Asus Eee PC Cloned with new Chipset

A new Eee PC clone emerges in China

A Shanzhai PC manufacturer has unveiled a netbook which looks very similar to Asus’ EeePC 1002HA. Both are fairly thin, light and have decent keyboards to go with their 10” displays. Both have three USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet, headphone, microphone, and VGA as I/O ports you will find in any regular netbook. The difference is that Asus model uses an Intel Atom processor and the 945 IGP chipset whereas, the shanzhai clone comes with VIA’s latest CPU – the Nano, along with their latest chipset, the VX855. The big advantage here is provided by VIA’s new VX855 chipset, which should enable HD playback capability.

The VX855 should offer full hardware acceleration of the widest variety of leading video standards including H.264, MPEG-2/4, DivX and WMV9, allowing smooth playback of high bit-rate 1080p HD video - as claimed by VIA. This means that while the Atom CPU in Asus device struggles to play even 720p video, the VIA–based product manages both 720p and 1080p easily, utilizing only 20-30% of the CPU load. As if that is not enough, there’s also support for a card reader.

We can expect a price point in the $250-300 range. Well, Via has been very quick in recent times to emerge as a formidable replacement for the pricey Intel processors in the Chinese market, and it remains to be seen what Via will do when exposed to the Global market.