The first third party 4900mAh batteries for the MSI Wind are starting to appear for sale.

Bluetrade are providing batteries that should be fully compatible with both the MSI Wind U90 and U100 models. The batteries should also be suitable for use in MSI Wind ‘clones’. Material.net is selling these batteries around 79 Euros which is $118 US.

There is no news of a release elsewhere in the world yet but, we will keep you informed as news comes in.

Via: Blogeee

Remember that Eee Download service which we told you about not so long ago? Back then it was said to be available only to our Chinese-speaking friends in Taiwan, but it seems like Asus has decided to hit the GO button and made it available in the international audience as well. Yes folks, take a gander at around 3,000 free software and games available for our Eee PC.

Specifically, the Eee Download lets you

• Install software and multimedia in just one click
• Choose from 3,432 software applications
• Choose from 148 audio and video files
• Currently supports OS version 1.1 and up

While scanning the site, we could already see some patterns in the downloading habits of the Eee users. The Top 10 most popular download all seemingly pertains to game titles.

We still have yet to use the site, but when we do, we will tell you our experience about it. In the meantime, anyone out there who have tried it, we would like to hear about your experience as well. Please leave comment below. Thanks.

Over on the MSI Wind.net forums new photos have been posted of the FTEC eBook. For those who haven’t read our previous story, the FTEC eBook is a rebranded ECS G10IL with a difference - the ‘flame’ design that FTEC have added to the case.

The below photos show off the smooth design of the FTEC ebook.

On release, the FTEC eBook is expected to be priced in the region of $625. There is also a possibility that a 3G wireless modem will be included in the price. Via: Liliputing

Digitimes is reporting that some DVD manufacturers are also benefitting from the growing popularity of low-cost netbooks. PC accessory manufacturers such as Sony, Pioneer, LG, Asustek, BenQ and other brands have registered significant sales increase of their DVD burners since netbooks have became so popular.

Since netbooks don’t come with built-in DVD/DVD RW drives, users have resorted to buying third-party products that they use together with their netbooks.

Interestingly, just like the low-cost netbooks, these external slim netbooks are also selling at low costs as well, averaging from $83-$90.

Aside from DVD burners, if you have already bought one for your Eee PCs and other netbooks, what other accessories have you bought to complement your netbooks? USB Wi-Fi dongle? USB speakers?

Solid State Devices or SSD Drives are used to have the flash performance of SanDisk but at a competitive price, for customers who need high-capacity storage. According to the Eee PC News, the SSD are now being excluded from the “MyDigitalSSD” due to some reason. These devices are very much friendly with the new Eee PC 901, where you an easily replace your old SSD drives.

SanDisk Vaulter™ is expected to release its SSD drive of 8GB and 16GB by the September. Buffalo has been reported to be working on 32GB and 64GB PCI-E SSD. As per Engadget, the 32GB SSD Drive will be priced around 157 USD and the 64GB SSD Drive will be priced around 313 USD.

Ya, its also a matter to think when you are getting a computer at the price of a SSD Device. But still it is going to have advanced benefits for Eee PC users, who always need extra disk space.

Asus has now ventured into Cloud Computing for its Eee users. Cloud Computing has been a matter of increasing doubt these days, but is supposed to be what Google is trying to do. Cloud Computing just being like an application server tends to provide outsourcing of applications and files on external servers and services. For Netbooks, UMPCs, but also MIDs smart-phones this is of immense sense to be in place. Google has been doing the same kind in its Docs, where many users can instantaneously work on the same file.

Asus also now want to be a part of this concept of Cloud Computing and proclaims it as the “Future Technology” as per the The Eee PC News. Asus will be providing 20GB of online storage space for its Eee users, and a simple drag and drop interface for your files to download. Proving a fast wireless or 3G UMTS network for this service is certainly a good opportunity for the users to avail.

