ASUS - The Eee Keyboard Will Ship in 2010

ASUS has made the transistion from just a motherboard manufacturer to much more. A lot of that was thanks to the Eee PC line. With the goal of being a top-3 notebook manufacturer by 2011 ASUS had a lot of notebooks on display at CES. The ASUS Eee PC 1201T is based on AMD's Neo MV40:

The system will be shipping in late Q1.

The Eee Keyboard is finally shipping this year:

With an integrated Atom-based system, the keyboard is your PC. The integrated display runs Windows but can run a smartphone-like shell on top of Explorer:

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The Eee Keyboard works well as a keyboard itself, but you won't be able to use the keyboard on another PC. It can only drive the integrated computer. For $599 ASUS will bundle the Eee Keyboard with an Ultra Wide Band wireless video streaming box:

You'll be able to use the keyboard and wirelessly stream its desktop to your HDMI equipped display. In this mode you can use the touchscreen on the right as a trackpad.

Final Words

That's it for me at CES 2010. Ryan is still running around with meetings, but for me I'm off to finish our Core i3 review and play around with some new SSDs.

Antec's New mini-ITX and ATX Cases
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  • Calin - Monday, January 18, 2010 - link

    I'm just saying...
    Entry level card (6200 based) - 350 MHz clock, 64-bits, 256 MB video RAM (DDR2 275 MHz) with access to up to 512 MB of computer RAM.
    Compare with an IGP (Radeon 1250, AMD 690G) from AMD: 400 MHz clock and 64-bits access to lowly PC-5300, DDR2-667 MHz in a base configuration.
  • jigglywiggly - Saturday, January 9, 2010 - link

    eee keyboard == useless
  • Totally - Sunday, January 10, 2010 - link

    yeah, it just dumb. There was a lot of uses that I could think of until they said it can only drive the embedded pc, which limited all uses I had for it to zero. Now raises the question why stuff it in a keyboard in the first place and just make it some kind of Ultra SSF nettop with a screen?
  • GeorgeH - Saturday, January 9, 2010 - link

    More like a missed opportunity. Had they integrated a KVM so that the keyboard could also drive a regular PC, this could have been a useful, if niche, gaming accessory. There are a few low-intensity apps (such as IM'ing and browsing FAQs/Walkthroughs) that it would be nice to run on a little "side screen" so that you aren’t constantly tabbing out of your game. If they made the screen able to "break out" and position anywhere, so much the better.

    As it is, though, calling it useless is being charitable.
  • ksherman - Sunday, January 10, 2010 - link

    I dunno... With the built-in ability to stream video to a TV, I could see people using it like those old skool Internet Browsing on your TV devices. Niche, sure. Useless, no.
  • Taft12 - Saturday, January 9, 2010 - link

    Thanks for providing some pictures Anand, we haven't seen enough yet of CES coverage. This has been the most memorable show since the dot-com bust days

    The features in those Antec ATX cases are fantastic, shame the looks are hideous :(
  • buzznut - Sunday, January 10, 2010 - link

    Nice article. I have to agree, I don't care for the direction Antec is going with their cases. The whole plastic grid thing just looks cheesy. Ugly.
  • AznBoi36 - Sunday, January 10, 2010 - link

    You can see pretty much everything about CES at Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/ces">http://www.engadget.com/ces
  • Locut0s - Saturday, January 9, 2010 - link

    I wonder who's idea it was to place the screen on the side of the E-Keyboard? It looks extremely awkward to use that way. You'd think you'd automatically place the screen on top as a detachable unit.
  • afkrotch - Sunday, January 10, 2010 - link

    or just get rid of it all together, which is what I think the other keyboard next to it is. I don't need extra buttons on a random screen on my keyboard.

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