Asus squeezes a PC into a keyboard

Posted on 9 Jan 2009 at 10:10

There was a time when all home PCs were built into a keyboard and attached to a TV set, and Asus has returned to those roosts with its latest Eee.

Building on the success of its pioneering netbooks, the Eee runs on an Intel Atom processor, 1GB RAM and an unspecified solid state drive.

Despite the specification, the Eee Keyboard does have a couple of tricks up its sleeve, beyond the unusual form factor. Built into the keyboard is a wireless HDMI unit, which means that once you plug in a small wireless receiver at the back of your television or monitor, you can output to the display without plugging in any cables.

The other neat feature of the Eee Keyboard is the 5in touchscreen display that sits to the right of the keys. The touchscreen is capable of displaying the full Windows XP desktop that ships with the unit, or a simple set of media hotkeys.

But there are drawbacks. In order to forgo space there’s no optical drive, though Asus plans to release Eee keyboard peripherals to deal with this. The company is also struggling to overcome a poor battery life, which at the moment stands at around an hour. However, it expects have increased the battery life should be up to three hours by the time the computer ships around September.

Author: Stuart Turton in Las Vegas

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