If you’ve been looking for an ASUS Eee PC 8G, you may have to wait just a little longer.

According to this Digitimes article, ASUS is blaming a flash and battery shortage for the recent lack of 8G shipments to retailers:

Asustek company president Jerry Shen admitted SLC NAND flash is running tight, although he noted that the shortage of batteries is more of a concern for the company. [link]

The good news is that ASUS expects to resume shipments of the 8G units in 1-2 weeks.

This could be part of the reason why extra Eee PC batteries are not yet available for purchase from ASUS- and with the batteries (and other accessories) rumored to be arriving in late February- maybe the problems are indeed just about solved.

If you’re interested in seeing photos of the upcoming Eee PC accessories, the guys over at the French Eee PC website blogeee.net have plenty of up close shots.

I personally like seeing the 6 cell 7800 mAh battery… the only question- will it still fit in the 4G slip case?

If you’ve been waiting for the official line of Eee PC accessories to be released, you’re in luck. This post on our forums reveals that by the end of February, you’ll have the option of six different accessories for your Eee PC. They include:

• A mouse ($19.99)
• Headset/microphone ($19.99)
• 4 cell battery ($99.99, ouch!)
• AC adapter ($39.99)
• Sleeve/case  ($19.99)
• 1 year additional warranty ($89.99)

You can find more information at the forum post. [Thanks, TexasGuy!]

The ASUS Eee PC has a tentative release date in India on January 29th, 2008.

It will be available in your choice of the Pearl White or Galaxy Black 4G models, and will run indeed Linux. It will begin to be offered at major electronics stores such as Vijay Sales and Croma sometime in February.

The price is set at Rs 18,000 which is about $457 USD.

For our readers in Switzerland, it appears as thought the German language Eee PC is now available for you to purchase as well. It looks like it’s the Eee PC 4G model priced between 454 CHF and 499 CHF. For more information, follow this link.

The crew over at eeepcnews.de posted several photos [English Translation] sent in by their users taken on the day of the Eee PC release in Germany. Dubbing the day “Eee Day,” it’s nice to see that our favorite device has officially made it’s way for sale in Germany. You can also look at this thread [English translation] from their forum to see more photos from the new Eee PC owners.

Jonney Shih, Chairman of ASUS, has his sights set on becoming one of the top 3 notebook brands in the world.

The plan involves increasing output, especially in the USA market. ASUS feels as though they were starting from scratch in the United States with the Eee PC, as before the release they only held 5% of the total US notebook market. The Eee PC, though, has now brought them name recognition and invaluable marketing for the ASUS brand. As a result, ASUS hopes to capitalize on the success and begin pushing more notebooks.

Of course, if ASUS ships 4-5 million Eee PC’s as intended this year, it will surely help the company achieve their goal.

If you head over to TigerDirect, you’ll notice the CybertronPC Mini-PC CM900. It has a 900mhz processor, 512mb of ram, 2GB SSD disk, and a design that looks really familiar.

Why does it look familiar? It’s really a badged black ASUS Eee PC 2G- and it’s priced at $359. I’m not sure about you, but I’d certainly prefer an original ASUS branded Eee PC 2G- especially since it’s about $60 cheaper.

[thanks, minikrak]

Remember the all the delays we had in getting the Eee PC?

Looks like the Everex Cloudbook is now joining in the fun of delays. Today was the release date (January 25th), but it failed to show up online for purchase last night and this morning. ComputerWorld finally got the scoop that the device was delayed for some last minute software tweaks. No indication was given on when it will actually be released.

At least ASUS never left us at the altar on the day of intended release!

I found an interesting blog post from “To Learn Twice,” a blog that talks about education and technology. It seems as though the author is running some student trials to get feedback from students on the Eee PC.

He posted two student responses from high school students, one male and one female. Each answered around 15 questions.

The overall feedback was pretty good. It’s apparently difficult for the students to use the Eee PCs in school as the curriculum is not centered around them. It should be noted that the students were in AP Chemistry- instead of a heavy verbal English or History class that you could easily use the Eee PC to take notes with- so perhaps they didn’t have software that complimented their class.

Building on that, the male student noted that “You can’t download programs and you can’t hook up external drives.”

While most of us know that’s not true, it’s interesting that it appears that way to some people. It’d be great to see more student trials where the professors not only include the devices into the curriculum but also find software that compliments the class.