Asustek to offer touch-panel Eee PCs?

While the Web swoons over news of Apple's latest $800 market entry, Asustek is planning to launch touchscreen Eee PCs in the first quarter of 2009, which the company expects will help drive sales further, according to Samson Hu, general manager of Eee PC business at Asustek, by way of DigiTimes.

According to the report, Asustek has not yet decided details of the models which will be updated, but will reach a decision based on market demand. The company expects to showcase the products during CES 2009.

Asustek is also planning the launch of dual-core Atom-based netbooks as soon as Intel begins shipping the CPUs, but Intel hasn't yet confirmed when this will happen.

If that's not enough, Asustek president Jerry Shen also announced plans for a model priced less than NT$10,000, or $307 USD, during 2009.

UPDATE 10:00am: More news in the lightweight category, Toshiba has announced its svelte Tecra R10, its lightest Portégé ever.

UPDATE 10:10am: Fellow ZDNet blogger Dancho Danchev writes that Asus accidentally shipped malware with its Eee Box PCs.