The Asus Eee PC 1201PN is the first of several 12 inch laptops from Asus that will succeed the company’s Eee PC 1201N. And it looks like you should be able to pick one up for about $499. ExcaliberPC is now taking pre-orders for the Eee PC 1201PN, with an estimated ship date of June 11.
The Eee PC 1201N was the first notebook from Asus to feature NVIDIA ION graphics. it also happened to have a dual core Intel Atom 330 CPU. The Eee PC 1201PN sticks with a more conventional single core Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz CPU, but swaps out first generation ION graphics for a more powerful second generation ION chip.
The laptop has 2G of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, HDMI output, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, and Windows 7 Home Premium. It has a 6 cell, 47Whr battery and should be more than capable of playing 1080p HD video as well as some 3D video games.
What’s not entirely clear at the moment is whether the laptop will feature NVIDIA Optimus technology for automatically shifting between integrated and dedicated graphics depending on what you’re doing with your PC. We’d heard that this model would ship without that feature enabled, but I’ve heard some inklings that a demo unit on display at Computex last week had Optimus capabilities.
via Netbooked
Sweet, we’re getting closer to the day someone throws one of these onto a bench and finds out how good it really is… Personally I’m skeptical that it’s in fact better than the 1201N that it replaces. I know from comment debates that I’m not alone, and opposed in this view. Can’t wait to finally find out one way or the other.