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Asus plans to start shipping the Eee PC X101 netbook in September. First introduced in May, the X101 will be one of the cheapest 10 inch netbooks ever to hit the market.

The netbook has a 1.33 GHz Intel Atom N435 low power processor, a low capacity 3 cell battery, and an 8GB solid state drive. The mini-laptop also runs the MeeGo Linux operating system, which means there’s no Windows license fee. Those features are all designed to help keep costs low. Asus plans to sell the Eee PC X101 for about $200 in the US.

Eee PC.it noticed that a handful of US retailers have started taking pre-orders. PCSuperStore shows a $199.73 price tag, while Directron is already taking pre-orders for $209.99, although my contact at Asus tells me the computer won’t ship in the States until early September.

I got a chance to check out a pre-release model recently, although it wasn’t running MeeGo at the time. The computer certainly looks and feels cheap, but that’s because it is. On the bright side, it’s also fairly thin and light and it has a decent keyboard.