Anxious to get your claws around an Eee PC that looks — amazingly — nothing like an Eee PC? Feast your eyes on the S101, which was recently toyed with by our brethren over at Engadget Chinese. We must say, this here piece of machinery looks mighty fine save for that not-at-all appealing brown coat, but we suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all. As for launch dates (pricing is still a mystery), we’re hearing that the Asia-Pacific realm could see it as early as tomorrow, while Europe will get it in around a fortnight and North America sometime later this month. Oh, and if you’re in that latter region, you better bite early — just 1,000 of ‘em will be made available here initially.

Whether counting its 23 Eee PCs or 50 plus models of traditional laptops, ASUS isn’t exactly known for its frugality. So seeing yet another press release touting the launch of its bamboo — a renewable material with immense tensile strength rivaling that of many metal alloys — laptops shouldn’t be a surprise. What’s new here, perhaps, is the detail. Now in mass production, these partially biodegradable laptops come with either 11.1- or 12.1-inch, 1,280 x 768 pixel displays, your choice of 3/6/9-cell batteries, and ASUS’ Super Hybrid Engine allowing you to dial down the power when the wails of the Antarctic penguins become too much to bear. The 12.1-incher is the relative powerhouse of the pair offering Vista a ride atop your choice of Intel T9400/P8600/P8400 Core 2 Duo processors, 256MB of NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS graphics, a 320GB hybrid hard drive sporting 256MB of flash, and Intel’s WiMAX / WiFi Link 5100 chipset. Pricing? Sorry, we’ll likely have to wait for another press release for that detail.

[Via The Inquirer]

With Intel’s Montevina platform (hopefully) on the way and AMD’s claim that “over 100″ laptops will launch with Puma, it’s kind of surprising that we haven’t seen even more pre-release info on machines due to ship with the new chips, but apparently ASUS is getting ready to hit us with some new gear at Computex. Based on the existing M51 and M70 lines, the M51VR will feature a 2.26GHz Penryn P8400 with 3MB of L2 cache on Montevina’s 1.06GHz bus, while the M51VA and M70VM (pictured) will get 2.53GHz T9400s with 6MB of cache. ASUS should also be showing off the Puma-based F5Z and X50Z laptops with 1.9GHz AMD Athlon64 X2 QL-60 chips, 667MHz buses, ATI Mobility Radeon HD3200 graphics and 15.4-inch screens at Computex, so it’ll be interesting to see how these bad boys do side-by-side.

[Thanks, Sergio]

Read – ASUS Montevina laptops
Read – ASUS Puma laptops

We’ve already seen one engineering bloke stuff a touch panel into a Cloudbook, so we figured it was only a matter of time before that luscious 8.9-inch unit from the Eee PC 900 found its way into the pioneering 701. According to jkkmobile, all that was necessary in order to make the mod happen was a good bit of reworking around the bezel and a BIOS hack to enable full-screen support on a larger display. Unfortunately, a step-by-step guide has yet to be posted (though it’s likely forthcoming), but you can gaze upon a smattering of photos right now by giving the read link a visit.

[Via Liliputing]

During the hurricane that was CES, ASUS managed to get in a word just long enough to make mention of a forthcoming G70 laptop. Now that the storm has passed, it’s dishing out a full list of details to get gamers’ mouths watering. The 17-inch behemoth features quite the vivid motif, and crammed within you’ll find your choice of an Intel Core 2 Duo / Core 2 Extreme processor, 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi, twin 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GTs, up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM and room for dual hard drives, too. Furthermore, you can feast your retinas on a WUXGA / WXGA+ panel and tickle your fancy with an optional Blu-ray writer, 2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, gigabit Ethernet and 8-cell battery. Sure, this beast weighs nearly 10.6 pounds and packs more LED lighting than an LCD Soundsystem concert, but hey, you’ve got to flaunt it if you’ve got it, right?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Last we heard of ASUS’ Lamborghini VX3, we were watching it get lapped by the smorgasbord of other kit introduced at CES. Still, there’s something to be said for a 12.1-inch ultraportable wrapped in sexy hues and accented with leather and Lambo badges — unfortunately, “fast” isn’t it. According to a recent test run over at CNET, the VX3 build quality was second to none, the style touches were easy to adore and the keyboard was surprisingly satisfactory. Unfortunately, the system faltered in more critical areas; partially due to the amount of bloatware that came loaded on, the 2.5GHz T9300 had a tough time surpassing other machines in benchmarking, and for folks hoping that the battery life would help negate that point, critics only yielded 67-minutes during a DVD playback test (and just 2-hours “in anecdotal use”). Even with the sluggishness, the VX3 may not be a bad choice if priced right, but considering the $3,299 sticker, we’d expect this thing to hold the pole position.

Oh, poor Eee PC 900. You haven’t even made it into most people’s hands, and already you’re getting dissected and inappropriately inspected. Honestly, we didn’t mean for that to rhyme. Regardless, the folks over at bit-tech have gone to all the hassle of cracking the little dude open, though what they find inside is apparently more of the same. No new modules, no fancy layout changes, no tiny army of artificially intelligent lifeforms. Still, it’s nice to look at. Take peak and see for yourself!

It’s like this: if you found yourself all giddy playing with the Eee PC 701, you’ll be absolutely enthralled when handling the 900. At least, that’s the verdict being blasted out from reviewers web-wide. More specifically, CNET found the 9-inch subnote to be superior in quite a few ways to the 701, and felt particularly impressed with the ability to run multiple applications more easily due to more screen real estate and the included 1GB of RAM. However, they were none too thrilled with the keyboard (still), and echoed Trusted Reviews gripes of lackluster battery life. Yeah, that last dig could be fairly substantial if you’re looking to stay untethered completely for hours on end, but if you’re confident you can locate an AC outlet when necessary (and can’t afford to wait for an Atom-based version of the machine), it seems the 9-inch Eee is well worth a look.

Read – CNET review (8.7 out of 10)
Read – Trusted Reviews review (…the Eee PC 900 still represents staggering value for money.)
Read – Stuff.tv’s video review