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When do you realize someone is going for the fences? When you see them do something completely illogical. That’s exactly what can be said about Asus’ Eee PC 1004DN. Asus has some of the best netbooks on the market, but it’s latest “premium” netbook is anything but a netbook. Eee PC 1004DN comes with a DVD drive and weighs about 4 pounds, and like those shiny HP laptops it comes with a fingerprint reader.

It is great that Asus is trying to bring DVD to its netbooks, but I am not sure this is the way to do it. A netbook is a super portable device that is designed to be simple, yet powerful. The goal is to create and consume data on the Internet. While there will be demand for 1004DN, DVD is the past and adding it to netbooks is a move in the wrong direction. You can always use the name “netbook” to sell more laptops but stop pretending that you are reaching out to the netbook fans. Thankfully, Asus still has some of the best netbooks on the market. But let’s hope their experiments stays just that..