British firm launches £169 laptop

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 9 Oct 2007 at 16:08

British education supplier, RM, is bringing the Asus Eee PC to the UK for £169.

The laptop, which was launched by Asus earlier in the year, has been rebranded as the RM Asus Minibook, but otherwise maintains all the features of the original, including a 7in display, a choice of either 256MB or 512MB of memory, 2GB or 4GB of solid-state storage and a 900MHz Intel Celeron M processor. It will also run on the same Linux platform.

The unit has an integrated webcam and 802.11g Wi-Fi, along with a 10/100Mbps Ethernet port and dial-up modem. RM is also offering an optional 3G datacard for the laptop, though at the time of going to the press it did not have any information on cost.

Rounding out the impressive little bundle is an SD card reader, three USB 2.0 ports and a battery which RM says will last for around 2.5 hours.

RM is staying true to its education roots and targeting the machine at schools and students, however, there will be two models to choose from, the £169 version featuring 256MB of RAM and a 2GB flash-based disk, rising to just £199 for the 512MB and 4GB drive model.

The minibook will be available from 1 November from RM's website.

Non-education customer's will have to pay 17.5% VAT on top of the purchase price.