This divestiture has nothing to do with Asus wanting to outsource its manufacturing and everything to do with keeping Dell, HP, etc as customers. Asus has been supplying these customers with laptops built in factories owned by Asus. When Asus entereed the branded laptop market in direct competition with its largest customers, those customers were none too happy.

Asus has divested itself of its manufacturing in order to provide what looks like a "clean room" for its customers. Asus laptops and Dell laptops will still be rolling off the same assembly line, but at least now that line is no longer owned (and scheduled, etc) by one of Dell's competitors.

Dell, HP, and other customers expected this move, are happy to see it, and almost certainly encouraged it at a very high level in the supplier/customer relationship.

Pegatron and Unihan... think they're looking for a Transformers tie-in?

At least Unihan could be read as a bilingual "all china" but "pegatron"? Ugh, sounds like a cheesy console gaming accessory from the 80s.

(I am looking forward to the incongruity of sleek Macbooks rolling off "Pegatron" assembly lines, however).

Great, once Asus completes the spin-off, it will no longer be in control of the factories like it is now.

This would be great for the shareholders, as it will be able to purchase from other OEMs instead of having to bear high manufacturing costs, higher profits, same great brand name.

Sucks for consumers, somehow, amongst all Taiwanese OEMs Asus has managed to build a reputation for quality, after the spin-off we'd be buying an Asus and getting someone else's product.

Spinning off divisions and giving up production, is great for the balance sheet, as is going retail. However it rarely works well for tech consumers, AMD and ASUS should take a look at formerly great tech companies like Palm (spin-offs), 3Dfx (Going Retail) and Transmeta (No manufacturing capability) and learn from their lessons.

as long as this doesn't derail that Eee PC - i would totally install WinXP on one of those and use it for travel.