With recent reports of future upgrades and plans for the Asus Eee PC people are getting excited for additional features and reasons to pick up an Eee PC.

Asustek’s 8.9-inch second-generation Eee PC lineup will include touchscreen panels and possible GPS support, with shipments expected to begin in May or June, according to Kevin Lin, vice president of Asustek’s sales department. Pricing is projected to reach NT$15,000 (US$500), Lin added.

The company is also looking to ship its E-DT (desktop PC) priced at US$199 at the same time, according to Lin.

The company aims to ship up to five million Eee PCs in 2008 through retail channels and contract orders combined, with quarterly retail-only shipments expected to total 650,000-700,000 units, according to the company. The device is seeing a 50% supply shortage in the Taiwan and Hong Kong regions and 70% worldwide in the first quarter of 2008.

Lin also pointed out that the company currently is facing a battery shortage for its Eee PCs due to a fire at a plant of LG Chem earlier this month but expects to solve the battery shortage in the second quarter of this year.

The 8.9-inch Eee PC will adopt Intel’s low-cost notebook platform and the lowest memory capacity will be upgraded from 512MB to 1GB, while the SSD (solid state drive) capacity will be upgraded from 4-8GB to 8-12GB, according to industry sources.

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If you have taken the plunge and modded your Asus Eee PC with a touch screen or have any UMPC/Tablet PC then this software is going to spark some major interest.

Download: http://www.phun.at

At heart Phun is a sandbox enviroment, the video demonstration will tell a 1000 more words then I ever could on this. Give it a try, regardless of if you have a tablet/touchscreen it is great.

Over the last few weeks I have received a few emails from readers about software on the Asus Eee PC, What do you use? any suggestions to applications or software for the Eee PC?

The majority of software I and many other people use these days for their day to day activities is open source. Free is a good price and the software is typically very light on resources while being extremely optimised and solid for a range of platforms.

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With Asus is predicting that their Windows based Eee PCs will outsell the original Xandros version by a ratio of 6 to 4 by the end of this year things will be very watched very closely by the consumer and ScaleGamer alike. Based on this Asus will ship 3 million Windows-based units.

Asustek Computer has officially announced its Windows XP-based Eee PC, and expects Windows versions to account for 60% of its five million unit shipment goal in 2008, according to Jonney Shih, chairman of the company.

The Windows XP-based Eee PC will launch in two versions, the 4G with a 3-megapixel webcam and 4G Surf model without webcam, priced at NT$14,490 (US$471.79) and NT$12,499, respectively. In contrast, prices for the same spec Linux-based models in the Taiwan market are NT$11,655 and NT$10,499.

Although Microsoft is scheduled to stop supplying Windows XP software licenses to OEMs and system builders by the end of June this year, since channel vendors and OEMs will normally hold a certain level of supply, the software should not see shortages until the end of the year, according to Davis Tsai, general manager of Microsoft Taiwan.

Tsai also pointed out that several other vendors, including Acer and Hewlett-Packard (HP), are also considering Windows for their upcoming small-size notebooks which are scheduled to launch later this year. Negotiations are still underway over whether these notebooks will adopt Windows Vista directly, Tsai added.

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With the news from CeBIT 2008 of the Asus Eee PC 900, new accessories and details beginning to flow out Asus have published a press release clarifying some of the details.

Expanding the Eee PC Family
ASUS has made several innovative improvements with the next generation of the Eee PC – dubbed the Eee PC 900. These new technologies will bring about a brand new concept for Internet access with 1G of memory, larger storage of up to 12GB, and wider 8.9-inch screens. These new Eee PCs will cost 399 Euro each, and will be available in summer this year – to select countries on the first wave of launch. All of these new models will be Windows ready, and will provide users with a chance to enjoy a brand new PC experience while on the go.

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At last a video of the Asus Eee PC 900 has surfaced and it is looking very nice.

Continuing the adventure at CeBIT 2008 Engadget have spotted the Asus Eee PC 900.

Features:
8.9″ – 1024 x 600 LCD
larger touchpad
2.5 to 3 hours battery life
TBA 8GB version
€399 12GB version

Release date: TBA / Middle of 2008

Asus Eee PC 7-inch Vs Asus Eee PC 9-inch photos

Engadget noticed Asus displaying some of their new Eee PC products at CeBIT 2008.

• Ai Guru U1 VoIP phone
• Eee AP – 802.11g wireless access point
• USB “3.5G HSDPA Card” – GSM900 / 1800 / 1900 and WCDMA2100 / 1900 / 850, with speeds of up to 3.6Mbps
• DVD-RW drive

Pictures and further details – Read more.

You may have heard that the format war is officially over, HD DVD has been defeated by Blu Ray and the world is now at peace.

So the world isn’t really in crisis over this situation but there are still a massive amount of Xbox 360 HD DVD drives on the market. Where does the EeePC even remotely come into this? Good question, I’ve been playing with all kinds of hardware over the years and one problem I keep running into is the fact I don’t own, or have ever owned an external CD/DVD reader for my PC. This would be extremely handy for all of those times I’ve had to repair, fix or restore computer systems that lacked a (working) drive of their own.

This is a great addition for installing operating systems, games and just about anything else you could ever need on the EeePC with out any hassles.

On February 6th 2008 Microsoft reduced the suggested retail price of the HD DVD player to $129USD, following Toshiba’s announcement to discontinue all HD DVD players Microsoft decided to officially discontinue the Xbox 360 HD DVD player.

Lucky for the consumer most retailers are currently having a “fire” sale on the Xbox 360 HD DVD player, For as cheap as ~$40USD ($45AUD) you can own this awesome player/reader for use with any PC, Mac or Xbox 360.

You will find it impossible to find a USB CD/DVD enclosure and a CD/DVD/HD DVD Drive together for this price, so this really is a once only deal, I’m sure that once these drives are gone…..they will be gone.

Yeah i know, HD DVD is dead tech but this won’t stop the drive from functioning.

Guryhwa decided to upgrade his EeePC as he felt it needed just a little more grunt.

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