The new Eee PC 900 with an 8.9-inch screen sold out within hours of its launch in Hong Kong, an Asustek executive said Monday.

A line of people had formed a few hours before the first store selling the new Eee PC 900 opened last Friday, and over 1,000 of the small laptops went quickly, said Jose Liao, a product manager at Asustek during a news conference in Taipei.

The new Eee PC 900 is slightly bigger and more expensive than the first version, the Eee PC 701, which has a 7-inch screen. The Eee PC 900 also sports a 1.3-megapixel camera and 12G-byte or 20G-byte solid-state disk drive (SSD), an upgrade over the original Eee PC 701, which has a 0.3-megapixel Web cam and SSDs as big as 8G-bytes. The 900 model also carries an oversized multi-touch trackpad. Both devices weigh less than a kilogram.

The Eee PC 900 also went on sale online at Yahoo in Hong Kong, again selling out within hours, Asustek executives said.

Asustek is selling two main configurations of the Eee PC 900, one with Microsoft's Windows XP OS and the other with a Linux OS. The two are identical in price, NT$15,988 (US$528) in Taiwan. Most of their components are also the same, including built in 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi connectivity, 4-cell batteries that can last up to 3.5 hours and 1G-byte of DDR2 DRAM (double data rate, second generation dynamic RAM).

The main difference between the XP and Linux Eee PC 900s is the size of the SSD. Users will gain more space for their songs, photos and other data on the Linux Eee PC 900, which carries a 20G-byte SSD. The XP version carries a 12G-byte SSD.

Asustek also launched its first HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) add on card designed for the Eee PC. The card ensures users can tap into mobile broadband from just about anywhere 3G (third generation telecommunications) mobile phone coverage is offered.