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Everybody's jumping on the Eee PC bandwagon

A-Data, a Taiwanese company, is introducing two Eee-PC-branded products: a USB flash drive and an SD memory card.

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Dan Ackerman Editorial Director / Computers and Gaming
Dan Ackerman leads CNET's coverage of computers and gaming hardware. A New York native and former radio DJ, he's also a regular TV talking head and the author of "The Tetris Effect" (Hachette/PublicAffairs), a non-fiction gaming and business history book that has earned rave reviews from the New York Times, Fortune, LA Review of Books, and many other publications. "Upends the standard Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs/Mark Zuckerberg technology-creation myth... the story shines." -- The New York Times
Expertise I've been testing and reviewing computer and gaming hardware for over 20 years, covering every console launch since the Dreamcast and every MacBook...ever. Credentials
  • Author of the award-winning, NY Times-reviewed nonfiction book The Tetris Effect; Longtime consumer technology expert for CBS Mornings
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Dan Ackerman
A-Data

We like the Asus Eee PC as much as anyone else, but does this $499 mini-notebook really need its own line of third-party branded accessories?

A-Data, a Taiwanese company that calls itself "The Global Leading Brand of Memory Products," is introducing two Eee-PC-branded accessories, a USB flash drive and an SD memory card.

A-Data says, "One of the limitations of Asus's Eee PC is the limited storage," and while the 8GB SD card is already double the capacity of the Eee PC's standard built-in 4GB SSD hard drive (other options are available), you could really use any brand of card in the system's SD card slot.

The same could be said of the 8GB USB memory stick, although the Eee-PC-branded version does include a white leather strap, if that's your kind of thing.

A-Data

No word on U.S. pricing or availability yet--but everyone we know treats USB keys and SD cards as commodity products, so we don't expect a big market for up-sell versions. Although the Eee PC has become such a cult hit, so we can't rule it out.

We'll give the final word to one of our Asus contacts, who wearily told us recently that he was going to get "Eee PC" tattooed on his forehead, because that's all anyone wants to talk to him about lately.