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The popular Asus Eee netbook will soon become touch capable according to Asustek’s General Manager of Eee PC, Samson Hu.  Touch screen netbooks are going to become popular pretty soon so Asustek has decided to jump on the bandwagon and make their Eee’s touch screen capable as well.

Unfortunately, Hu says that the touch screen Eees won’t be ready until sometime in Q1 of 2009.  The good news here is that he also said Asus will have the new touch screen Eees on display come January in CES 2009.  Beyond the touch screens, Hu mentioned that Asustek will be shipping out Eees with the new Intel Dual Core Atom processors.  However, Intel hasn’t announced a specific shipment date for their Atom processors. 

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The Japanese distributor for Asus has found that a virus has been shipped with the company’s new Eee Box PCs.  The virus, called recycled.exe, is found on the D: drive of the new low cost desktop PC, which launched last week.  When opened, it copies itself to the C: drive and any removable storage device attached to the PC and disables any anti-virus programs it finds. 

It also accesses the users address book and sends itself to everyone in it, visits web pages without the user knowing, disables processes, the Task Manager, the Windows Registry Editor and File Protection system, modifies Windows Security Policies, sends information back to its host (which is presumably a botnet) and more. 

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By now most of us are probably aware of the Intel Atom processor, the little chip inside nearly all of the netbooks out right now.  Intel has started shipping a desktop version of the processor with two cores.  Intel is saying that it is made specially for “nettops.” A nettop being to a desktop computer as a netbook is to a notebook computer.

These new chips will allow for small footprint desktops with little electricity usage to be released at low price points.  According to the eWeek article, Intel is hoping the Dual Core Atom will help sell PCs in China and India for families who don’t yet have computers in the homes.  It could also be used for cheap computer for North American and European families who are looking to add another computer to their home.  It would also make sense for public terminals, such as in a public library where the PCs are usually used only for word processing and Internet access anyway.

Can you get by with a machine using this chip?  Hit the jump to find out.

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Of course we saw those leaked spec sheets come from Asus late last week that confirmed most of the N10 netbook specs along with the pricing, but as always its nice to get a little further proof that its truly accurate information. The latest comes in the form of a product listing at online retailer J&R, which show the Asus N10 retailing for $849 even. Of course we still have nothing as far as when it will be available, its simply listed as “coming soon” which could mean anything. According to the product listing the N10 will feature a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, a built-in webcam, fingerprint reader, a 6-cell battery and Windows Vista Business. Still nothing listed yet on the two lower priced models, but its only likely that they will begin to show up online as well.

Product [J&R] Via [Engadget]

Asus still has not announced just when we can expect to see the non-Eee branded N10 notebook hit the retail market, however that is not stopping the leaks. The most recent leak comes in the form of some official looking leaked documents that highly detail the N10 notebook along with some in-the-wild style images of the notebook from the recent Asus World 2008 conference.

Based on the leaked documents we can see that the N10 will be a pretty solid offering. The N10 will feature a 10.2-inch display with a 1024 x 600 resolution, 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, 250GB hard drive, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, an NVIDIA GeForce Go 9300M GS 256MB graphics card, a built-in webcam, fingerprint reader, three USB 2.0 ports, ExpressCard slot and HDMI port. Other features include facial recognition software, a 6-cell battery that will offer up to 6.5 hours of battery life and a switch to use either the graphics from the NVIDIA chip or the pain jane built-in motherboard graphics.

Pricing seems to run as low as $649, and go up to $849 for the top of the line model that is pictured above. A specific launch date has not yet been announced, but they are expected to be available later this month. Keep reading to check out the rest of the spec sheets and those in-the-wild style images…

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Asus has quietly launched their latest offering, the Eee Download service, and judging from the initial support and initial response, they should have kept it a little quieter and made sure it was a little further developed before they unveiled it.

See, at first glance its a great idea, the Eee Download service offers the ability to “install software and multimedia in just one click,” which comes courtesy of the Click ‘N Run (CNR) format. If you remember back, CNR comes from Lindows Linspire fame shame, however CNR has since recently been purchased by Xandros.

