We'd like to say we're a little more surprised by some news from Asus today concerning a handful of new products they've got coming to American shores, but from the looks of things we've seen almost all of them. First up -- just as hoped for -- the company is bringing the Nova P22 desktop our way, a Core 2 Duo-based number which should please the style conscious without breaking the bank (at its $799 price tag). Also headed this way is the $399 R700 GPS navigator that we saw for Europe recently, a 4.3-inch touchscreen-based nav unit with a petite 1.3-cm-thick (er, thin) footprint, and a bunch of media playin', Bluetoothin' functions that will make you weak in the knees. Also announced for the US is the U2 laptop (here known as the U2E), a Core Duo ULV-based computer, coupled with a 32GB SSD -- which cuts down on the energy-sucking without sacrificing performance (or so they say). There was one new product in the PR that we haven't seen: the 24-inch widescreen MK241, which features HDMI support, a built-in webcam, microphone, and speakers, though no word on price or release date. Check the read links for a slightly more detailed look.

[Via jkkmobile]

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Looks like Samsung has gone and whipped up a 17-inch laptop of its own to appease the multimedia lovers out there, but for folks lookin' to get their game on, we doubt you'll find much to love here. The 7-pound R700 sports an all-black motif that's oh-so-Samsung, and features a 1,440 x 900 resolution panel, NVIDIA's GeForce 8400 GS, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, dual-layer DVD burner, built-in HDMI port, gigabit Ethernet, 802.11a/b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 and a 7-in-1 multicard reader to handle all your flash cards. Oddly enough, we're not told what type(s) of processors will be available here, but we do know the machine will come stocked with Windows Vista Home Premium when it hits the market in February for around $970.

[Via Laptops Blog]

We first got to know the Asus R300 and R700 GPS units back in September, but now Asus is finally ready to spill the rest of the sordid details on its well-specced R700 model. The Asus R700 runs a 4.3-inch touchscreen, with RDS / TMC traffic info, a hands-free Bluetooth kit, microSD port and all the trimmings inherent in Windows CE 5.0 -- including a lovable collection of media playback codecs. There's text-to-speech built in for reading street names, but the real twist comes from the ability to vocalize your text messages over Bluetooth. This model will be hitting Europe in December with a set of 3D maps and iGO 8 software for 400-500 Euro ($586-$732 US).

[Via NaviGadget]

Asus has been getting into all kinds of wild activity as of late, from its Eee ultra-cheap laptop, to wooden concept computers, and of course, entry into the GPS market. Well, hot on the heels of the R600 (the company's first foray into navigation) comes the R300 and R700, two new GPS / PMPs that do just about what you'd expect, and maybe a little bit more. The R300 has a 3.5-inch touchscreen, a 400MHz Samsung CPU, 128MB of RAM, FM tuner, Bluetooth 2.0, can playback MP3, WMA, AAC audio and MPEG-4, H.263 video, and sports a microSD slot. The R700 has a larger, 4.3-inch touchscreen, and an integrated RDS-TMC traffic receiver, though otherwise the specs are pretty much the same as the R300. No word on price, but the units are expected to arrive sometime in November, at least in Europe.

[Via Unwired View]

Egads, the industry's move to DisplayPort is hotting up with AMD announcing ATI Radeon graphics processors supporting DisplayPort 1.1 in the "early 2008 timeframe." Just in time to support Samsung's new 30-inch panel scheduled to see production in Q2 2008. In fact, AMD just completed successful interoperability testing of their presumably "next-generation graphics processor" toting a native DisplayPort 1.1 transmitter. Taking a deeper look then into those analyst notes issued last week, we can expect the new interface to appear in ATI's Shanghai-class, R700 FireGL graphics cards. Now all we need is an official announcement from some of the PC boys are we're good to go. Yeah, we're looking at you Dell.

[Via I4U News]