Eee PC: to ship with XP

Staff writers, Daniel Long | Mar 5, 2008 12:03 PM

The hot little seller makes the big leap from Linux to XP, with a small price jump.

- Eee PC to be sold with Windows XP
- New XP machines on sale second week March
- Price of Eee PC with XP: $579
- 8.9inch Eee PC announcement this week

The ASUS Eee PC is making the inevitable leap from the world of Linux over to the Windows XP mass market.

Beginning the second week of March in 2008, Asus will bring out a revamped Eee PC that uses the XP operating system as its core interface. Asus have confirmed to the marketplace that the new unit will sell for $579.

Fans of Linux may be disappointed to learn of the Asus decision as the open Linux interface has been a boom to home developers and tech enthusiasts who have readily embraced the power and portability of the Eee concept on a micro budget. Unlike the exsisting Eee, which comes with the free OpenOffice, buyers of the XP version of Eee will likely need to add the extra cost of an Office license to the purchase price – unless ASUS decides to bundle OpenOffice with XP.

Although a stripped back version of XP sounds interesting, it will be quite some work to make it fit on the standard 4GB flash drive that is currently bundled on the Eee. In the latest news from the CeBIT exhibition in Hanover, Germany, Asus plans to release a larger version of the Eee, with a 8.9 inch screen (much easier on the eyes), a 12GB flash hard drive and 1GB of memory, and give any future XP upgrades a little more room to breath.