What’s your preferred method of controlling your PC? Is it by a USB mouse/keyboard? Multi-touch on its touchscreen display? Or by voice control? If your answer was the last one, then you’ll be glad to hear that Asus is actively working on implementing voice recognition on some of its upcoming Eee-branded devices, and even has a whole team dedicated to the effort. ASUS CEO Jerry Shen has confirmed, and says that the company is closely working with third parties for this endeavor. They promise to ship these enhanced Eee PC and Eee Top products by Q3 or Q4 of this year, so look out around that time frame to see what kind of interesting stuff they manage to cook up.

Techradar via Engadget

We got an email from one of our readers that have pre-ordered the EEE Top at Amazon.com and he says that it got shipped from Amazon yesterday.

At Amazon.com it still says: “This item has not yet been released.”.

Any other users that have got their EEE Top shipped yet?

Read about EEE Top at Amazon

All-in-one PCs, like the Asus Eee Top desktops, are expected to take off this year, and as such, the 19-24-inch LCD monitor market are likely to take a hit. Market sources are cited as saying that the market for 19-24-inch LCD monitors is expected to be undermined, because of all-in-one PCs becoming more popular and more models expected to come out in the second half of this year. Once most nettops hit the $400 mark, it’s not hard to imagine this happening. If your computer already comes with a large enough screen, why would you need an external monitor? Of course, all this will still largely depend on whether companies like Asus and other all-in-one PC makers fulfill their part of selling worthy electronics for people to buy.

Via Digitimes

Got this notification from the Official Asus Eee PC Group in Facebook announcing that Amazon is now accepting pre-orders for the Eee Top. The Asus Eee Top will be available in both white and black colors, and retail for $599.99.

The Black Eee Top certainly looks sleek. I wonder when it will be available outside the U.S. I might consider getting one.

Anyway, the Facebook group also gave the following five reasons to get the Eee Top, if you’re still not convinced that it is an awesome device.

1. Slim and stylish design

2. Easy-to-use TOUCH functionality Easy Mode (Touch-friendly interface with large icons) – 4 tabs: Communication, Fun, Work and Tools Opera Touch (Touch-friendly web browser) – Grab, drag and scroll through webpages easily with your finger; access sites quickly with webpage speed-dialing; built-in RSS news feeds SoftStylus (Virtual Keyboard) – Handwriting recognition software; easy-to-use virtual keyboard; supports multiple languages

3. Perfect for multimedia enjoyment Eee Cinema (Integrated and interactive media center)- Excellent ease of use with comprehensive format compatibility; Robust media library management SRS (Premium sound and excellent manageability) – 4W embedded stereo Hi-Fi speakers; SRS premium sound system + Circle sourround headphones

4. Ideal for interactive communication Eee Cam (Fun Communication) – Doodle pictures and add fun effects; Express your emotions on Skype, MSN, ahoo and AIM with custom emotions Eee Memo (Quick and Convenient Desktop Notes) – Leave notes quickly by scribbling onto desktop ’stickies’ with your finger

5. Can be used anywhere in your home Keyboard and Mouse included

Read more at Amazon.com

For those who got attracted with the Asus Eee Top ET1602 and are having second thoughts whether to buy it or not, Slashgear has a blow-by-blow review of the said nettop, complete with unboxing video.

The review pointed out that although the Eee Top’s display maybe relatively small compared to other standard desktops, this small size can work to the portability advantage of the Eee Top. You can practically carry it anywhere in your house easily. They also emphasized the energy-saving quality of the nettop which is even economical than a standard desktop PC.

Those who are not looking for a high-quality graphics performance might find the Eee Top useful enough with its robust web browsing, office applications and media playback capabilities.

As for the Touchscreen features of the Eee Top, Slashgear pointed out that it may not be that perfect, but still pretty useful at a lower cost than HP’s touchscreen desktop PC.

For the full review of the Eee Top ET1602, check out Slashgear.

Like we told you in the previous post, it seems that Asus and MSI are in head-to-head collision in trying to clobber up the nettop/all-around-touchscreen-PC market. Although, we’ve already seen about this Asus touchscreen Eee Top a long time ago, it is only now that Asus will be officially announcing it. While MSI has launched three new Touchscreen all-in-one nettop, Asustek for its part will be releasing only two new models of its Eee Top – the ET1603 and ET1602.

Like we told you before, the only difference between these two nettop is in the graphics arena. The ET1603 has an ATI HD3450 graphics card, while the ET1602 comes only with the most basic of these graphic cards. In addition, the ET1603 has a battery pack while the ET1602 does not have it. Nonetheless, both Asus nettops come in 15.9-inch touchscreen display, preloaded with Microsoft Windows XP, a 1.6GHz Atom processor, 160GB HD, 1GB DRAM, Wi-Fi 802.11 n and a built-in 1.3 megapixel web camera.

And like all other Asus announcement, these two nettops are currently unpriced and we have yet to find out how much they will retail.

Remember that EEE-branded nettop PC which Asus introduced a couple of months ago? Well, it looks like Asus has quietly released said PC dubbed Eee PC Top and it even comes with a multi-touch screen? Although there is no official announcement yet made by Asus, the Eee PC Top seems to have shipped already as evidenced by a product page at play.com

The said Eee TOP is touchscreen device which features the ff:

• Windows XP OS
• 1.6GHz Intel ATOM CPU
• Intel 945GSE ICH7M Chipset
• 1GB RAM
• 15.6-inch display (16:10 Wide Panel)
• 160GB HDD
• Single Touch Panel
• 1.3MP web cam
• WLAN – WIFI
• varous ports

The Asus Eee Top Touch Screen PC is listed for pre-order at Clove Technology UK. It retails for $574.

via Blogeee.net