Asus has launched its latest addition to the Eee PC series of netbooks, the Sirocco, at a glamorous event in a boutique hotel in Taipei, Taiwan with Pocket-lint in attendance. The event is intended to drum up some excitement for what many people believe is a doomed market.  

This is Asus’ second fashion netbook following the Karim Rashid Collection, and this time around we’re not just looking at another pretty netbook, the specifications have also been given a nice little bump.

The slogan for the Sirocco is "making waves" and it goes with a new chassis that has a soft to the touch rubber coating with a wave shaped pattern. This not only makes the Sirocco look unusual, but it also makes it very fingerprint resistant with the added benefit of having a nonslip surface. Asus will offer the Sirocco in three different colours, gold, purple and “angel skin” - a light pink.

On the inside, the specifications have been spruced up and now include a dual-core Atom N550 processor, which Asus claims will boost the performance by about 20 per cent compared to a netbook with a single-core processor.

Asus has also added what we think is a first for a netbook, namely Bluetooth 3.0 support. It’s questionable how useful this is at the moment though, as there are only a couple of smartphones and some notebooks that currently support the faster Bluetooth file transfer standard.

At 1.25kg and 36mm at its thickest point, the Sirocco isn’t quite as svelte as the Karim Rashid Collection models, but it’s on a par with most other netbooks.

If all the above wasn’t enough to get you excited, Asus has also included a new version of its Express Gate instant on OS, this time with a “cloud” moniker stuck on at the end. This means that many of the applications that are part of Express Gate are now located online and, as such, require Internet access to work. You do, of course, also get a full version of Windows 7 Home Starter Edition as well.

The Eee PC Sirocco should be on sale now in Euroland for about 349 Euro, although we haven’t managed to confirm the UK pricing as yet.