Looking to make the best of the year’s first major industry event, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Asus announced the presentation of its next generation EeePC netbook, also a demonstration of Windows 7 running on netbooks, a multi-touch EeePC  and even a 4.3 inch screen PC that can be installed to run inside a regular notebook.

The company was the first to introduce touchscreens to netbooks about two years ago and it seems that with its new initiative Asus is looking to keep the number one spot, as other companies are barely stepping into this segment. The two upcoming releases, the 8.9 inch EeePc T91 and the 10 inch EeePC T101H are the first netbooks ever with a swivel screen – similar to the format presented by the tablet PCs a few years ago, an idea released and promoted during 2001’s Comdex, which never really caught on to become a popular major segment. Still, Asus’ products will be significantly cheaper than tablet PCs.

"This new generation of netbooks actually is a multi-touch network," noted ASUS Chief Executive and Chairman Jonney Shih, adding that "It's the superset of the original tablet PC."

The T91 features an Intel Atom Z520 processor (Silverthorne core), and the 10” T101H has the N270 chip with Diamondville core. The devices run on Windows XP, and Microsoft, looking to turn this into a long term partnership, was also present at the show, showing an Asus EeePC netbook running on Windows 7 Ultimate. "We're deeply partnered with Asus on Windows 7," explained David Fester, general marketing manager at Microsoft's OEM division, during a news conference ahead of the International CES, which is scheduled to begin this Thursday.

The company will also present other products, which may not enter production any time soon. One of them is the EeePC N20, the company’s first multitouch netbook. Unfortunately, its complicated interface and multitouch application crashed several times during the presentation, leaving out many details about its functionality and applicability. Another first was the Eee Keyboard, which is a compact keyboard that has a fully functional PC inside and a 5 inch touchpad. The company presented this device as the “first wireless media center with integrated ultra-wideband HDMI” and it will enable users to connect to all sorts of existing displays, such as TVs. Asus also demonstrated the potential of a future notebook with a 4.3 inch touchscreen instead of a touchpad, which will be able to run display features like email and video decoding, which will be transferable to the larger screen. The company claims that this technology could keep a notebook running for about 12 hours, considering that users will handle some of their activities on the 4.3 inch screen.

Asus decided to save for the end of the press conference a video presenting its vision for the future: a concept PC, a compact folding notebook, which will be able to fold into three different form factors in order to connect with other fold notebooks and enable screen sharing.