Bob McCarty Writes

If you haven’t heard yet, the Asus Eee 4G 7″ Micro Laptop PC is stirring up a lot of buzz in the tech sector. Why? Because it’s priced at $399 and fills a websurfing-only niche the big-boy computer marketers have, to date, left void.

The $399 version of the Asus Eee, which features a 900 MHz Intel Celeron Processor, 512 MB RAM, 4 GB Hard Drive, a webcam and Linux preloaded, is available in a half-dozen colors, including black, pearl white (shown), pink, green and sky blue. Not surprisingly, it is rumored to be the top-selling laptop on Amazon at this time, though I did not confirm that.

To see how rugged and/or durable the Asus Eee is, head over to Gottabemobile and watch a video of some PC testers torturing one. By the way, the video shows the Asus Eee “can stand up to quite a bit of punishment.”

Understandably, as Instapundit reports, “SONY IS SCARED of the Asus Eee PC, for fear that it will cause consumers to realize that — given how powerful even cheap computers are now, and given that most computers are mostly used for websurfing and email – it may cause a race to the bottom in prices, instead of a race for expensive new features of the sort Sony prefers.”

* * *

UPDATE: Gadgetell reports this morning Rumor: Asus set to announce the 9-inch Eee, dubbed the Eee PC 900 that is expected to sell for around $600.