Asus have just announced a new Eee PC that will cost $900, the S101. It will have the same 1.6GHz Atom processor from Intel that the 901 and 1000 have. It will also have a 10.2 inch LED backlit screen, the 945GME chipset and a 64GB solid state drive. It’s also going to be slim, and is likely to be something akin to the Macbook Air, it was even revealed in an envelope like the Air was!

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This all sounds promising, but as each successive version of the Eee PC has been released, it’s got ever closer to the pricing of a full scale laptop, making it harder and harder to justify over the incredible price of the original 7inch version which sat at around £200 ($400). The 900 series really was standing pretty close to the low end laptop pricing. This latest announced version puts it squarely in the realm of full laptop prices, and this could be a problem.

The Atom that powers this machine may look somewhat underpowered when you look at what a typical $900 laptop carries these days. In fact a quick look on Dell’s website at a similarly priced laptop reveals a Pentium Dual Core at 1.73GHz with a 17in screen and a Nvidia GeForce Go 8600M. I grant you this isn’t exactly as portable as the new Eee PC, but the spec carries a lot more for the money.

The S101 looks set to be another niche product, a budget ultra portable, but with a spec that appears less powerful than full sized laptops at the same price, the real question with the Eee PC is: will it sell? or have Asus gone a bit too far away from the Eee PC concept and left themselves stranded among heavy hitting specs?