Community Matters

The rumors just don’t stop. This time it is DigiTimes that claims to have the details, talking about 8, 9, and 10 inch versions of the eeePC, the 9-inch one even with a touch display. And this just after another story that claims to have seen an 8.9 inch model at CES.

I wonder about some reports like this. 8 inch wouldn’t really be a big boost to what is there today – and I wasn’t able to find any 8 inch LCDs with larger resolution than what the current 7 inch model already has. The same goes for the 8.9 inch version that allegedly was spotted at CES – still just 800×480. But maybe they’ll really just bump the physical size of the display in their entry level product? Not really what I’m looking for, but who knows; might make sense from a marketing point of view.

As I pointed out in an earlier post on the 10 inch eeePC rumors, the problem with a screen of that size is that it wouldn’t fit in the existing form factor – and I doubt that Asus is willing to make the overall computer any bigger.

And a touch screen? For one thing, given the target street price adding $15 to the bill of material of the eeePC is a huge deal. But even worse, the touch screen support in the underlying OS is pretty mediocre. There is no good full screen handwriting input method available. Most software would have to be modified to make this work – not a task I think Asus is willing to tackle. And a half-hearted implementation (just as mouse replacement maybe?) would look really lame, given what the iPhone shows you can do with touch screen input.

So my guess is still that we’ll see a conventional 9.3 inch or 9.4 inch screen, first.