Asus VivoBook Hands-On!

Our very own Eliane Fiolet is at the Asus Windows 8 event in New York City–yes, there are two technology events going on today–where Asus has just announced six–count them, six–new lines of Windows 8 PCs. The new lines are the VivoTab, VivoBook, the Transformer Book, the Touch Zenbook, the TAICHI, and the Asus All-in-One. Let’s take a look at the new Asus low-end laptop… with a touchscreen:

The Asus VivoBook is a touch screen notebook, with a fairly attractive industrial design. It has an aluminum brush finished body and an enhanced keyboard with “optimum travel distance,” but we’ll have to try out the keyboard to know how well it types. It’s powered by an Intel Sandy Bridge processor, although there’s an option to upgrade to a Core i3. It should boot and wake from sleep quickly, because it has a hybrid SSD/HD with 320GB of space. The graphics are Intel’s integrated option.  It starts at $499 for the 11-inch model, which is the real attention grabber, with different options and prices for larger screen sizes and more powerful processors.