Netbook pioneer Asus will introduce a new version of its Eee PC (left) next year for just $200, says company president Jerry Shen. The company has also teamed up with Intel to launch a new website, intended to bring about the "world's first community-designed PCs."

(Click here for a slightly larger view of the original EEE PC)

Asus is credited with touching off the netbook explosion with its Eee PC (above), tipped to cost just $200 when it was first shown off by company officials in June 2007. The device eventually shipped for $400 in Nov. 2007, with a seven-inch screen, a 900MHz Celeron processor, and the Linux operating system.

Since then, the company has released a bewildering variety of Eee netbooks. For example, March 2008 brought the EEE PC 900, still with a Celeron CPU but stepping up to a nine-inch screen. In June, Asus announced the Eee PC 901 and 1000, with Intel Atom N270 processors plus nine- and 10-inch screens, respectively.

The Asus PCS101 "fashion-forward" netbook
(Click for further information)
Eee PCs offer a variety of screen sizes and hard disk drives as large as 160GB. Most recently, Asus released the


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