Our goal is to provide products that are better than Apple's.

I actually find this quote refreshing. It's rare that any company admits shortcomings of their products, and it's even rarer that a company points to another company who is doing things better, who can serve as a model.

Of course, Asus probably sees Apple as less of a competitor than Acer, the king of netbooks. More on that little rivalry over at the NYT. [NYT via Engadget]

The keyboard houses an entire Atom chipset inside its body which is separate from the touchpanel. But the touchpanel also uses the XP power to run Skype and MSN and serve as a media remote, among other things. Engadget Chinese said it worked pretty well, and if the video is any indication, the 5-inch, 800x480 screen uses a capacitive panel. The keyboard is rumored to launch sometime in June, in either wired or wireless-UWB models, but little is known beyond that. [Engadget]

Design
For $429, it's an enjoyable little machine. My demo unit was piano black with the faintest flecks of blue in sunlight. And while that glossy finish will obviously get a bit smudgy, small touches like a beveled-keyed keyboard, tapered edges and integrated lithium polymer battery are reminiscent of computers of another class (yeah, I'm talking about the MacBook Air, pictured below).
Indeed, the Seashell is just 2.4lbs and measures but an inch at its thickest point—a quarter of an inch thicker than the Air. It's probably a bit more functionally thin than OMG thin, but I'm not complaining. The Seashell makes most netbooks of yore look like hardback books with screens.

The keyboard is extremely satisfying to use. It's satisfyingly clicky and each key is easy to find with your fingers. A convenient button controls Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combinations to reserve power, while another button turns off the trackpad when not in use.
As for that trackpad...it's the only obvious design error in the system. While most trackpads are ever so recessed from a laptop's body, the Seashell's doesn't dip at all. Instead, your finger glides over a series of dimples. As you might expect, the sensation is odd at first. But while you'll quickly adjust to feeling of the braille-like design, your fingers will constantly find friction from the netbook's glossy, sticky finish.

The Seashell's sides stay sleek thanks tethered rubber stoppers like you find in some cellphones. They hide two USB ports alone with one each of mic, headphone, mini VGA and Ethernet ports. Notably, Asus stuck one of each of those USBs on each side of the computer, which should prevent the dreaded "there's no room for my second USB device because my first USB device is in the way" conundrum.
The 10-inch (1,024×600) glossy screen? It could be brighter (right now, the brightest setting is just adequate if you're anywhere near a window), but it's colorful and features an impressive angle of viewing. The power adapter? Remarkably small. The annoying mini VGA to VGA cable you'll need to connect to an external monitor? Cleverly hidden within the case's underside.

Like I said, it's a very well-designed classic netbook. If only it came in aluminum, we'd all be freaking the @&#;% out right now.

Performance
The Seashell looks pretty, but internally, it's the same as pretty much every other netbook. Luckily, the computer is running XP, so the Atom N280 processor (without the accompanying, new GN40 video chipset), 1GB of RAM (upgradeable to 2GB), 160GB hard drive, SDHC port, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.1 will offer a reasonably quick and robust experience for browsing the web and light tasks. But as with any computer in this class, you should expect to lose some framerates during video playback (especially in HD).

But the real reason you should be looking at this performance section is for battery life. Asus promises that their integrated lithium polymer battery lasts 6 hours (keep in mind, this battery is unswappable, though future versions of the Seashell have already been announced that will feature swappable batteries). What does the Seashell really get?

3 Hours, 27 Minutes

That figure was generated through nonstop MPEG4 playback, with the screen at its brightest setting (which I consider the only day adequate setting),Wi-Fi on and Bluetooth off. As I've said before on many occasions, real battery life tends to be about half of claimed battery life across all laptops. Here we see that mantra hold true yet again. Considering that the AC adapter is pretty tiny (not some ludicrous brick that will add a lot of weight to your bag), three and a half hours seems pretty workable, even without a replaceable battery.

Buyability
If you have any Atom netbook, the Seashell's sleeker new form, while attractive, probably isn't so unbelievably beautiful that it's worth forking over the cash for an upgrade. If you're in the market for a new netbook, keep in mind that the Seashell's current $429 price is about $60-$129 more than you could pay for slightly chunkier but similar performing competitors.

Still, I will say, the Seashell will be a very tempting purchase when the price drops a bit in the coming months (which it's sure to, given the ever evolving netbook market and the fact that Asus' Seashell sequels have already been announced). I mean, the thing is just 2.4lbs! Remember back when netbooks were just 2.4lbs? And it's tiny! Remember back when netbooks were tiny?

Asus' Seashell is a quite literal return to form for the netbook industry: Small, light and reasonably inexpensive, the Seashell is easily the most enticing netbook Asus has released since the original Eee.

