The press conference started and Asus wasted no time. The WiMAX enabled Eee PC that I talked about earlier is real! (According to Engadget, who is/was live blogging the event.) Here are the big announcements

• There will be an Eee PC with WiMAX (Sorry, just had to say that again.)
• WiMAX will be rolled out this year and roll out will continue in future years.
• Base price for WiMAX enabled notebooks is going to be $999, but thats not what the Eee with WiMAX will cost (does that mean that the Eee will cost more than other WiMAX notebooks???)
• New Eee PC models will be introduced with 8 and 9 (well, 8.9 technically) inch screens

Thats all we know so far, but thats still a lot of news for one press conference.

Of course, WiMAX is a perfect companion for the Eee PC because of the Eee’s portability, but the pricing is yet to be announced, which could seriously hurt the appeal of a WiMAX Eee PC. On the other hand, with the new models with bigger screen sizes, many people may be willing to pay more for an Eee PC, since they can use it for more standard laptop tasks. In fact, the bigger screens might even be the more important part of this announcement.

Right now, the news looks great for Linux, but there was one worry-some slide that Engadget posted. One of the bullet points suggests that Asus may start to offer Windows on the Eee. Still, the disadvantages of Windows on the Eee PC that I have discussed before (cost, limited resources) should deter consumers from choosing Windows over Linux. In the end, as long as offering Windows has no effect on the Linux side of the Eee, I really can’t complain.

An interesting piece of news from Asus’s press conference is that the Eee PC is their “most successful product ever,” according to Engadget. This is potentially huge news for Linux on two levels.

First, Asus is no small company. While they may not be well known to many people, if you have ever been in the market for a new motherboard, you know the name Asus. For a company of this size, saying a product is the most successful product ever is no small statement. Granted, motherboards are rarely “successful,” but they sell other products too. Hopefully, the huge success of the Eee PC will cause Asus to try using Linux on more devices. It already appears that they are open to this, since they have put a technology called Splashtop (or ExpressGate), which is a fast-booting Linux system, on some of their motherboards, but this success should make them even more anxious to try out Linux on more devices.

(Note: I am sure someone is going to say “but it was the hardware that made the Eee PC sell.” That may be true, but do you think that Windows would run as well as Linux on a device with such limited resources? Also, without Linux, the price would have been higher.)

Second, the buzz the Asus Eee PC will (or at least should) get for announcing a WiMAX equipped model and being called the most successful product ever by Asus should help it to sell even more units. See the first point again.