When I spotted the Eee PC 1215B laptop at the Asus booth this weekend I had no idea that the AMD Zacate-powered machine had a little brother. But the folks at Notebook Italia dug up some info on a related model called the Asus Eee PC 1015B.
The 1015B has a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display and a smaller case and keyboard design. But it has the same 1.6GHz dual core AMD E-350 processor and AMD Radeon HD graphics, which should offer an overall speed boost over a typical Atom-powered netbook and a much better graphics experience (on par with what you would get from a machine with NVIDIA ION graphics).
There’s no word on pricing or availability yet.
Update: It looks like this model may actually have an AMD C-50 Ontario processor rather than the E-350 Zacate chip that had originally been reported.
Are there any dual core ion notebooks with 1280×800 or better resolution – and most importantly no Windows license?
For now Id take AO522 over 1015B because of HD panel on Acer.
But the Acer uses the lower end C-50 Ontario and not the Zacate E-350. So you’ll take a performance hit for that choice.
And I wouldn’t assume that the final official release of the Asus won’t have a HD screen.
I’ve been looking at one of these to replace my AO521 with, and I wonder why these manufacturers can’t make one with the E350 *AND* a HD panel. Tough decision. AO522 should get some more life from the battery than 1015B I suppose? FWIW on the final-version specs for AO522, Amazon’s preorder pages still show HD panel in specs. Amazing deal for the price. I’m very tempted to buy one and swap in a SSD, more RAM, and W7-x64. I was going to with my AO521 until I heard about the Zacate netbooks coming out. I’m of the crowd that wants a decent gaming ‘book no bigger than 10″.
this is probably the best your going to get for the 10′ form factor performance is about on par with the 12′ version of the Ion2. I am waiting on a tablet with this platform I don’t get why when a new processor comes out everyone thinks netbooks but doesn’t even bother to make a tablet out of it.
Well it’ll be the best at the price range. They’re starting to come out with CULV 10″ models but they’ll cost a lot more.
well all I know is that I am going to get the $300 gigabyte tablet until I hear tablet news from either the Asus ep121 sandybridge or a Zacate tablet
Acer’s supposably coming out with a 10″ Zacate tablet with removable keyboard dock thing. (Insert trollface at ‘supposably.’)
You sure? Last I heard they were only coming out with a Ontario tablet and that’s lower spec than the Zacate.
Hey, you’re right. I’m thinking of an older article guessing at Zacate but it looks like it’s going to be Ontario.