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In a strategic move apparently intended to confuse people all the more, Asus CEO Jerry Shen has announced that the luxury Eee model we have been talking about since an Asus roadmap slide was leaked a couple weeks ago will eventually be called the S101, having dropped the Eee brand by the time it is released in September. For now however, it is considered part of the Eee brand. The Asus Eventually-Not-Eee S101 will feature an Atom CPU as we have come to expect and a 10 inch screen. Two models have been announced, one mounting a 32GB SSD that costs $699, and one with a 64GB SSD for $899 (prices are not confirmed and seem to be changing as we speak).

Beyond those few stats, the other interesting things we know about the unit from this announcement are that it’s brown (at least for now), glossy and quite thin (16-25mm). It also looks a good deal larger then the Eee 901 in the picture here with it (the Eee logo smudged out in the pic is just temporary, apparently).

By announcing the S101 as part of the Eee line but not selling it as one I think we are seeing a conscious strategy by Asus to use the amount of press coverage the Eee units get (as opposed to other Asus products…yes, there are a few non-Eee Asus laptops still for sale) to build up hype and anticipation for a new notebook, then dropping the Eee brand on release so as not to be viewed as just another netbook. This way they may be hoping to duck the expectation of a low price from Eee PCs. Very sneaky. Whether it will be successful or not, I have no idea but I would tend to doubt it. Shell games like that rarely work in the marketplace.

(Source – iTech News)

Zealot (445 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).