The new Eee PC’s been announced in Australia!

Specs, pricing and two guys guaranteed to make you feel lazy inside.

Specs, pricing and two guys guaranteed to make you feel lazy inside.

We were at an Asus launch event for the new Eee PC 900 yesterday. We love the little thing even more than the older model.

The new 900 series has the same footprint as the older 700 series, except the screen size has been increased from a 7in 800 x 480 model to 8.9in 1024 x 600 widescreen model. The RAM’s been increased from 512MB to 1GB, and it’s available in Windows (12GB of storage) or Linux (20GB of storage) variants.

The screen is the most noticeable (and nicest) improvement: now that it takes up the whole bezel, using the Eee PC doesn’t feel like you’re typing through a funnel. It also means you don’t have to scroll documents and web pages from side to side. And speaking of scrolling, the touchpad now responds to two fingered use much like Mac Books do. The speakers that were on the sides of the screen in the old model have been moved to the bottom of the chassis, and although we haven’t heard how they sound, it’s a safe bet that they’ll be pretty useless. Headphones, people!

And we have pricing! The 12GB version with Windows is $599, and the 20GB version with Linux is $649.

Yes, the Linux version is more expensive. Which is odd, because overseas there’s no price difference whatsoever. The working theory was that the money Asus saved on a Windows licence by providing a Linux model was spent on a larger drive.

There was a large Microsoft presence at the event. I’m not saying any more.

While we were at the event, we also heard from two young Australian adventurers -- Chris Bray and Clark Carter – who are trying to cross Victoria Island, the world's ninth largest and largely unexplored island. They’ve tried it before, while hauling 250KG of gear in a homemade wheeled kayak, and managed to get a third of the way across.

They’ve designed and built new kayaks, including new wheels built out of tractor inner tubes coated with Kevlar. They’re using Eee PCs and a satellite uplink to let everyone know how their second attempt goes. It’s largely because Eee PCs are light, solid state and consume bugger-all power, which they source from solar cells and their conventional laptops devoured on their last trip.

What they’re doing on their expedition is really very awesome. Sure, some of us go rock climbing or dirt biking or abseiling -- even I go kite surfing every now and then.

But these guys are exploring vast, uninhabited new worlds. The closest we get to that is playing an MMORPG that’s not World of Warcraft.

More on their trip at their site.