Eee PC 1218 wins awards, blows cover

Looks like there's a brand-new Eee PC on the horizon -- not that Asus has bothered telling us humble journos. The existence of the fabulous-looking Eee PC 1218 was only made public on the company's design Web site -- a forum for listing the various awards bestowed upon its products, in this case a red dot award.

Oddly, red dot hasn't announced its 2010 winners yet, so Asus might have jumped the gun, but its site has some pretty terrible low-resolution photos -- surprising since it's design-led. But we can just about make out a MacBook Air-style aluminium body shell that's finished in either silver or black.

The Web site says the Eee PC 1218 has a "unique internal layout" which allows for a "full array" of ports to be positioned at the rear of the device. As a result, the front and sides of the netbook are smooth and uncluttered.

A closer look at the back end reveals three USB ports, Ethernet, headphone and microphone jacks, plus an HDMI video output port, so you can feed the visuals from the screen (no, we don't know how large it is yet) to an external display.

No other technical details have been released, but we reckon this one could be pretty special. We're busy badgering Asus for more pics and info. In the meantime, havea squiz at our photo gallery for a closer look.