Aspects of the mouth-watering Eee Keyboard have been mysterious since we first heard about it at the beginning of this year. Now that the FCC has had a go at the device and has released its documents, we have sweet description in full. “Several of the documents hidden from our anxious eyes during the FCC filing have now gone public. Not only can you visually inspect its innards, the feds have also laid bare the full spec sheet for the ASUS Eee Keyboard model EK1542. Beneath the 5-inch, 800 x 480 pixel touch panel (with stylus) we’ll be getting Windows XP Home running on an Intel Atom N270, 945GSE / ICH7-M chipset with Broadcom AV-VD905 video decoder, 1GB of DDR2 memory, either 16GB or 32GB of flash storage, 4-hour battery, Bluetooth, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, gigabit Ethernet, HDMI and VGA outputs, integrated stereo speakers and mic, 3x USB, headphone and mic jacks, and external WiFi / UWB antenna. The Eee Keyboard’s on-board Ultra-Wideband (UWB) throws 720p content to your TV within a 5-meter range (10-meters for non-video transmissions) via a UWB receiver packing 2x USB ports, another mini-USB port, audio out, and HDMI. You can even connect to two external monitors at the same time using UWB and either VGA or HDMI cable. Now all we need is a final date and price… ASUS?”
I know they get a few cent discount, but they should just grow some balls and resist putting those stupid hard to remove ugly stickers on every piece of hardware.
This is one thing Apple gets right. They would never ever do something like that.
That is assuming that Apple sold OS X to OEM’s
They have stuck huge glowing Apple logos that you cannot remove from their systems. What are you smoking?
You also have asus/hp/acer/whatever branding on other computers, but you also get a share of ugly stickers.
A Mac computer is a Mac computer, hence the logo, but you don’t get OSX/Intel/nvidia stickers.
You still can’t use one of their products without getting adverts for the others: the iPod’s connected to the iTunes app, the iTunes connected to the iTunes store, now hear the word of the Jobs.
What Apple is good at is, first and foremost, advertising. They even make sure you enjoy it.
I cannot wait to show up at a meeting and pull one of these out of my laptop bag.
Edited 2009-10-12 20:32 UTC
Atom n270? Seriously? Intel 945 chipset again, seriously? And can we kill off XP already? It’s time for it to go. After seeing these specs I don’t care how stylish or cool it is, the hardware and os are just bad comparedto what’s available for use. Don’t get pulled in by the looks, this thing has slightly worse hardware than some netbooks.
Pretty much identical to most netbooks actually… except for the added “broadcom video” thing (which I’m guessing is some proprietary decoder chip that only has Windows drivers)… and the UWB thing, which also probably only works on Windows
It’s kind of neat otherwise, but definitely falls short of my expectations. I have a reasonably cheap machine with 1TB of storage attached to my TV with a wireless keyboard/touchpad already… and I have my reasonably cheap AA1 netbook for traveling… so I have pretty much no interest in this device at this point.
I predict a flop.
It’s a shame, as I really like the computer-in-a-keyboard form factor and hoped it would come back at least with a bang rather than a whimper.
it would have been cooler if it were this http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus-tactus/
The only way to do that is using custom ratio OLED capacitive screen, something that does not even exist (yet). The resolution would also be impossible to achieve using an 945g or any graphic card actually.
I like the keyboard form factor. I can imagine a few basic uses around the home. It would be cool to see one with a micro projector for presentations.
It would also be VERY nice if it could support a linux distro like moblin or a lite version of ubuntu.
We will see I guess
have mandated open specs for all the hardware. This is competitive and users could have drivers for xBSD, Linux Solaris and so on. Taking it apart is nothing very useful.
I’ve been thinking of buying a small LCD to see what music is playing on my multi media box (which I’d rather run as a dedicated server for other stuff instead) without turning on the TV, and adding a touch screen to that and no need for an extra keyboard is great. As long as it can play 720p I don’t need any more powah.
Edited 2009-10-13 07:58 UTC
Looks pretty cool if the price is right, but its too bad they are going the Apple route with the design of the keys. My company just bought a bunch of new iMacs and they all came with tiny USB keyboards which I am assuming is the same used in the MacBook. After 5 minutes of typing I gave up and broke out an old full size quicksilver keyboard.
At least they have the right shift key on the left side of the arrow keys. The right-side layout of my 1000HA keyboard leaves a lot to be desired.
Oh man… that looks horrible.
And I thought my AA1 keyboard was goofy