Asus sent souped-up batteries to Eee 9" reviewers
Early adopters of Asus 9" Eee PC in Hong Kong are in a righteous fury over what appears to be a flat-out campaign of dishonesty and misinformation on the part of Asus in regards to the Eee's battery life. Early reviews cited a 2.5 hour battery life for the Eee, but Asus has admitted that it "mistakenly" sent reviewers a 4-cell, 5800mAh battery with their Eees instead of the battery that consumers will actually get: a significantly weaker 4400mAh 4-cell with a paltry 1.5 hour battery life.
Boo, Asus. That's just bad baseball. The 2.5 hour battery life was always disappointing, even before it turned out that you lied to reviewers even to get that. But 1.5 hours? On a brand new battery? How do you even release a product like that? Especially for five hundred and forty nine dollars?
Asus is now "considering" upgrading early adopters' batteries for free. Just do it, Asus. You're rapidly losing fans here. The cheap sub-notebook market is getting very crowded very quickly, yet you just seem intent on forcing itself out of the market it created. Lying to reviewers? Cheating customers who read those reviews? There's going to be enough contenders in the space within the coming months that unless you get your act together and start building superior units, there's going to be no reason to buy an Eee anymore. If, in fact, there's any reason to buy one now.
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I'm surprised no-one else has commented on this...
At first reading, I thought it said that they were going to offer battery replacements to all early eee pc adopters, on closer reading, it's just Hong Kong buyers of the 900 on the first day. That's me stuck with a duff battery then! (Bought two of the eee's first incarnation.)
Just do it ffs. The cost compared to this negative story is miniscule against the massive good will they have at the moment.
I'm certainly going to be waiting for the atom...