Thanks to one very keen modder, a tutorial is now available to show you just how implement an Apple Mighty Mouse trackball into the palm rest of your Eee PC, notably the Asus Eee PC 901.

You will have to have a bit of patience and skill to go through with this procedure, however, as it involves de-soldering wires from one place, re-soldering some more on your Eee PC 901 motherboard, cutting holes in the Eee PC case and various other bits and pieces.

However, for those who prefer not to use the built-in mouse on your Eee PC netbook, this is one more alternative you have other than using a bluetooth or USB mouse. If you have the skills, patience and knowledge, it certainly seems like a wonderful little project.

See discussion on the forum for more information about this interesting project.

Typical of the responses our UK users are getting from ASUS UK is this one, which eeeuser member loopz posted on the battery discussion thread. loopz says it was received from ASUS customer service in the UK.

Dear Customer,

Like I promised I would give you an update as soon as I got one.
The Exchange for the battery is postponed until further notice.
I am so sorry for this late call but I only heard 2 minutes ago about it.
The minute I know something else I will let you know.

With Kind Regards
Glady’s

It seems to me that, with the competition (for example, the MSI Wind) hot on the heels of the ASUS EEEPC 901, ASUS could have handled the UK battery situation far batter. Potential buyers will surely be asking themselves if this is the sort of after sales service they deserve after forking out their hard earned money on a new UMPC – and they will also no doubt be considering the alternatives.

The ASUS press release quoted by Mobile Computer Magazine’s web page starts off with the bold statement “ ASUS delivers unique customer service“.

UK 900 buyers must be finding the customer service offered by ASUS UK truly “unique” indeed.

• Hands on WiMax enabled Eee PC 901 (engadget chinese)
• Side by side by side: Eee PC 701, 901, 1000 (engadget chinese)
  
• Official Specifications (asus.com)
• Eee PC 901 First Look (notebookreview.com)
• Eee PC 901 Unboxing, First Impressions (laptopmag.com)
• Eee PC 901 Mini Review (laptopmag.com)
• Benchmark/Review of the Eee PC 901 (eeepcnews.de) – The page is in German, but the Video on it is in English, really useful for judging performance

What am I most excited about for the Eee PC 901? The battery life!

Blogeee.net has numerous photos of the white 901:

The photos also show that the 901 is not branded as an ASUS, but rather as an “Eee.” This appears to confirm earlier talk of ASUS spinning off the Eee brand.

Blogeee.net also has photos of the 901 in black:

Digitimes also has more information on the 901. The specifications will be almost the same as the Eee PC 900, but it will feature bluetooth, metallic parts, a slightly different design, and of course the Intel Atom processor. While this sounds great, the price is going to come in at a whopping $650– far away from the intended price of the original Eee PC. With that said, it does have many more features than the original. It will be launched June 3 (though the article doesn’t say it, it’s probably going to be at Computex 2008 in Taiwan.)