Impressively slim and light

Great keyboard

Reasonable real world runtime

Screen is just bright enough, but will be too dim for some

Trackpad feels unnecessarily funky

I mean, it's a mini convertible touchscreen laptop with GPS and a TV tuner. It's also under an inch thick and weighs two pounds. That's why I'm glad to see that Asus has finally scheduled it for releases (be it in the UK only) this June for £449. We'll see what the localized price turns out to be, because $670 is a little steep for anything packing an Atom processor. [Electricpig]

One name came up again and again. It was the Flip Video, the little camera that changed the industry. While tech giants like Sony, Canon and Nikon were duking it out in the typical, spec-warring dSLR space, a relatively small company named Pure Digital Technologies developed a real piece of crap camcorder called the Pure Digital Point and Shoot. The video quality was absolutely atrocious for 2006. The name was obviously equally as bad.

But as technology improves, we're reaching the era of "good enough."

The Pure Digital Point and Shoot (later renamed the Flip Video/Mino) was pocketable, cheap ($180) and served an important function: It was the perfect YouTube camera. And that, in itself, was enough.

Because of Pure Digital's singular vision and perfect timing, not only did the camcorder quickly steal 13% of the camcorder market causing bigger companies start duplicating the Flip (with only moderate success), but Pure Digital was itself bought out by mega corp Cisco.

However, the Flip Video is not alone in under-performing game changers. You may remember way back to 2007 when a company we all kind of knew named Asus had something planned called the Eee PC.

Its screen was but 7-inches, and its storage was dwarfed by most iPods. But once again, the Eee was small, cheap ($245-$400) and served an important function: It was the near-perfect knock around computer. And that, in itself, was enough to drive the entire computer industry mad overnight.

I'm by no way implying that the technological arms race is over, that companies no longer care about building the fastest machines with the biggest storage and most ridiculous sticker prices. But a number of technologies are finding a new equilibrium of price and performance in the industry by knowing just where consumers are willing to settle.

These are devices that fulfill a functional niche, sure, but do so with the minimum amount of effort possible—keeping a unit price and bulkiness to a minimum. The breakthrough "good enough" product features the price and specs of a third tier product, the build quality of a second tier product and the design aesthetic of a first tier product. The hardware is fully capable, but it's just sort of...cheap...for lack of a better term.

And yes, like Wired, we have to marvel at how magnificent gadgets of yesterday—the ability to record something in HD (HD!)—became just a "good enough" gadget.

Of course, now we must wonder, what is the next Flip or Eee? What's the next technology that can have its bar set ever so lower but actually excite the public with a new, utilitarian form factor in the process?

If you know the answer to that question, you stand to make a good deal of money.

According to ARN, Asus is claiming that worldwide financial downturn and an increase on parts prices will dictate their price hike. But at least one of those points is a little tough to swallow. Samsung has been having a tough time lately because they provide various electronic components to a multitude of companies—and the prices on these components (like LCDs) has gone down, not up.

Obviously, Asus is free to price their goods as they'd like. But within the competitive market of netbooks especially, their customer base is more interested in saving a buck than picking up something with the Asus brand name. [ARN]

UPDATE: According to Wired, Asus USA has denied knowledge of such a plan. That denial doesn't completely disprove the price increase, however, since most of the company's decisions are made overseas.

UPDATE 2: Asus USA has since contacted us explaining the ARN article to be "pure speculation, nothing more." They added, "There has been no such announcement from ASUS about price hikes, period. Also, this article is from Australia so it has no bearing on the US market at all."

A member who claims to have “very little knowledge on computer things” managed to take about his 900HA and turn it into a touchscreen notebook. All you need is a screwdriver, some tape, a plastic card, a solderless touchscreen kit and some extra wires.

Pretty neat, if it works! A 900Ha is only $320-ish on Amazon and this method doesn't seem to add more than another $100 to the cost. Maybe if Asus hasn't released the T91 in the next month, it'll be time for me to get my screwdriver out. [Eee User Forum - Thanks Shoangore!]

The Eee 1000HE features 10-inch screen, 160GB hard drive, 10GB online storage, (1GB RAM?) and an Atom N280 processor—similar to the 1.6GHz we've been seeing but now taking a front side bus boost to 667MHz from the 553MHz of the N270. Also, a new high capacity battery promises 9.5 hours of battery life, assuming the screen is at 40% brightness, Wi-Fi off, Bluetooth off and camera disabled. I guess 9.5 hours is possible, but given my other experiences with netbooks, in real world application we'll see that number drop dramatically.

You can preorder the $400 1000HE through the Eee Facebook group now (annoying), or dig around for it at other retailers. You save $25 through all pre-orders. [Asus Promo and Facebook]

As for the battery bargain, it's still available to those who can wield it over at DealExtreme.[Scott'Soapbox via Lilliputing and DealExtreme]

It's 2.2 lbs., extremely light and thin, and the chrome finish on the trackpad area is much better looking than the generic plastic of similar models. The 10.2-inch matte screen is compact without straining your eyes, and the keyboard feels bigger than the original Eee's (that or my fingers have gotten smaller to accommodate this segment of the PC industry). The only thing painfully tacky in the S101 is a Swarovski crystal accent on the hinge, but it isn't very obvious until you glance at it.

