Asus might have lost the netbook war to Acer, but it is fighting back as far as the keyboard PC wars are concerned. With the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) still a day away in Vegas, the geeky and gadgetry announcements are coming thick and fast. We've already got a taster of the new AMD Yukon platform and now we have the weirdest of wonderful concepts from Asus. The Eee Keyboard PC.

OK, hands up, I know that the whole idea of a PC stuffed inside a keyboard casing is not exactly new. Heck I can recall such things from back in the eighties, unless my brain has finally become nothing more than a hunk of silly putty. The point being, all of those keyboard PCs were, well, pants.

The Asus Eee PC Keyboard looks like it could be different. Not least because the time is right for such a beast to actually have a place in the living room rather than be something confined to the nerd back bedroom.

First looks suggest a rather Apple inspired design, with that silver metal casing and the inset dark full QWERTY keys. Then there is the integrated 5 inch touchscreen display that hints at the fully functional PC contained within this thing of beauty. Word is that this, while being a prototype, is actually pretty close to the finished product. Asus is keeping quiet regarding potential costs or release dates, but it does look likely to come complete with a wireless HDMI capability for streaming high quality video around the house. The ultra-wideband wireless HDMI carries more than just entertainment value of course, it also enables any compatible HD television set to be used as a monitor for your computing activity. Neat.

Really, very neat indeed.