One of the coolest things about the tiny Eee PC is that it's extraordinarily hackable. You wouldn't think you could fit so much junk inside of its lilliputian case, but hundreds of people have added touchscrens, Bluetooth, additional memory, and other components to their Eee PC units. If you're not an expert with a soldering iron, or if you've got better things to do with your time than mod your own Eee PC to perfection, one hacker has a proposition: Buy his modded Eee PC on eBay -- for $3000, give or take $2000.

The starting bid is set at $2800, and the auction has a Buy it Now price of $3200. So what do you get for your money?

• 40GB solid state memory (8GB solid state drive that shipped with the unit and 32GB of additional storage)
• 2GB of RAM (the unit originally shipped with 1GB)
  
• 802.11 a/b/g/draft n (originally had b/g)
• GPS
  
• 7 inch touchscreen
• Air Play for transmitting audio to an FM radio
• Custom heatsink to deal with additional heat from overclocking
• Bluetooth adapter
• 2 internal USB hubs for connecting all the internal goodies
• Windows XP SP3 plus a hacked video driver to display 1024 x 768 screen resolution (although I wouldn't recommend using this on a day to day basis, as it makes the fonts look horrible)

Apparently the laptop now weighs "less than 3.5 pounds," which is nearly double the unit's original weight. You can find more pictures at the seller's blog.

So far this little auction has gotten a lot of attention, but hasn't attracted a single bit yet. Because to be perfectly honest, if you're willing to spend that kind of money on a light weight ultraportable, you might as well pick up a Macbook Air which has a far more powerful processor. The Eee PC is still stuck with a 900MHz Celeron processor. And no matter how much you overclock it, it's not going to perform like a dual core CPU.

[via Gizmodo]

Want an Eee PC 900 but don't want to wait until May 12th for Asus to begin selling the laptop in the US? There's always eBay. As AsusEeeBlog points out, the updated Eee PC is already showing up on the auction site.

It looks like you should be able to pick one up for around $650, plus a hefty shipping fee since the computer will be coming from Hong Kong or another exotic location. One seller seems to be located in Russia. It's not entirely clear how each seller got their hands on the latest Eee PC, which has not yet been released in most countries.

Of course, you could save a few bucks by waiting for the official European or US launch.

Want to get a bit more battery life out of your Eee PC? The current generation of batteries come in 4400 and 5200 mAh varieties, which tend to die after 2-3 hours of use. Asus plans to sell a 6-cell, 7800 mAh extended battery soon, which should give you a bit more power. But if you don't feel like waiting for Asus to begin selling extended batteries, you can pick a 3rd party battery on eBay today. Best of all, there are already 3rd party batteries with capacities up to 10400 mAh, which is reportedly enough juice to power an Eee PC for nearly 5 hours.

Asus hasn't announced pricing on its extended batteries yet, but plans to charge $99 for a replacement 4-cell battery. So it's probably a safe bet that the 6-cell version will cost a bit more. These 3rd party 10400 mAh batteries, on the other hand are available for about $64. They ship from China, so you may have to wait a little while to receive your package.

Note that the extended battery does jut out from the back of your computer, which will probably make it hard to fit your Eee PC in its slipcover or other tight-fitting case. But that seems like a small price to pay for a battery that can double your time away from a wall socket.