While the Eee PC is a pretty incredible little computer for the price, there's certainly room for improvement. Sure, it'd be nice if there was more RAM, a faster processor, and more money. But if you really need those things, you can go out and find a computer that sells for 3 or 4 times the price. No, what I really would like to see is a model with a larger, higher resolution screen, better battery life, and shorter battery charge times.

And apparently Asus CEO Jerry Shen agrees. It's not entirely clear at this point what those improvements will do to drive up the cost of the $400 laptop. I'm almost certain a larger screen is going to add at least $50 to the price, if not more. A higher capacity battery could easily do the same, but Asus may also be able to increase battery life by implementing power saving techniques and/or using a different processor than the 800MHz and 900MHz Celeron processors the company is currently packing into the Eee PC lineup.

[via EeeUser]

As expected, Asus had a few things to say about the future of the Eee PC platform during the company's presentation at CES today. And as expected, WiMax is the word. Wait, is that actually a word? Anyway, Asus is playing up WiMax integration with the Eee PC and other mobile devices.

But if you ask me, the most exciting news is that Asus will launch two new models of the Eee PC during the second quarter of 2008. One will have an 8.9 inch screen, which goes along with what we'd been expecting. And there will also be a model with an 8 inch screen, which comes as a complete surprise. Each model will be WiMax ready and some or all will sport higher resolution screens with 1024 x 600 pixel displays. You know, just enough to make the early adopters really really jealous.

I kind of hope the new models cost $500+ because otherwise I'm going to be sorely tempted to pick one up.

[via jkOnTheRun, whose Kevin Toefel played a key role in today's press conference]