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After ASUS’ press conference we stuck around for some alone time with the new touch enabled Eee PCs. While both the models were fairly pre-production (ASUS says they won’t hit market for a few months) we still were able to toy around with the touchscreens and get some decent hands-on time with the convertible netbooks.

Eee PC T91

The 8.9 inch T91 is one of the most compact Eee PCs we have seen to date and at an inch thick and 2 pounds it is smaller and lighter than the Eee PC 901. The model on display had a black glossy lid with the usual Eee branding on the center.

Under the hood is a pretty compact keyboard, but with different feeling keys than we have seen on any of the Eee PCs. In fact the keyboard is more akin to that on the ASUS N10. The trackpad was fairly wide for an 8.9 inch netbook from ASUS.

Of course, the real appeal here is the convertible touchscreen. The 180 degree rotatable hinge swivels the screen around; it did feel a bit wobbly but given the amount of people that had their paws on the prototype we will let this slide for now and hope the final product feels durable.

What is not present on the T91 is an accelerometer that would automatically rotate the screen when in tablet mode. Unlike the Convertible Classmate PC it will not rotate when put in a vertical position. To boot, there is no external button to rotate the screen orientation. We assume ASUS will have a software stack on the tablets that will allow for rotating.

The actual responsiveness of the 1024 x 600 resolution display to finger input was solid. We didn’t have to press too hard to open Windows Media Player from the desktop or move through the Start menu. We hope to get some more time during the show with a unit with closer to touch implementation. Apparently a stylus will be included but we didn’t get to test that.

The T91 was running Intel’s Atom Z520 processor with Windows XP. The T91 will also have a TV tuner and GPS. Check out the video below of the T91 in action.