CNET has an interesting note at the bottom of their article about the recent Japanese launch of the Eee PC 4G-X (which comes with Windows XP preinstalled instead of Linux). It states for USA availability:

Asus originally promised we’d have the Windows version of the tiny Asus Eee PC in December. The Taiwan-based company now says we can expect it in late February or early March. [link]

So, for those of you waiting for Windows to be pre-installed, it could be just a little over a month away.

It appears as though the ASUS Eee PC being released in Japan has enough differences between itself and the standard line of Eee PCs that ASUS has designated it as the 4G-X instead of 4G.

The Eee PC 4G-X will come with Windows XP Home pre-installed, a 4GB SDHC card, optical mouse, and in both white and black. The price will be ¥50,000 ($470 usd).

The Eee PC is seemingly finding success in both the general market and the educational market.

ASUS has just entered into a partnership with learning.com, who will provide web based educational content for the Eee PC being used in educational environments. The hope is to continue to facilitate the digital education of children by not only using the Eee PC but also by having educational software and content to use on it.

Also of note: The Fresno United School District in California recently ordered 1,000 Eee PCs for use by students and teachers.

It’s good to see that the Eee PC is finding it’s way into good hands.

There’s a pretty good review over at notebookreview.com of the Eee PC 2G Surf. We’ve posted many reviews of the 4G, but never one for the 2G. It details the general features of the Eee PC, but also the differences between the 4G and the 2G Surf. You can also see pictures including the lack of a ram slot on the bottom of the unit.

It’s time for our first contest here at EeeUser.com, thanks to the folks at CarryMobile.com! You can win:

(1) CarryMobile Leather Case (Snake Print Pattern Black) for your Eee PC

It features:

• Magnetic closure
• White stitched finishing
• 4 memory card slots, 1 card slot
• Openings in case for earphone/microphone/status lights

What you need to do to enter:

• Reply to this thread on the forum (not this blog post!) explaining what it is you do during your day that requires your Eee PC to be extra protected.

Various rules and such:

• The contest ends at 12:00AM EST on 1/30/2008. I’ll close the thread at this time.
• You may only reply once to the thread.
• Each reply will receive a unique ID number and will be entered with your username into a spreadsheet. The winner will be chosen at random.
• We will contact the winner of the case via e-mail within 24 hours of the end of the contest. They have 48 hours to reply. If they do not, we will select a new winner at random and repeat the process.
• CarryMobile will ship worldwide (cool, huh?)

Good luck!

For those interested in seeing the Eee PC up close and in great detail, the folks over at ITidiots.com feature an Eee PC 4G in episode 60 of their video podcast. The guys do a great job of going over the entire unit (both hardware and software) and show video of a full boot and what it looks like when switching over to full desktop mode.

If you’re still on the fence about becoming an Eee PC user, this may be what you need to see before finally making the jump. The video is in high quality, and the ITidiots are engaging and interesting.

Best of all, they name-drop a certain Eee PC website that you might have heard of before…

I was reading this review of the OLPC XO device, and I came across some interesting photos on page 5.

First, there’s a great photo of a white ASUS Eee PC side by side with an OLPC XO. You can see how the XO is slightly larger than the Eee PC, and how the Eee PC design is a lot more… well… (let’s just say) understated compared to the XO.

However, what’s really interesting is the next set of photos. They show the screens of the two devices, up and close, looking at the exact same website. You can see how much more you can see with the 7.5″ diagonal XO screen running at 1200×900. It’s not much more, but it does make quite a difference.

For those interested in having HSDPA on their Eee PC, French carrier SFR has a bundle just for you. It includes a white ASUS Eee PC 4G and a HSDPA modem together for €299 (or $435 usd).

The interesting aspect of this is that SPF pledges to give back €100 back if you’re willing to sign a contract for HSDPA service.

Unfortunately, the modem uses the USB slot instead of being fully integrated into the Eee PC. As we reported back in December, Not all of the latest Eee PC’s have the internal mini-PCIe connector anymore. As a result, there’s no easy way to simply snap in an internal wireless card.

It does make you think about several questions- Would any US based carriers offer a solution like this? Would it be worth it? Could a carrier offer a free Eee PC with wireless contract? Did ASUS remove the mini-PCIe connector so certain carriers could do something like this?

Reading further into the Digitimes story on Asus adding touchpanel screens into the Eee, PocketLint suggests that the panels will be the four-wire type adding just US$15 to the BOM.

“The 9-inch touch panel-equipped Eee PCs will adopt “four-wire resistive touch screen technology” adding just $15 to the manufacturing cost of the new tablet-esque gadget.”

While less precise than the five-wire garden-variety panel, the touchscreen interface is a much anticipated addition that would further add to the image of the Eee as a competitor to the recently introduced MacBook Air in the ultra-portable laptop category.

It appears as though the Eee PC will finally be for sale in Germany on January 24th. If you look at this thread, you can find this link [translated version] to an article that explains that ASUS will begin selling the Eee PC at 180 dealers, according to product manager Lars Sweden. The initial batch will be 20,000 units of the 4G models featuring Linux, costing 299 euros (or about $437 usd).