When we reported on the ASUS Eee 1201K a few months ago, we were surprised by the system's odd internals. With a dated AMD Geode CPU, the 12in netbook certainly seemed like a bizarre fit in the company's line-up. At the least, though, we were curious how much such a PC might cost.
Now it would appear that the system has successfully made its way to retail, though not quite on these shores yet. Italian retailer ePrice has the 1201K in stock and shipping for €328.99, which works out to around £275.
The specs match up with those listed on the ASUS website, which means that it uses a single-core 1.4GHz Geode NX 1750 CPU, a SiS741GX chipset and 1GB of RAM. While the retailer has the memory listed as DDR2, it almost certainly runs DDR1, given the controller.
Despite the legacy CPU, some of the features are fairly standard for a modern 12in notebook, with a 1,366x768px resolution screen, 160GB HDD, Bluetooth 2.1 and 802.11n WiFi all included as standard. However, the decision to forgo Windows 7 Starter in favour of Windows XP manages to keep things stuck firmly in the past. The battery is still listed as a 6-cell 47Whr model, which ASUS claims will be good for a total of two hours run-time - which sounds about right for a dated 130nm CPU.
The Eee 1201K is a bizarre mix of old and new, and we can't quite figure out why ASUS decided on this combination of components. It's not as if the pricing is even that aggressive - while you would struggle to find a cheaper 12in netbook, there are plenty of 10in models powered by Intel's Atom N455 retailing for less on the continent.
For the time being, ASUS hasn't released any information on when - or if - this model might show up in the UK, or how much it will cost.