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With a refreshing change, the latest Asus netbook has just been unveiled and thankfully it does not carry the Eee PC branding, instead it is simply dubbed the Asus N10.

Sporting what appears to be a more professional looking outer shell, the N10 features a 10.2-inch display with a 1024 x 768 resolution, fingerprint reader Bluetooth 2.0, built-in 1.3-megapixel webcam, built-in card reader and a possible 320GB hard drive. It has also been mentioned that the N10 will be running either Windows Vista or a Linux variant. As for ports and connectivity, the N10 is expected to include HDMI, VGA, three USB 2.0 ports, Express Card slot, headphone out, microphone in, Ethernet and Wi-Fi with an external on/off switch.

As of now we have not seen any estimated time frame for a release date, however the pricing is expected to be in the ballpark of €300 - €400 (around $446 - $595 US). In the meantime, keep reading to check out a few more images of the Asus N10…

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While we all know that nobody seems to be all that excited about the latest Eee PC model because of its lack of outstanding features, we still owe it to you our dear readers to cover the official announcement of the Eee PC 900A. Like we said before, the Eee PC 900A doesn’t offer to many features and probably realizing this, Asus decided to add a new color variant to the Eee PC 900A instead, sadly of all colors that are available in the color wheel, Asus decided to paint it in purple. It’s not that we have anything against the color purple. But we just think that it doesn’t fit into the category of the Eee PC netbooks.

Anyway, if you’re raring to get that purple Eee PC 900A as soon as it comes out here’s a quick recap of what you’re going to get for your hard-earned bucks. The Eee PC 900A features the same 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor that the Eee PC 901 has, an 8.9-inch display with a 1024 x 600 resolution, 1GB of RAM, built-in card reader, 0.3-megapixel webcam, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, VGA out, three USB ports and a 8GB or 16GB SSD option.

In addition, Asus is throwing in a free 20GB of online storage on the Eee Storage Service that was announced a few days ago. Another weakness of the Eee PC 900A is that it could only offer 3-4 hours of battery life and its lack of Bluetooth connectivity feature. Still, if these don’t bother you too much, you can grab yourselves the Eee PC 900 for around $465 when it comes out later this month.

Product [Asus]

Asus and Target have just announced that the Eee PC will now be available both online and also at 150 of their retail locations. I suppose this news should come as little surprise, because Asus seems to be spreading the Eee brand so thin with new models, that it now being available at Target almost seems normal.

I think what will end up being more surprising is just how many customers will see this as a good idea. As a geek, I love my Eee PC, and I have shown it to many non-geeks who loved it, but majority of them also stated that without having used mine, they would never have purchased one.

Anyway, hopefully Target and Asus will have better luck, they currently have a pretty full range of products available including the 2G Surf in a variety of colors, the 4G Surf in black or white, and accessories to include extra batteries, headphones, power adapters and mice. The 2G Surf is retailing for $299.99 and the 4G Surf is retailing for $349.99.

Product [Target] Via [jkOnTheRun]

We have just recently seen the Eee PC 900a show its face in some leaked images, and although it seemed to be just another model in the never ending Eee PC lineup, we were hoping for something special.

Sadly, the specs have been revealed and honestly we are not really sure why Asus even bothered, its just another Eee. It will feature the 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor but that is about where the excitement stops.

Other features include what seems to be the standard now; an 8.9-inch display with a 1024 x 600 resolution, 1GB of RAM, built-in card reader, 0.3-megapixel webcam, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, VGA out, and three USB ports.

The Eee PC 900a will also be available in a 8GB or 16GB SSD option, but sadly Bluetooth will not be included. The 900a will be available beginning August 21 and retail for 299 EUR (around $465 US).

With all the different models and options now available, it seems that Asus should just make a few standard case sizes and then offer them in a selection of colors and allow the user to configure them as desired.

Via [jkkmobile]