The Asus EeePC - A laptop with only what you need
The release cost of the Asus
EeePC back in November 2007 must have come as a bit of a surprise to consumers; the mid-spec 4G model costed only £220 (Smith, T, 2007). With the
EeePC, users were presented with a cheap and portable laptop which did almost everything expected from such a machine.
1. Designed for Purpose
In essence there was nothing new about the
EeePC. Yet, Asus managed to provide a product that fitted into a market place perfectly. Emeran remarks, "notebooks became smaller and lighter and end users wanted to run feature rich (read bloated) operating systems on their mobile computers...Thankfully Asus realised that there was room in the market for a basic, affordable machine that didn't need to run the latest version of Windows - thus the
EeePC was born".
Effect on quality
The
EeePC allows users to perform simple tasks on the move. In his presentation, Dien states "Durable, solid solid-state design" and claims, "Bumps and shocks are no longer issues. With a dependable solid-state disk, you get unparalleled shock-protection and reliability" (Dien, J, 2008). There are additional benefits; solid state drives are smaller (see appendix A for a comparison of hard-drive sizes), improves the battery life as motors tend be to be power hungry and improves robustness (see appendix B). One might argue that quality is reduced in some aspects, for example, the 4GB solid state memory is very small in comparison to what desktop PC users might be used to. The reason it is so small is due to cost, the Kingston M-Series 80GB Solid State Drive is only 80GB yet it costs £318.23. The
EeePC is unable to play CDs since it has no hard drive. However, for the market the
EeePC is aim at, my opinion is that users do not rank large hard disk space and the ability to play CDs as high as longer battery life, size and robustness.
Effects on cost
By reducing the number of features - within both hardware and software - the cost of the
EeePC is very low. As mentioned previously there is no CD drive and the hard disk is very small. The
EeePC has a LINUX rather than Windows operating system. This reduces cost further since the
majority of distributions LINUX is free; Matthew reminds us that the GNU General Public Licence only grants access to the source code - there may still be cost involved in obtaining software (Matthews, 2004, p. 3). Other companies are also reducing features to reduce cost: Apple, renowned for generally releasing state of this art products have also seen the demand from users that do not desire every feature under the sun - by releasing the iPod shuffle. I feel the diagram bellow summarizes this concept.
Illustrating the link between features and price
2. Designed for Standard Compliance
The
EeePc is 802.11n wireless standard compliant which allows for faster and easier connectivity to the Internet (Asus Corp, N.d.).
Effects on Performance and Cost
In my opinion the cost of being wireless compliant is unavoidable. Imagine such a product or
any laptop being release today that was not, there would simply be no interest in it. It also provides many performance improvements that simply out-weight any development cost. Compare the cost that a stand-alone network card costs approximately £20 (Linksys by Cisco WMP54G Wireless-G PCI Card, N.d.), with Microsoft Office which costs £70 (Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Home and Student CD, 2007). We can replaced Office with programs such as Google Docs which are free of charge therefore decreasing the overall price. It can also by-pass some of its short-falls - rather than storing programs on hard disk, use Internet storage - this way the
EeePC does not have to provide large-expensive hard-drives.
Conclusion
The popularity of the
EeePC in my opinion is due mainly to these design features. By giving users only the essentials, they can provide an inexpensive machine. Then through the use of the Internet, many features users require can be added. This masks the fact that it is technically a "sub-par" machine (Jackson, J, 2007) because it provides users (perhaps through slightly unconventional routes) with what they need.
Finish.
Appendices
Appendix A: Table comparing Hard Drive Dimensions
| Name |
Width |
Height |
Depth |
| Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II |
10.2 |
2.54 |
14.7 |
| Kingston M-Series 80GB Solid State Drive |
7 |
0.95 |
10 |
|
(Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM, N.d.) and (Kingston M-Series 80GB Solid State Drive Internal 2.5" SATA300, N.d.)
Appendix B: Table comparing shock resistivity*
| Name |
Shock Resistivity |
Time |
| Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II |
65g |
2ms |
| Kingston M-Series 80GB Solid State Drive |
1000g |
0.5ms |
*note: comparison only works if the effects of shock is
linear. I.e. it is assumed the Kingston device at 2ms can take 250g of shock.
(Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM, N.d.) and (Kingston M-Series 80GB Solid State Drive Internal 2.5" SATA300, N.d.)
Bibliography
Asus Corp. (N.d.).
Connect to your world via wireless connectivity. Retrieved May 1, 2009, from
http://eeepc.asus.com/global/product1000he.html
Dien, J. (2008).
Asus Rock solid and Heart touching. Eee PC. Retrieved May 1, 2009, from
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/080514-EeePCStanford2008.pdf
Ebuyer UK LTD. (N.d.a).
Linksys by Cisco WMP54G Wireless-G PCI Card. Retrieved May 2, 2009, from
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/45602
Ebuyer UK LTD. (N.d.b).
Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Home and Student CD. Retrieved May 2, 2009, from
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124756
Ebuyer UK LTD. (N.d.c).
Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB SATA II 7200RPM 16MB Cache - OEM. Retrieved May 1, 2009, from
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/124228/show_product_specifications?spectype=extended
Ebuyer UK LTD. (N.d.d).
Kingston M-Series 80GB Solid State Drive Internal 2.5" SATA300. Retrieved May 1, 2009, from
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159057/show_product_specifications?spectype=extended
Emeran, R. (2008).
Asus Eee PC 900. Retrieved May 1, 2009, from
http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebooks/review/2008/04/16/Asus-Eee-PC-900/p1
Jackson, J. (2007).
Asus Eee PC 4G Review. Retrieved May 1, 2009, from
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4055
Matthew, N. (2004).
Beginning Linux programming. Indianapolis: Wiley.
Smith, T. (2007).
Asus launches tiny PC. Retrieved May 1, 2009, from
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/10/16/asus_launches_eee_pc/
