Asus continues assault on netbook market

PC manufacturer determined to dominate the mini-notebook space with its latest high-end release

ASUS has continued its drive to be king of the netbooks with the launch of its latest Eee PC model – the S101.

Rather than the traditional white or black colour, this latest machine comes in a Mocha colour with a metallic finish, to appeal to the fashion conscious business executive.

It weighs 1kg and is just 1.8cm thick, with a 10.2inch display and a battery life of up to five hours. It also runs on the Windows Operating System and comes with a solid state drive with up to 20Gb internet storage. Priced at just under £450 it is one of the PC builder’s most expensive netbooks to date.

The mini-notebook or netbook market is hotting up with Gartner predicting earlier this year that as many as 50 million mini-notebooks will be shipped globally by 2012.
Major players such as Sony, Samsung, HP and Lenovo have all either entered the market this year or admitted to planning an assault on the space in the near future.
Annette Jump, research director at Gartner, said at the time: “The demand for mini-notebooks will be driven by several factors: their small form factor and small screen, their light weight, price, ease of use and basic but sufficient PC functionality.”