But here also comes up a point of information security, which is somewhat well handled in Google Docs, which should be focused on more to make this venture successful. Google reads well known appropriate content from their huge advertising base of their Adsense network. Asus will have to make an way out for this to be suitable for them.

As the Taiwanese DigiTimes reported, ASUS now has Eee storage and Eee Download Service. Eee already provides download files and programs and is going to support playing music and other content as soon as possible. In near future they are going to improve that service through the concept of Cloud Computing and making it more familiar to its users. But you know where the hook is? Eee download is now only for the Chinese market.

Asustek has launched yet another Eee PC-related product but this time its not in the form of a hardward but rather a web-related service which are still connected with the Eee PC netbooks.

First of these two products is the Eee Storage which is a 20GB web hard drive service that provides a drag and drop interface for transferring files between the Eee PC and a web storage servers managed by Asustek.

The other Eee PC-related service is the Eee PC Download which currently contains 3,000 free software and game titles which are being offered as free downloads to Eee PC owners. It doesn’t matter what model of the Eee PC you have, for as long as those are legit Asus Eee PC products, you can download these stuff into your units. The Eee PC Download will be initially offered to the Chinese-speaking Eee PC market. No official words yet as to when this will be available internationally.

Asus has a new device for Eee lovers, the Eee Stick. The world’s first Eee Stick is easy to use plug and play wireless controller that will bring the pleasure of playing games on your favorite Eee PC.

The Eee Stick promises the easy 3D remote features translating users´ physical hand motions into corresponding movements onscreen and providing exciting gaming enjoyment.

The Eee Stick will be bundled exclusively with certain models of the Eee PC™ and the Eee Box, along with a collection of games developed or adapted specifically for use with it. There will be a number of games that will be bundled with each Eee Stick and special Eee PC and Eee Box edition.

Theoretically the Eee Stick can operate on other PCs and gaming peripherals such as game pads and keypads, enabling users to mix and match devices in own unique playstyle.

We all know that any netbook’s, or any laptop for that matter, success depends heavily on how many hours of usage the can provide us. The Eee PC netbook series for one have been time and again trying to upgrade their battery power to provide as much usage time as possible. Last we heard, some Eee PC’s have around 4-5 hours of good usage with the 6-cell batteries.

But the standard battery that Asus supplies their EeePC are not are only options. In fact that’s the beauty of the Eee PC netbooks - they give us the freedom to modify as much hardware as possible with our units. For Eee PC  users, an 8-cell battery is currently available at eBay. This 8-cell battery can provide 8 solid hours of use and it costs $88 plus shipping cost of around $14.99 at eBay.

The said 8-cell battery was said to be compatible with the following Eee PC models:

• Asus EeePC 901 Series
• EeePC 901 12G
• EeePC 901 20G
• EeePC 901-W001
• EeePC 901-BK002X
• EeePC 901-W001
• EeePC 901-W003X
• EeePC 901-BK002XAsus EeePC 1000 Series
• EeePC 1000
• EeePC 1000-BK003
• Asus EeePC 1000H Series
• EeePC 1000H
• EeePC 1000H 20GB
• EeePC 1000H 80GB

But of course as this is a third-party Eee PC accessory, care and caution must be observed when dealing with these kind of products.

Via [Liliputing]

We all know that despite the fact that the newer models of the Eee PCs have already improved on their battery power with the use of the 6-cell battery, still 5-6 hours max of battery would not be enough for some heavy users. So Asustek is determined to improve on the Eee PCs battery life some more by introducing some new features that will give the Eee PCs “whole day” battery life and internet storage.

Likewise Asus is also looking into introducing both software and hard upgrades on a monthly basis to fill the gaps in the netbook market. This is in anticipation of the growing demand for the Eee PCs especially in the Western European countries.

Asustek will also continue working with Pegatron Technology and is said to be most satisfied with the company being the Eee PCs OEM.

No further information were provided though as reported by Digitimes regarding the new features that Asus is planning to introduce in the coming days. But we expect to hear more from these later on.