Sometimes we see devices at the CES that never get launched. Luckily, this isn’t one of those times. That ASUS Eee PC with the integrated optical drive we eye-spied in January is about to arrive in mid-April, says DigiTimes. It’s the same 1004DN we glimpsed during our ASUS booth tour and that integrated optical drive looks mighty slim.
You’re sure to pay a premium for the pleasure of a SuperMulti DVD, which should pair nicely with the new GN40 chipset and Intel Atom N280. How much is the million-dollar question. DigiTimes has the suggested retail pegged at 18,000 to 20,000 NT$ which works out to $531 to $590U.S. Of course, pricing in various countries usually isn’t a straight conversion and I’d be willing to bet that we’ll see this unit around $450 or so with the drive. I’m happy with my external USB drive for the oh-so-rare times I need it, but I can see the desire to have one of these if you want to watch DVD movies without ripping them to a hard drive. Yes, yes, I know: and for software installs too. That’s of limited value to me these days and becoming less and less of a reason to have an optical drive. I’m still living in a browser for the majority of my tasks and/or I can install apps by downloading them when needed. I’m probably in the minority here.
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