Asustek New Thin, Light UL Laptops
Nick: On Monday Asustech unveiled a new family of thin, light laptops called the Unlimited Family or UL notebook PCs. They update an earlier line of UL series of devices designed around consumer ultra low voltage or CULV microprocessors from Intel. Both series were designed with Apple’s MacBook in mind. Some laptops in the UL family have features the MacBook heir lacks, such as lower prices, larger screens and DVD drives. But the MacBook heir beats the entire UL series on processing power. Every laptop in the new UL series is less than an inch thick, a feature Asustech CEO Jerry Chen was eager to show off. The company claims the laptops offer up to 12 hours of power depending on the configuration, but third party assessments were not available. All of Asus’s UL series laptop come with the latest 1.3 gigahertz Intel Core 2 Duo, SU7300 processors and Intel GS45 chip sets as well as 0.3 megapixel webcams. Of the devices shown on Monday, the UL 50VG laptop boast the largest screen at 15.6 inches and the highest price at just over 1100 US dollars. The laptop also includes Envia G Force G210 M graphics, a 500 gig hard disk, a DVD super multi drive and can hold up to 4 gigs of RAM. The only sub 1000 dollar laptop in the series was the UL 20A, which has a 12.1 inch screen, a 320 gig hard drive, up to 4 gigs of memory and a suggested retail price of 380 US dollars. Asustech pointed out this prices are all for Taiwan, and prices elsewhere were not available. All four of the UL series laptop will be in stores starting September 22nd. Also at Monday’s event the company showed off eKeyboard, a product announce last year that will hit market in Europe and north America in October. It’s a standard size keyboard with a built in computer and 5 inch touch screen on the right side of the board. The device is designed to connect via wires or wirelessly to any device with a display screen. It has a 1.6 gigahertz Intel Atom microprocessor inside, 1 gig of RAM, and an onboard 16 gig or 32 gig sal state drive to store data, pricing has not been announced. With reporting by Dan Nicetead in Taipei, I’m Nick Barber, IDG News Service.