Woot.com is selling new 8.9-inch Eee netbooks for $150, today only. That’s a pretty good price on a non-refurbished portable computer, if you’re in the market.
ASUS’ NVIDIA Ion-powered EeeBox PC has gotten sort of official. It’s on ASUS’ website now, at least, although there’s still not much in the way of pricing or availability. The specs look pretty nice, though, with a whisper-quiet setup thanks to a dual-core Atom N330 CPU, 2GB of RAM, 250GB SATA hard drive, 802.11b/g/n wireless, card reader, and, of course, the horsepower to push full 1080p video.
Do you know the one thing that I absolutely love about my BlackBerry? The little LED indicator light. That single light informs me when I have a new message, if a call is coming in, if Bluetooth is turned on, and a whole lot more. So why isn’t there such a light on computers? One modder answered that question by installed a three-color LED light on his Eee PC with a very similar functionality.
Our own beardy Devin Coldewey had quite a tech boner for the Asus Eee Keyboard back at CES. At that time, a company representative made a “confidential estimate” that the device would be released in August. Then someone at Asus apparently got all giddy or something and it was announced that the Eee Keyboard would launch in June. Well, June’s almost over and there’s no Asus Eee Keyboard.
Make way for the Eee PC 1004DN, ASUS’ first netbook with a built-in optical drive. Rumors swirled last week, but ASUS made everything official by announcing that the machine will feature a Super-Multi DVD burner, a chiclet-style keyboard, an Express Card slot, multi-touch trackpad, brushed aluminum casing, and almost six hours of battery life.

First, the “news”: Digitimes is reporting that Asustek is considering a merger of their PC and notebook – really netbook – divisions. This means the two divisions will work as one cohesive unit which means lots of people will probably get fired. Fair enough.
Now what does this mean in the macro sense? Since the early 2000s, PC and laptop hardware has been converging. Open a barebones PC case and you’ll basically find a laptop motherboard hanging out in the middle of a huge box. I remember an entire year or two around 2002 when laptop mobo manufacturers were stuffing their wares into smaller and smaller boxes until you basically had a PC the size of a cigarette case.
Asus has loaded its netbooks with a custom UI for a few generations now, but the latest feels a bit more evolved. This next-gen UI sits atop the native operating system and can be called into action with just a click of a button. Chances are that the this generation will come on the T91 convertible notebook/tablet where the advanced GUI can really shine. It seems that Asus’s early entrance into this niche market is finally showing as this new Touch UI is extremely polished and might just be the most advance type of interface available. Video after the jump. Watch it; you’ll be impressed. Promise.
Apparently, if you ask nicely, Asus will show you their deepest and darkest secrets. The Eee Keyboard, or Keeeboard (working title) is still very much in a prototype phase, but they were happy to let me look it up and down and give its sweet little touchscreen a spin. I can tell you right now, this thing is really sleek, and what with the wireless HDMI and all the ports, it really could be a complete home theater PC in a keyboard.

Asus announced on Tuesday that they are releasing two new versions of their Eee Box, with some new features.
The new versions have a high definition hardware decoder (a Radeon 3400), HDMI out and a remote. The hardware decoder should improve performance, possibly making this a decent choice for a HTPC solutions. While the hardware and software seem better, I’d like to see it come in other colors, so it doesn’t look so much like a Wii. No word on pricing or availability yet, although we can reasonably put it above $300 with the added cost of the video card.
ASUS has plans to make its Eee Top PCs a big thing with yet more screen sizes. So far the company has announced a 15.6-inch version of the touchscreen PC, but now the company prez is stating that larger sizes will be available as well. We’re talking both a 20- and 22-inch version. Hopefully, by the time these things drop in the middle of ‘09, the 1GB of ram and 160GB HDD will experience substantial growth.
Netbooks have been slowing down over the last year and for the most part, each one is about the same thing with a different logo on the lid. HP’s offerings seem refreshing and polished even though they sport the standard netbook specs of 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 8.9-inch or 10.2-inch display, up to 2 GB of RAM, and either a 60GB HDD or 16GB SSD. The solid-state drive can be complimented by a standard USB thumb drive in a special slot for extra storage. The specs are only half the story as the OS is where it gets interesting.
Sometime in the coming weeks Toys ‘R’ Us is going to start selling iPods and, more notably, Asus EEE PC’s as the retailer is grasping for higher holiday sales. The iPods are going to be in their own little iPod boutique that is sure to be decorated in novel all white fashion.

There’s an idea – rip apart your Asus Eee PC, sprinkle some modifications here and there, and embed it into your car’s dashboard. That’s just what a guy in Russia did. It appears to be a bit more than a mere weekend project, as he’s added a touchscreen, GPS, Bluetooth, a keyboard in the glove box, and the Centrafuse car PC interface.
If you like the idea of netbooks in theory but get unnecessarily agitated at the thought of having all that pesky "portability," then maybe you’d be a good candidate for the small form-factor Asus Eee Box PC.
It’s specs are as follows: 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB RAM, 80GB SATA hard drive, built-in Wi-Fi, DVI out, and Windows XP Home. Buy.com currently has it for $290.99 with free shipping. Might make for a good, inexpensive HTPC or Car PC.
[via dealnews]
Remember those unfortunate Eee Boxes we mentioned last week that were shipped with an active virus on the hard drive? Well, Asus is being a big boy about it and has ordered a recall. That restores some of the cred they lost last week, but I’m still wary. Apparently the infection came from a USB stick they were using to test the things.
Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it) they’d only sold a couple hundred of the things before this minor calamity, so there’s not too much damage to pay for out of pocket.
ZipZoomfly.com has a $65 mail-in rebate on the 8.9-inch ASUS Eee netbook. The rebate is good until the end of the month. The selling price is $364.99 for the model with the 20GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, and Linux – bringing the total cost to $299 if you’re one of *those* people who can remember to send your rebate forms in on time.
I’m starting to notice a welcome trend here, as more and more of these netbooks are starting to drop a bit in price, include mail-in rebates, or both.
ASUS EeePC 900 [ZipZoomfly.com via dealnews]

Remember that Eee Monitor from a while back? Well! It’s all growns up and it’s sporting a touchscreen and Windows XP. I have to say, though, as nice as it would be to have a little XP touchscreen around the house, the specs are a little lacking: 1GB of RAM, a 1.6GHz Atom processor, 160GB HDD, and 128GBMB (heh) of shared graphics. The 15.6-inch screen would be nice to run your fingers over, but I feel like compromises were made here that would limit the machine’s usability.
Still, a full-blown touchscreen XP box for just under $700, though it’s just pre-order at the moment, to be shipped next month. Lovely.
Update: Digitimes says the “Eee Top” will cost $450 and will come in 16″ and 19″ flavors. Uh, we’ll get back to you with more definite details whenever that happens.