smartphones and tablets are becoming universal remotes for them. I’m afraid there’s not a lot of room for a doodad like yourself… but I’m reporting you for old time’s sake. What, you’re $600 now?!

Yes, the long-awaited Eee Keyboard is available for pre-order, as we knew it would be, over at Amazon. I’m afraid Asus might have missed the boat on this one, though. I mean, between this thing and an iPad, what is the average consumer going to pick? Yeah, that’s what I thought too.

[oops, via Netbooked]

The Asus Eee Keyboard will now be released in April 2010

Matt Burns — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:30:11 +0000

It seems a little odd that we first saw the Eee Keyboard at CES 2009 and it’s still not available. The demo that we played with at least seemed like it was nearly production ready. But here we are over a year later and now the Asus chairman is stating that the new release date is April 2010. Like we haven’t heard that one before.

At this point Asus better produce a flawless product. It’s unbelievable that there isn’t more generic clones available. One was spotted at CES 2010 made by the Chinese company Great Wall, but it’s a China-only model. Hopefully we’ll see the Eee Keyboard sometime this year. You might as well start saving your pennies though, it’s not going to be cheap.

Asus beat to EEE Keyboard market by knockoff

Contributor — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:00:05 +0000

Bad news for Asus, the EEE Keyboard that still hasn’t been released yet was beaten to market by a clone. The knockoff version is made by the Chinese company Great Wall, and while the clone version did beat the original to market, there are some serious reasons to wait until Asus releases their version.

The Great Wall version sounds good on paper, 2gb of RAM, a 250gb hard drive, wifi, and a Nvidia chipset and a new Cross PC U510 CPU. It all starts to fall apart when you look at how exactly it works. It’s lacking the built in battery, it doesn’t support dual displays, and will in fact turn off the touchscreen when you plug a monitor into the machine. The Great Wall version will sell for around $570 US in China, but I doubt we’ll ever see it in the US.

Additionally, when you start to compare features (like the touchscreen working when you plug a monitor in), it really seems to me that it’ll be better to wait for Asus to come out with their version.

[Via Tom's Hardware]

Bad news, good news: Eee Keyboard delayed, but it's getting the old touchscreen back

Devin Coldewey — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:48:42 +0000

I amaze myself sometimes. You see, I have so much power as a writer on this invincible and influential blog that sometimes I can change an entire industry with but a word. Case in point: apparently my recent post on Eee’s decision to change the touchscreen to resistive on their Eee Keyboard was so crushing that they’ve altered their entire business plan and delayed the device to accommodate it. O Mighty Blogger! Thou humblest the world!

Actually, I’m guessing they did some focus groups and found that the trade-off of “lower price and crappier touchscreen” with “people actually wanting the device” was unacceptable. At any rate, the device (which had an original internal release window of August-ish) may not make it in time for the holidays. It’s not rare that we see a device at CES that doesn’t make it during the next year, but I really had hopes for this thing.

Eee Keyboard gets touchscreen "updated" to resistive

Devin Coldewey — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:00:26 +0000

Remember when everything had a capacitive touchscreen, and we decided we really hated those and we wanted resistive ones that required styluses? Me neither. That’s why I’m a little puzzled as to why the Eee Keyboard, which had a perfectly workable capacitive touchscreen when I gave it its first hands-on in January, has been changed to have a resistive screen and integrated stylus. It’s like they produced a concept car, and then when they put it into production, they gave it wooden wheels.

Watch the full video demo above, and see the madness that is the new design decision. Controlling a cursor on screen by using a stylus on a differently-shaped touchscreen… seems a bit of a terrible idea to me.

[Via Netbook News]

The Eee Keyboard according to the FCC

Matt Burns — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:52:17 +0000

The FCC is probably one of the biggest spoilers of fun in the electronic world. They spill more CE beans than anyone else. The latest victim: the Asus Eee Keyboard. We can finally see what’s under the hood thanks to recently filed documents.

An Intel Atom CPU along with a 945GSE chipset powers Windows XP Home along with a Broadcom AV-VD905 video decoder. It also packs 1GB of RAM, either 16 or 32GB of flash storage, gigabit Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth, HDMI and VGA outputs, and a 4-hour battery. There is also the standard assortment of USB ports, headphone and mic jacks, and power adapter. As for the display, it’s a 5-inch 800 x480 touchscreen.

The keyboard throws 720p video/data to a display via an on-board Ultra-Wideband system. Video has a range of 5-meters while everything else should be fine up to 10-meters. The UWB receiver is equipped with two USB ports, a mini-USB, audio out and HDMI-out.

So far it seems that the device has lived up to the concept Devin spent some time with back at CES ’09. Now the only info left is the launch date and price point. [eeepc.it via SlashGear]

Asustek keyboard and netbook expected this fall

Contributor — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:00:48 +0000

While nothing official has been shared yet, industry insiders are expecting Asustek to announce and release some of their new product lines this coming September and October. Looks like it’s going to be an interesting autumn.

Again, this is not official, however it is coming from “industry insiders” so it’s probably pretty accurate. Asustek will most likely be releasing their Nvidia Ion-based Eee Box, the Eee Top all-in-one PC, and two new ultra-thin notebooks in September. The long awaited Eee Keyboard is expected in October.

