When I met with Nicholas Negroponte not long ago, he laughed at the coverage he'd received through the past few years, including our own portrayal of Intel chairman Craig Barrett and him as Beavis and Butthead. Far more hurtful have been the admonitions of his own former staffers who feel he has mismanaged the OLPC project. Nearly every one of the original staff had abandoned the project by 2008, often in disgust. But Negroponte remains stalwart: "My elephant skin is the thickness of steel," he told me. Perhaps his resistance to criticism has been one of the project's fatal flaws.

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When the Asus Eee came out, the market was simple. There was only one tiny, cheap laptop so you knew which one was for you. That was less than a year ago, but things move quickly in the tech world. Now it's tough to keep up with the major brands offering mini-notebooks, let alone every no-name knockoff (where you may still find the better deals and innovation ). Luckily, Liliputing has created a comprehensive list of these machines so it's easy to compare stats and prices. And there were a few that even we hadn't heard about.

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The shiny brown machine in the photo there is apparently the top-of-the-range Eee PC S101 that was shown in Asus' leaked presentation last month. It looks just a little bigger than the white 901 model next to it, and it will be about 2.2cm deep, have a 10.1-inch LED-lit LCD, and have an Intel Atom purring away inside. What makes it "ultimate" is presumably in part its SSD: it'll come with either a 32GB or 64GB solid-state drive, and that's why the two models will cost around US$699 and US$899 when available in October. And they may not carry the "Eee" label, or so the rumour goes. [PChome.tw]

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It shouldn't be a surprise, really, as Asus has already whored the Eee brand strength to computer peripherals and even a television, but in a recent presentation the company revealed a sort of USDA computer pyramid prescribing an Eee for every class of buyer. And whether or not the majority of these 23 models are cheap, tiny laptops (unlikely) or the pyramid represents the Eee branding hitting all Asus laptops (a bit more likely), the whole line is looking like a confusing mess to consumers who just heard about the Eee for the first time. [Engadget China via Engadget]

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Asus's EeePC 901 has already proved itself very hackable but Buffalo's newest product won't require much modding: 32GB or 64GB replacement SSD's. Not much more to say, apart from the obvious: more storage, more impact resilient, longer battery life. The best bit? The 32GB SHD-EP9M32G is a mere US$156, and the 64GB SHD-EP9M64G an equally neat US$316. Available in Japan at first, mid-September.

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MSI is jumping the gun with its 6-cell version of the Wind laptop. Originally slated for a September release, the MSI Wind is currently available at Mwave.com. Those battery shortages that threatened to keep the model off shelves until September never materialised. The US$570 asking price is US$70 more than what MSI had originally promised, but my Gizmodo brethren tell me that even with the hike, the pricing is pretty much in line with others in this space (although it is a bit more than what you can find the comparable Eee PC 1000H going for today). [Lilliputing]

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Still not content with keeping the Eee name only on their successful (but ballooning) line of netbooks, this unofficial but legit-looking crew of peripherals joins the Eee Box, Eee TV, Eee Monitor and Eee Enema (spot the outlier!) in further desecrating the brand. Included is an external hard disk with a fold-out USB connector, an optical drive and a 3G data connection card--which put together make up for most netbooks' feature shortcomings. No release details but we'll keep an Eee Eye out, if we can make sense of the whole mess. [Eee PC News via Laptop]

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I've thought for awhile that the key to selling the super cheap yet very underpowered sub-notebooks that are exploding all over the place would be carrier subsidisation, and now a carrier in Japan is taking the the idea and running with it, selling the Eee PC 701 for less than US$1 American with a data plan contract, much like how we get mobile phones. These devices often feature 4G—in this case with an external wireless modem—networking, which means you get an always-on Internet connection for your tiny laptop for less than US$65 a month. American carriers, are you paying attention? [JK On The Run, via Liliputing]

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If we didn't know that this was done by a user, we'd swear that this touchscreen Eee PC was made by Asus themselves. The video shows a super sensitive and responsive screen, flicking quickly up and down on a web page with either the finger or stylus. On a laptop of 10-inches or smaller--what we like to call "tardtops"--a touchscreen fits just perfectly. Why get a Kindle when you have a light, touchscreen laptop that can be carried with you and supports lots of colours? Nice work jkkmobile. [JKKMobile]

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The mini-notebook market is heating up, with today bringing stats and shots of the Asus's latest Eee PC with it's tiny screen and keys that might work with normal hands. Then later, we get news of a leak about Everex, Asus's competitor in this market, about its next Cloudbooks, including one with a 10.2-inch screen and 3G connectivity, and another with an 8.9-inch screen and WiMAX.

No definite word on if they'll be using Intel's Atom processors or competitors from Via, or if they'll be XP or Linux machines, but the makers of the reference design, FIC, would confirm a screen resolution on the 10.2-inch model at 1024x600. It will also feature a 1.3-Megapixel camera, 2GB RAM, card reader, dual USB 2.0, and an express card slot.

Less details are known of the 8.9-inch model, though the specs should be similar, including resolution. The devices might be subsidized by 3G carriers like AT&T or Sprint -- if they ever hit the US shores, which there's no promise of.

We liked the Cloudbooks we've seen so far, and we can't wait to see if a slightly larger model will actually be usable for those of us with big, bear-like hands. [PC Advisor, via Slashgear]