In my daily trawl of the Austrian/German price comparison site, Geihzals.at (not de!) the other day, I saw that one retailer was offering the R2H for 599 Euros. That offer is gone now but others retailers have dropped the price well below the 800 Euros mark which indicates some re-pricing by the distributor. Asus have dropped the R2H completely from their global website so it looks like we won’t see much more of the R2H (watch out for bargains on Woot!) The reason is that the R2E is coming. ASUS are launching a brand new shiny 2nd-gen UMPC.
Or are they? Lets take a close look at this because either a cheeky marketing manager somewhere is trying to pull the wool over our eyes with a ‘new’ specification or the specifications themselves are wrong.
In Italy, where the R2E launched back in Oct, you can find the R2E-BH030E model, with HSDPA, for 1100 Euro. It’s looking like a pretty good deal. Possibly the cheapest HSDPA-capable PC in the world. But if we look at the German specs, the R2E-BH035E is being sold for a similar price without HSDPA. What! You’re getting a slower processor, a slower operating system only a small bump in memory, maybe some battery life improvements, a rumoured improvement on the GPS and an extra, high capacity battery. Is that really worth a price bump of 50% from 800 to 1200 Euros? I think not. Something is wrong here and if its a marketing play, i’ll do my best to highlight it because hiking-up the price from 800 to 1200 Euros for no good reason is just not cricket.
Check back for more info as I’ve got queries out with my contacts. In the meantime, take a look at the specs and keep fingers crossed for better battery life, LED backlighting, improved GPS and HSDPA!
