One of the first press conferences of CES 2009 has turned into an embarrassment for Taiwanese notebook maker with the failure of their touch screen technology during a live onstage demo.
While the Company appears to know a lot about notebooks the Company it seems to know little about CES press conferences with journalists turned away because the Company had only booked a small room for a major conference and then took up half the space with an oversized stage.
And to top this off journalists found that not only were press kits and images not available but USB sticks handed out at the event were blank.
Despite these hiccups the Taiwanese Company did manage to roll out some interesting notebook technology including a keyboard that was also a full notebook PC.
They also rolled out new touch screen Eee books with swivel screens however they were light on performance data pricing or release dates.
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Among the products announced by Asus is the Eee 131 which they claim is the first netbook with a built-in 512 GB hard drive. At their CES press conference the device was shown running Microsoft’s new Windows 7.
Asus CEO Johnny Shih said that a lot of work still had to be done in the development of touch screen technology for notebooks. He also admitted that Apple had gained a significant advantage in the patenting of their touch screen technology and that a lot of Companies were now trying to work around these patents.
His comments came after an Asus executive twice failed to load music files during an onstage demo. Shih admitted that Asus needs to do more work on multi-touch before coming out with a notebook that features it. Asus did demo multi-touch capabilities, at least conceptually, as well as a “dual-mode PC.”
Later during a Q&A session, Shih was asked whether an Eee PC would eventually run Google’s Android operating system. “It seems like many companies are considering Android,” Shih responded. As for placing it on the Eee, he said, “I’m not sure about that yet.”
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| New Asus digital home display device with PC |
During the press event Shih showed off a digital home controller called the Eee Top, which he described as “a device for every room in the house.” It appears to be designed to connect to home networks, and operate using an “easy navigation system” using gestures rather than touchpad or keyboard.
The device was running an Asus developed interface sitting on top of Windows XP.
Asus also introduced the S121 which they say is technically not a netbook.
The less-than-6cm metallic frame with leather trim houses a 12.1-inch, LED, active-matrix TFT, 1280-by-800-pixel display (presented with edge-to-edge glass) and its roomy 128GB solid-state drive.
More to follow.
