E-DT, E-TV and E-Monitor on the way
It's going to be a year of E's for ASUS as Digitimes reports that the Taiwan-based manufacturer announced plans today to launch a whole family of Eee products.
The new products in the Eee line up are to include an Eee Desktop PC (E-DT), an Eee Television (E-TV) and an Eee Monitor (E-Monitor). Jerry Shen, president of Asustek states that all new Eee products will follow the marketing strategy behind the Eee Notebook PC, indicating that low-cost will be the key to all new devices.
The E-DT will be sold as a standalone system without a monitor and is currently scheduled for launch between April or May and will be on hand at CeBit in March. Initially, the E-DT will feature an Intel Celeron processor (which could be dual-core) and later E-DT's are said to adopt Intel's forthcoming Shelton platform and the 945GC chipset. The price of an Eee Desktop PC? Right now it's estimated at between $200 - $300, ASUS claims it'll try to lower the cost to $199 but we'll have to wait and see.
The E-Monitor, which you may have confused as being a monitor only, is actually a complete all-in-one system, similar to a Dell XPS One - only, much cheaper. It'll feature a 19" - 21" display with a built-in TV tuner and be based on Intel's Shelton platform. Pricing for the E-Monitor is currently set at an incredibly low $499. It's scheduled to launch in September and could really put a thorn in the side of Apple and Dell's all-in-one solutions.
Last but not least, the E-TV plans to bring low-cost Eee goodness to the LCD market. It'll measure in at 42" and over whilst integrating the Linux-based PC functionality that Eee PC products feature. Pricing? Well, the added PC functionality is said to add a $200 premium compared to other low-cost 42" LCDs.
It'll be an interesting year for ASUS and its Eee family of products but we wouldn't take too much notice of these prices just yet. The supposed prices tend to be a little different to the actual launch prices, take the Eee notebook for example.
ASUS' Jerry Shen also took the time to state that the company had decided against the touch screen Eee PC which is a shame, we were kinda looking forward to that. Oh well, we'll take an E-Monitor instead. Next year we'd like a low-cost Eee Car too.
