CES 2009 - ASUS Expands the Eee Family
by Jarred Walton on January 7, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
The final addition to the Eee Family shown at the event is the Eee Keyboard.
The Eee Keyboard looks like a full sized keyboard (reminiscent of Apple’s aluminum keyboard) but with two major differences: an integrated PC and an integrated 5” touchscreen display. I wrote about such a device in one of my blogs at WePC.com, take the numeric keypad away from a standard keyboard and replace it with a touchscreen/touchpad and that’s what you get with the Eee Keyboard.
The integrated PC (no word on specs, presumably very Eee-like?) allows the keyboard itself to be all you need for a computer, assuming you have a display nearby. The display part of the equation is pretty sexy, the Eee Keyboard has an integrated Ultra Wideband HDMI transmitter - if you’ve got a display with a UWB HDMI receiver, all you’ll need is this keyboard and you’re good to go, no cables required. There’s a standard HDMI port on the keyboard as well. As soon as you say wireless, however, battery life becomes something to discuss, and at present we have no idea what sort of battery life that Eee Keyboard will offer. We're unsure about whether or not an optical drive is part of the keyboard, but it does present some intriguing ideas.
The touch screen can function as either a screen for the integrated PC or as a trackpad for whatever machine you have the Eee Keyboard hooked up to. A large, glass trackpad on a keyboard seems like the ideal way to bring multi-touch to the desktop.
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MamiyaOtaru - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
I hate glossy bodied laptops bad enough, but glossy screened too == auto avoidmathew7 - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
I like the N10Jc very much and I intend(ed) to buy one, but if they bring it in a 12" package, that is a "must buy" for me. So N10 will have to wait.Jynx980 - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
I don't know about you, but when I saw the pics of the origami inspired notebook, first thing I thought was: "You sunk my battleship!"zshift - Thursday, January 8, 2009 - link
wow, that's quite the assortment of new products there. I have to say, I definitely love the laptop with an LCD touch pad, being able to watch videos and such for 12hrs. and the Eee keyboard is amazing, so long as battery life would be ok.All in all, Asus is about to make a crap load more money in the coming years, especially if they can keep the prices down on their products. Also, did anyone else notice their huge focus on "touch" technology? with this and the new BFG phobos desktop, seems like ever since the iPhone came out people are raving about touch technology. w00t for new tech!
Devo2007 - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - link
I see ASUS still hasn't figured out where the right SHIFT key goes on the T91 - that one is a deal-breaker for me sadly.chrnochime - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - link
Being a left-handed person their odd location of right shift key does not bother me at all. I just use the left shift key most of the time anyway.I guess that's one plus for being a lefty, amongst the tons of negatives(e.g., virtually no lefty desk in college lecture halls)
ssj4Gogeta - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - link
I like the concept of that "origami inspired" laptop.Zak - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - link
So... maybe now Asus can afford better web hosting? Or maybe even have a server in USA??? So it would be actually possible to download drivers in some reasonable time. I might consider then buying their products again.Z.
Penti - Sunday, January 11, 2009 - link
You just end up downloading the drivers directly from the manufacturer of each respective device or chip any way. Since they can't offer any support maybe they should just pay the manufacturers to directly support their hardware and link to them instead. That way at least one would get the latest drivers. Most OEMs (or system builders) are extremely bad too, I don't get it why they just don't package and auto-update the drivers properly instead.JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - link
I've had issues with ASUS' web pages in the past, but not recently. For at least a couple years, the pages generally load fast and without issue. I'm pretty sure http://usa.asus.com/index.aspx">http://usa.asus.com/index.aspx is located in the US, although the download pages (http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLa...">http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLa... might still be on a Taiwan server. Anyway, give it a shot and see if it's better that last you checked before making too many assumptions.