Now that the Eee PC 900 is all official like, we know for certain that it does not have a touchscreen display. It’s got a nifty new touchpad that supports two-finger gestures. But you can poke at the screen all you like. All that’ll happen is that you’ll scratch it and possibly break it.
But we’ve been hearing rumors for months that Asus had plans to add a touchscreen. Honestly, I don’t see the point in adding a touchscreen to the Eee PC unless you redesign the laptop display so that it can fold over into tablet mode. The folks behind most of these rumors are the reporters at DigiTimes, who seem to have a source in the touchpanel display industry who keeps leaking information. DigiTimes is frequently right when they make predictions about next generation devices like the Eee PC 900. But when it comes to the touchscreen, they haven’t been right yet.
Still, they’re insisting that a touchscreen Eee PC is coming later this year. And since it seems likely that Asus will produce at least one more model of the Eee PC once Intel’s new Atom processor is out, we suppose it’s possible they could also squeeze a new display option into the case.
Of course, if you really want a touchscreen, you can probably pick one up off of eBay and install it yourself.