Touch (M)Eee

While stumbling through the blogosphere, I found an interesting piece of news. It turns out that Asus is planning on releasing a new model of their small Linux based Eee PCs. While that would generally not get my excited, because they are just too small for me, there will be some really cool additions: touch screen and built-in GPS. Now, if they also allow the screen to be rotated somehow I think that this little laptop would become a pretty competitive to all mobile devices, including laptops and PDAs, like N810.That is because: it will be small, have a decent keyboard, usable with only a few fingers, have GPS for in-car navigation, and lot of internal space. Speaking of memory space, the Eee PC will also contain 1GB of RAM and 8-12 GB solid state drive.

The only problem that I could see has to do with the battery life. The Eee PC has a pretty decent CPU for such a small system (900 Hz), which already takes up a lot of juice that results in a 2.5h battery life. And now they want to add even more devices like a GPS unit and a touch screen to drain it even faster. Unless they also manage to upgrade to battery to at least 8-cells, the Eee PC might not be a good choice for a portable device.