At $700, it's not exactly cheap for an Atom-powered laptop running Windows XP off of a 16GB SSD, and that's the only configuration you can order up. Still, in addition to its good looks, it's got more inputs than a new MacBook: 3 USBs, a 4-in-1 card reader and VGA video out. It'll arrive in copper brown and graphite; too bad that the champagne paint job, in the Continental's opinion the best suited to accompany the Swarovski accents, won't make it to the US. [Asus]

The $850 fully loaded N10J-B1 will pack an Nvidia GeForce Go 9300M GS 256MB graphics card. That's pretty good for this 3.5lb computer. (We're not sure what's coming in unspecified $750 and $650 configurations.) Users on the go will be able to turn off said discrete graphics to conserve battery life. According to Asus, it make the difference between about 6.5 hours and 4.7 hours of runtime—we're a little skeptical of those big numbers—and it should give us a tiny computer that doesn't act so much like a tiny computer anymore. [BGR]

Netbooks are torture.

The poor fool. Like the midlife crisis guy sold a car too small for his rump and too young for his hairline, Asus or MSI or someone had convinced this slovenly coffee drinker that hunchbacks were in this year.

And this scene—one I've witnessed on more than one occasion—confirmed my suspicions. The small laptop was a failure, a marketing ploy manufacturers were not incapable of implementing before, but simply too kind to do so.

For one, these computers aren’t cheap. Sure, the price may start at $350 or $400, but you’ll need to upgrade to 2GB of RAM if you'd like to run XP in the fashion you’ve become accustomed to. And you may want to buy the larger battery too (every manufacturer lies about their mini laptop’s battery life to conspiracy levels worthy of their own Oliver Stone tribute).

Now, with that snazzy $500 to $600 machine, let’s do some browsing! Surely, this will be way better than on my phone! Unfortunately, such is not the case. While mini-notebooks have bigger screens than smartphones do, smartphone browsers and news applications are often designed around their limitations. Yet architects of XP and Firefox simply never took 5" to 8.9" tiny screens into account. If one's choice is tiny text on a premium OLED phone screen or a bottom-dollar LCD, there’s no comparison. I’d rather read the headlines through the New York Times app on my iPhone than the browser on my Eee any day.

Oh, and then there's the typing situation. Don't even get me started.

The end result of using any mini-notebook is a complete loss of comfort coupled with the guilt of not enjoying the experience more. Plus, while you might not be bringing your full-sized laptop to the coffee shop, you’ll still need your briefcase to lug a mini-notebook, no matter how small.

Netbooks are like feral cats. They look cute at first, but put one in your lap for a bit and you’ll learn real quickly why you stayed away in the first place.

Netbooks are wonderful.

When the Asus Eee PC arrived, it subverted every laptop tradition that had come before it. It was the first cheap drool-worthy laptop (not counting the judgmental hippie Kumbaya circles of the OLPC), and its mentality was different, too. Not there to replace your PC, but not there for the business traveler either, the Eee was simply a fun machine, a computer just made for dudes who like computers. Seriously, how many laptop ads have you seen that feature a model relaxing on the beach? There's a reason for that.

And maybe the most innovative paradigm shift—oh, I went there—was that this amazing laptop wasn’t even built out of laptop parts! There was a freaking digital camera memory stick in the thing in place of a real hard drive. Had we been lied to? Could digital cameras double as computers for all this time??

You see, my MacBook Pro, that’s for work. My phone, that’s for outside. My mini note? Perfect, it won’t even distract me from the television.

Take the iPhone. It's great, but it’s streamlined for productivity. It’s so good at what it does, filtering news headlines from air and emails from inboxes, playing music on command and calling web numbers with just a tap, that I’m trapped in productivity.

Sometimes I don’t know where I want to go online, just that I want to go online. And it’s this digital improvisation that begs for a mouse, a keyboard and speakers to play any stupid songs off any stupid web advertisements. I want the full effect, only smaller.

Just as an HDTV can bring a movie theater home, so too can one of these put a full computer back in your actual lap. Have you ever Skyped on a mini-notebook? Yeah, it’s like one of those telephone conversations from the future as told by an '80s sci-fi movie. It’s fantastic.

For those who crave more power, don’t worry, as processors shrink this platform will become synonymous with the laptop. And for those who crave more comfort, get over it. You’ll learn to type on a new keyboard or stay away from the second helpings.

I’m just saying, there’s a reason James Bond carries a Walther PPK.

If you're willing to stretch your browser and translators to the ends of the Earth, you might be interested in something like the Sungjut TangoX, a mini-notebook with a touchscreen, modular Skype phone and DVI out. Or maybe you'd prefer the Raon Digital Everun Notebook, which is only 1.6lbs and packs an AMD Turion dual core processor instead of an Atom or Via.

Either way, it's a convenient chart to keep your head straight. Hit the link to check it out in full. [Liliputing]