The Eee Top PC will be priced at roughly $688, and the Eee keyboard will be priced in the $400-$500 range. Of course, these numbers are based on the prices that the products will be released at in Asia, so don’t consider them locked in stone.

[via Digitimes.com]

Imitation Eee Keyboard — not as slick, but still sweet

Devin Coldewey — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 01:00:40 +0000

There’s nothing truly special about the Eee Keyboard beyond the fact that Asus did it first. Sure, it took some fancy configuring to get the PCBs, RAM and everything in there, but if you were a dedicated DIY computer guy, you could do something similar. And this guy did — no touchscreen, no wireless HDMI, and it’s not as fast, but hey, it’s a computer in a keyboard!

The creator is Russian and you can get the translated rundown here. From what I can understand, it appears that it’s still a work in progress; heat is a big problem and he’s having to work with different clock speeds to keep it stable. VGA out isn’t exactly state of the art, but it will put an image into a projector. It’s running at 900MHz right now on a Celeron, with a gig of RAM and a 20GB (?) SSD. Better than my keyboard computer.

[via Liliputing and Gizmodo]

ASUS Eee Keyboard gets cracked open

Contributor — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:40:51 +0000

The ASUS Eee Keyboard has been sliced open and dissected by Blogeee.net (translated from French). The innards basically consist of laptop parts laid side by side with all the ports facing outwards.

The 4cm fan is apparently pretty quiet, the 1GB of RAM has been soldered onto the motherboard, and there’s a 1,880mAh battery that’ll apparently let the thing run for over an hour and a half before needing to be plugged back in.

When assembled, the backlit keys look pretty cool and the iPhone-sized touchscreen on the far right ought to come standard on every keyboard ever made (my opinion). Please observe the video demo below. It’s in French, but it’s pretty easy to follow what’s going on.

Blogeee.net via SlashGear

Asus keyboard computer delayed until August

Contributor — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:40:38 +0000

Our own beardy Devin Coldewey had quite a tech boner for the Asus Eee Keyboard back at CES. At that time, a company representative made a “confidential estimate” that the device would be released in August. Then someone at Asus apparently got all giddy or something and it was announced that the Eee Keyboard would launch in June. Well, June’s almost over and there’s no Asus Eee Keyboard.

Looks like it’s indeed coming in August after all.

And today must be “Companies Being Honest Day” (see the Sony piece from this morning) as Asus’ reasoning behind the delay is simply because it can’t figure out how to market it. It needs a niche, in other words, and Asus had no niche in time for the keyboard’s release.

I think a “people want it” niche might work but that’s not enough these days, apparently. Oh well, August it is then. The computer-inside-a-keyboard will feature a 32GB solid state drive, 5-inch LCD, and wireless HDMI for outputting to a TV or monitor.

[TechDigest.tv via SlashGear]

Eee Keyboard slated for June

Devin Coldewey — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:30:15 +0000

Ahh, the Eee Keyboard. Who knows whether you will be awesome to actually own, but it was sure fun manhandling you at CES (you too, ladies). And although Asus was shy at the time about release dates (August was their confidential estimate then), they’ve decided they’re going to just come out and say June.

Engadget China reports that they’ve heard it from Asus themselves, although there are no press releases or anything of that kind. I wonder if it’ll come in the original color as well as the new silver/silver version?

[via Tech Report]

Eee Keyboard priced and dated, somewhat

Devin Coldewey — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:59:34 +0000

Remember the awesome Eee keyboard we were the first in the world to touch and play with? Well, it wasn’t just a pie-in-the-sky concept; they told me then that they were planning on getting it out in mid-2009, and it looks like they’re on track to do that. The keyboard itself appears to have changed somewhat since CES; it no longer has the MacBook style black-on-aluminum look, opting instead for a silver-on-silver — like Powerbooks.

It’s still got nice solid-looking construction, and the two-tone keys are eye-catching. They’ve added a new LED indicator in the top right, I notice — though I can’t for the life of me figure out what it’s for. There are actually two versions now, one with the wireless HDMI and one without. It’ll have a 1.6GHz Atom processor like their EeePC line, and will have 1GB of RAM and a 16GB or 32GB SSD.

The pricing is still not set in stone, but the rep at CeBIT estimated it would be about $400 for the wired version and maybe $600 for the wireless one.

Exclusive hands-on with Asus' prototype Eee Keyboard

Devin Coldewey — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:26:06 +0000

Apparently, if you ask nicely, Asus will show you their deepest and darkest secrets. The Eee Keyboard, or Keeeboard (working title) is still very much in a prototype phase, but they were happy to let me look it up and down and give its sweet little touchscreen a spin. I can tell you right now, this thing is really sleek, and what with the wireless HDMI and all the ports, it really could be a complete home theater PC in a keyboard.

There’s no word on pricing and they’re very coy about specs, but even so it’s not hard to picture this being onen of 2009′s absolute must-have gadgets.

Update: Updated.

Asus Eee Keyboard: what your home theater system has been missing

Contributor — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:25:20 +0000

OMG. This is without a doubt my favorite gadget I’ve seen or heard about all day. This beauty is a “fully functional PC” that features wireless HDMI, a full QWERTY keyboard, and a mini secondary touchscreen. We’ll let you know when/if we hear more.

[PSGallery=1jbx01u1gf]

via Gizmodo