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For anyone who may have been holding out for an Eee PC because it was too expensive, is there anyone that really felt that, can now rest assured in that Amazon has begun offering some refurbished units at a discount.

Amazon currently has the black Asus Eee PC 701 available for as little as $341.29, which is actually a nice savings from the original $399.99 retail. The similar white model also has a few available but without such a big discount, those are starting at $360.

Product [Amazon] Via [Liliputing]

Asus has finally announced that the Eee PC 900 will be hitting US stores on May 12. Retail price will be $549 for both Linux and Windows XP versions. I would say this is a good deal already and we should all thank Asus for not putting too much on the price tag of the Eee PC 900, considering all the upgrades that it has put into the little machine.

U.S. consumers would be treated with all the good stuff that we reported a couple of days ago:

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Well the international roll-out has begun for the Eee PC 900. The new ultra-portable has already been launched in Hong Kong and the UK, with France getting theirs on April 17 and Taiwan on either April 22 or April 24. No word on release dates for other areas, hopefully they will follow shortly.

While it would be nice to have seen, or at least confirm a US release date, we can confirm that many of the expected specs held true. The Eee PC 900 features an 8.9-inch display with a 1024 x 600 resolution, a 900 Mhz Intel Celeron processor, 1GB of RAM, 12GB SSD, a 1.3-megapixel webcam and the multi-touch trackpad.

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The long rumored Windows XP-based Eee PC will soon be hitting the market here in the US. With all the recent commotion about the Eee PC 900, the XP rumors had seemed to die down just a bit. The updated Eee PC will keep the same specs as the current Linux-based model, except for the OS, which will be Windows XP Home.

Perhaps the best news; the Eee PC will keep the same $399 price tag and we will not have too long to grab one for yourself, they will be available at Best Buy locations beginning April 9, 2008.

According to the folks over at Laptop, Asus is planning on also bundling a 4GB SD card in with the notebook to offer some additional storage space. With the small internal 4GB SSD, after Windows XP is installed and with just a few other programs they were left with just 153MB of free space.

Via [Laptop]

Asus has unveiled plans to include touchscreens in the next generation of the Eee PC. These will be included in the Eee PC 900 which will feature the 8.9-inch display, and is sound like these updates will make most current Eee PC owners just a little jealous.

According to Kevin Lin, who is the vice president of Asustek’s sales department the new Eee PC’s will feature touchscreen panels and possibly include GPS support. In addition to the touchscreen and GPS, the new lineup will also see a boost in both memory and storage. The standard RAM will be 1GB as opposed to the current 512MB and the storage will go up from the current 4-8GB to 8-12GB’s.

The new Eee PC’s are expected to begin shipping in May or June and retail for around $500. Asus also has plans to ship their previously announced E-DT desktop model around the same May or June timeframe, which is expected to retail for $199.

Via [DigiTimes]

While we still have not seen any press release or formal announcement from Asus, we have found what seems to be a fairly good confirmation of the existence of the Eee PC 900. The guys over at Engadget have posted some images of the 7-inch Eee PC 701 side-by-side with the newer and larger 9-inch Eee PC 900.

As you can see in the pics the 900 seems a little bit larger, but it does not seem like enough to make a big difference. I would be interested to get a hands on with the new 900, because the current 701 is actually a lot smaller when you actually have it in hand. Aside from the obvious larger display, the trackpad seems to be a little bit bigger, which will be a welcome change.

Via [Engadget]