As mentioned earlier today, Asus is preparing to launch a mini-notebook with a 10.2 inch screen that will not be part of the Eee PC lineup. Now French site Blogeee has what appear to be exclusive pictures of the upcoming laptop, dubbed the Asus N10.

Here’s what I can glean from the images:

1. The Eee PC branding is nowhere to be seen.
2. The PC has an attractive silver and black case, with a rather glossy looking lid. It remains to be seen whether this is just a cosmetic change, or whether the build quality has been affected (the N10 bears a tiny resemblance to the HP Mini-Note, which is the strudiest feeling netbook I’ve used so far).
3. I spot a VGA port, an Ethernet, a card reader, and 3 USB ports, a webcam. There’s also another port on the right side that I can’t quite make out.

This laptop is expected to cost somewhere between $477 and $637 and could be available in September.

DigiTimes reports that Asus is preparing a notebook with a 10.2 inch display, an Intel Atom CPU, and hard drives with up to 320GB of storage capacity. And these notebooks will not bear the Eee PC name. Instead, they’ll be called the Asus N-series.

For a company that’s already done a lot to dillute the Eee PC brand name by releasing over a dozen laptops with similar names, the move seems a bit odd. The N-series will reportedly start at NT$15000 or about $479 US, which puts these computers squarely in Eee PC territory when it comes to both price and size. The only thigns I can see that really would really set these laptopss apart are the facts that they run Windows Vista and have high capacity hard drives (which might be part of the reason they run Windows Vista — Microsoft is only granting low cost laptop makers the right to use Windows XP on devices with slower processors and smaller hard drives).

If DigiTimes is correct, the N-series should be available in September.

[via Register Hardware]