Amazon.com is taking pre-orders of Asus' Eee PC Seashell 1201N

The 1201N is available in black and silver from Amazon.com for $499.99, and it ships mid-January

Asus launched the 1201N last month, and it claimed that its new product shattered 'netbook conventions'. Since that announcement Amazon.com has listed the Asus Eee PC Seashell 1201N-PU17 in black and silver for $499.99 including shipping. The netbook will be released on the 15^th of January 2010, and it's not clear whether the price will change much before then. The 1201N has been the subject of several articles that have followed its journey from China earlier this year, to Europe, where it appeared for Italian pre-order last month.

The netbook was designed by Asus for current netbook users who were looking for more multimedia power from their machines. Asus hopes that the 1201N will impress users with its Intel Atom 330 dual core processor and NVIDIA ION GPU. This combination of components should provide 1080p HD video, DirectX 10 compatibility and run Windows 7 with relative ease. The 1201N offers excellent portability because it has a 12.1” screen and weighs only 1.46kg. It has a full-sized chiclet keyboard, which should allow most users to type comfortably.

Is it too expensive?

In the power-starved world of netbooks, the 1201N does offer some of the best components available, however, its relatively high price means it is within the range of notebook prices – some of which can contain Pentium Dual Core processors and 15.6” screens. It's an expensive netbook and for that reason alone, one would expect it to offer more battery life than the 5 hours Asus claims it can provide.

The fact that powerful dual core processors are just within reach of most buyers with a ~$500 budget, begs the question – why bother with the 1201N? Whilst notebooks within this price range are unlikely to offer much more than 3 hours of battery life, they still offer a whole host of benefits that the 1201N can't provide. Asus have shattered netbook performance conventions with the 1201N, but they have shattered the netbook price convention too, but in the wrong way: it's just too similar to notebook prices. To create truly revolutionary netbooks, manufacturers need to offer the lowest prices and unprecedented battery longevity, whilst managing to offer modest, yet reasonable functionality.

Specifications

Here are the specifications, as detailed on Amazon.com:-