They say they want to work with Google, and that implies Chrome OS. Asus would be a natural partner for Google if they wanted to put out a lot of Google-branded cheap tablets with Chrome OS on ‘em, but it’s still too early to say anything definite. Guess we’ll just have to wait until June.

The original idea of turning a PC into a Wii was solid, but Asus never really marketed the products outside of an novelty Eee accessory. Off-the-wall accessories like the Eee Stick rarely stick around anyway. Chances are if we don’t hear anything about the product next week at CES, the Eee Stick will be put out to the pasture to quietly fade away like the rumor suggests.

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. 

Granted, they’re not the most powerful machines on the planet — 900MHz Celeron CPU, 4GB SSD, 512MB of RAM — but perhaps you’ve got a little spot for one of these on your couch. 

These are the Linux versions, available in black, white, or purple. 

Asus Eee PC 900 Netbook with Intel Mobile Processor [Woot.com]

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.

There’s HDMI and VGA output, along with three USB ports and an eSATA port for external upgrades. The system weighs 2.4 pounds and will be available in black or white. The OS is listed as Windows Vista Home Premium, which pretty much means that this little guy will be out before late October when Windows 7 gets released.

EeeBox PC EB1012 [Asus via Gizmodo]

This little guy won’t win any benchmarking contests or even play Hulu all that well. But it will run a word processor, web browser and solitaire just fine. Plus it has a webcam so you can keep in touch with the ‘rents while you’re away at school. Neato!.

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.

The light sits atop the screen so it can be seen if the lid is open or closed. Whenever a Twitter, Pidgin, or Gmail message comes in, it flashes a different color. Now when can this same thing be available on commercial products? I’m looking at you, Apple.

JustBlair via lillputing

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.

Looks like it’s indeed coming in August after all.

And today must be “Companies Being Honest Day” (see the Sony piece from this morning) as Asus’ reasoning behind the delay is simply because it can’t figure out how to market it. It needs a niche, in other words, and Asus had no niche in time for the keyboard’s release.

I think a “people want it” niche might work but that’s not enough these days, apparently. Oh well, August it is then. The computer-inside-a-keyboard will feature a 32GB solid state drive, 5-inch LCD, and wireless HDMI for outputting to a TV or monitor.

[TechDigest.tv via SlashGear]

Newegg.com is selling the Asus Eee PC 900 for just $170 with free shipping. That’s for a new unit, too, not a refurbished one. The specs won’t blow your toupee off your head but, hey, the price is right.

You’ll get an 8.9-inch screen at 1024×600, a 900MHz ultra low voltage Intel Celeron M processor, 512MB of RAM, 4GB solid state drive, four-cell battery, and Linux.

ASUS Eee PC [Newegg.com via dealnews]

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.

Other specs include:

• Intel Atom N280 CPU at 1.66GHz
• 10-inch 1024×600 screen
• Weighs 3.2 pounds with six-cell battery
• Intel GN40 chipset with GMA 4500M graphics
• Up to 2GB of RAM, up to 120GB hard drive
• Bluetooth, 802.11n, 1.3-megapixel webcam, fingerprint reader

So the slightly-bumped CPU is a nice addition and the Express Card slot is definitely welcome. It’ll be interesting to see how many people buy this for the optical drive, too. All in all, this appears to be a more business-y offering from ASUS.

No word on price or availability yet, although the previous rumors hinted at an April release.

Eee PC 1004DN [Press Release]

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.

With the fall of the desktop PC as a marketable mass-market device – face it: only the very young and the very old really need them and the rest of us, if we’re forced to use them at school or at work, do so under protest – and the rise of the laptop/netbook as a viable alternative, even for some gamers, it makes sense to trim fat by making the merger official.

I suspect more manufacturers are going to go this route, treating laptops and desktops as two parts of the same silo. If it has a processor, memory, and a keyboard, it’s basically in the same genus and species, if not the same order, as every other thing with a processor, memory, and a keyboard.

What think you?

Not content to watch MSI steal all the thunder with the X-Slim series, ASUS has lobbed a snowball back with the Eee 1008HA – nicknamed “Sea Shell.” It’s basically a nice-looking 10-inch Eee, though, and not the genre-defying 13.3-inch X320 that we’ll see from MSI.

Still, it’s about as slim and trim as they get at one inch thick and 2.4 pounds. Not bad for a 10-inch model. Specs include an Intel N820 CPU, XP Home, 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive, Bluetooth, 1.3-megapixel webcam – all your standard netbook fare. I’m guessing that the screen resolution is going to be saddled at 1024×600 as well and it’s unknown whether the battery will be removable or how easy upgrades will be due to its skinny frame.

No word on pricing or availability yet, as the 1008HA has just recently been announced at CeBIT in Germany.

[via JKK Mobile]

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.

There’s no word on pricing and they’re very coy about specs, but even so it’s not hard to picture this being onen of 2009′s absolute must-have gadgets.

Update: Updated.

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.

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.

HP gives you the choice of either Windows XP or an Ubuntu-powered “experience” MIE operating system. This Mobile Internet Experience streamlines most common uses into a custom built homescreen that screams of HP’s Touchsmart interface – that’s a good thing.

A 8.9-inch Mini 1000 XP option launches today for $399 with 512GB of RAM and a 8GB SSD – or $50 more for the 10.2-inch screen. The linux flavor will drop after the New Year and will start at $379 for the 8.9-inch model. A mobile broadband version should be available in select markets by December, along with a docking station by January. 

The Vivienne Tam edition will also launch in December for $699.

So every other netbook manufacturer, take note at HP’s netbooks, but don’t copy ‘em. Instead, hire a design firm and actually produce something that is innovative instead of another EEE clone. Deal?

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.

The EEE ultra portable notebooks will range between four models and be priced-out at $269 for Linux model and $299 for the Windows option. Open Office comes standard on the Linux EEE PC, while Microsoft Office is understandable loaded on the Windows model. Who knows if parents will feel comfortable buying a EEE PC from the same retailer that sold them a Big Wheel, but having another national retailer pimping the EEE PC is great news for geeks more comfortable purchasing in a brick and mortar store.

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.

Looks like a stock installation, too.

Ah, the pre-project pile o’ gadgets. Such hope… such promise. I’m not sure where that Logitech webcam is mounted as I didn’t see it in any of the finished photos. Maybe he mounted it outside on the roof or something.

[Eee CarPC via Wired]

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]

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.