Eee-rific

The Eee itself has been an excellent initiative for people who want small computers but the proliferation of Eee branded products seems to be causing consumer confusion.

I love Asus, I really do. I should start out saying that I am not a fanboy, but ever since the Asus Eee came out, I’ve been deciding whether or not to buy one. Asus have been a staple in quality notebooks for sometime lending themselves to having some of the better battery life laptops have seen. As a result, many a tech-head suggest them alongside established leaders like IBM and Toshiba when people ask “what sort of laptop should I buy?”

The Eee itself has been an excellent initiative for people, and short of a deal-breaker right Shift key which only bothers lefties like myself, they can be seen as some of the better Netbooks around.

But Asus now have a problem. After setting themselves as the benchmark Netbook manufacturer with no less than 8 configurations with a rumoured few more already on their way out the factory doors, Asus are having too much fun with the “Eee” name.

Sure, the “Eee” is a brand that can be milked for all its worth, but seriously, how much milking is enough?

Let’s see what’s likely to be in the Eee pipeline, shall we?

Asus EeePC
Ah yes, the original. The one and only… that now comes in so many configurations that you have to work in technology to have a clue what they all mean. Seriously, don’t bother asking the people at Harvey Norman what the difference between the Eee 1000H, 1000HD, 901, and 904HD are: you’ll get dumbfounded looks and a comment that they run an operating system of some sort and will be great for you or your family.

While Asus have obviously tried to make it easy with the model naming scheme – the first digit giving the size of the screen followed by model number (700 is “7” inch screen from the “00” original model as far as I can work out) – there are still too many configurations and not enough explanation. Someone is surely going to need to come out of the woodwork and tell people why there are models running a Celeron, Penitum M, and an Atom. Hell, even I’m getting confused.

Asus Eee DT
The Eee is going to become stationar-eee. Ok, so that joke sucked. It’s 9.30 in the morning and my humour is quite what it should be at the moment.

I’m not sure Asus’ is either, to be honest. The Eee desktop looks to be a low-end sub-desktop… if that makes any sense. Acer have done similar models in the past and even Asus have done them.

The Eee DT will look a little bit like another electronic gadget with a similar sounding name, have an 80GB hard drive and probably a DVI out for your monitor (which is nice now that HDMI has made DVI redundant and all). Running off of Intel’s Atom processor, it should be a decent little desktop provided it turns out to be cheaper than the 901 and 1000 series of Eee notebooks.

Asus Eee HDTV
Laptops? Fine.
Desktops? Fine.
TV’s? Now we’re beginning to stretch it.

What will it be? An HDTV likely running a similar panel to what’s already found in the Sony / Samsung models and might offer some form of media center built in.

Oh, and it’ll come with that Asus Eee logo. Shiny and stuff.

Asus Eee external hard drive, optical drive, 3G card
Oh come on… this is just insane.

Really, I do get that everyone needs matching accessories to go with their Barbie fun house, but more Eee-stuff? Do I get a TEee-shirt too? Crikey.

On the one hand, it makes sense: you buy an Eee and you need the Eee optical drive to go with it, but the 3G card? Why not just – I don’t know, this might sound a bit logical here – install the required hardware on the Eee in the first place. You know, make the Eee Netbooks really something that can access the net on the go.

Asus Eeehuahua
Ok, so I made this one up.

But seriously, how much fun would an Eeehuahua be? It would be lighter than the already tiny Chihuahua therefore making the current model obsolete and you could run windows on it and make it a building buddy. Bob the Builder wouldn’t even have to hire any more cheap labour and could get to running equipment and goods of the Eeehuahua’s back in no time.

And as seen here it would really fit in the palm of your hand and be perfect for families everywhere!

Seriously, while I understand the Asus have kind of picked up onto what might be labeled as a “roll”, this whole naming of everything as Eee-connected might hurt the brand more than anything.

I like the Eee name as much as the next guy, but with the leaked presentation today citing the eventuality of 23 Eee computers, I’m surprised Asus haven’t picked up on the problem that the dilution of the Eee might be the very thing to cause it to lose its identit-eee.

Written by Leeeigh D. Stark