Forbes Asia has chosen the Asus Eee PC as the product of the year for 2008. This isn’t the first time a publication has given the Eee PC this title, but it’s still a sort of funny award, since there are actually more than a dozen netbooks wearing the Eee cC brand name.

Still, there’s no question that Asus deserves a lot of the credit for launching the netbook craze. The Asus Eee PC 701 was the first consumer oriented netbook to hit Asia, Europe, and the US in 2007. And the design decisions that went into that model influenced companies including MSI, HP, Acer, Dell, and Lenovo. Like the Eee PC line of netbooks, most low cost, mini-laptops available today have 7 to 10 inch displays and many are available with Windows XP or Linux as options.

via Eee PC.net

UK men’s magazine Stuff has put out its list of the top gadgets of the year. And at the top of the list is the Eee PC 901. The tiny laptop beat out the iPhone 3G, Xbox 360, and PS3 to win.

The reasoning is a bit odd, if you ask me. Stuff says the Eee PC helped spark the netbook revolution, which is absolutely true. But it was the original Eee PC 4G 701 that did that. The 901 is certainly one of the more attractive current generation netbooks. But it’s also one of the more expensive. And the market’s flooded with laptops that have similar specs: an 8.9 inch display and 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU with a weight under 3 pounds.

Still, if Stuff felt it would be silly to give an award to the cheaper 701 now that it looks so outdated less than a year after release, I suppose the next best thing is to bestow the honor on its successor. Personally, I prefer the Eee PC 1000 series, which has a larger, easier to use keyboard.

The iPhone 3G did win the magazine’s reader’s choice award.