Seems like all of the big companies are focusing on voice. There’s the iPod shuffle of course, the iLane that reads email etc. It’s like they all started watching Knight Rider and fell in love with the idea of gadgets talking as well as users talking to their gadgets. In the end we may all want our gadgets and ourselves to STFU, but for now there’s a lot of jibber-jabber going on.

Add Asus to the list of those who want voice recognition devices. They want “an end to the keyboard.” And so a bunch of Eee products will soon be introduced with voice recognition capabilities later this year.

Asus’s Fold/Unfold concept that they showed off at CES is actually going to be released, according to Asus CEO Jerry Shen. The notebook will cost somewhere between $1,000 and $1,500. The Fold/Unfold (Lets hope it gets a better name) should arrive around September or October 2009.

The design maximizes space for the keyboard and trackpad by sliding the keyboard forward over the trackpad when the laptop’s closed, and sliding back to reveal it when open. It’s an interesting development given the size limitations of netbooks while wanting to maximize keyboard space.

Anyone who owns a TV, knows how to read, or listens to the radio knows that the global economy sucks today and will continue to be poor for most of 2009 and possibly into 2010 depending on whom you listen to. That means that all sorts of retailers are having a hard time with many of the largest electronics and computer firms announcing major losses and layoffs.

Despite the poor economy one sector of the computer market is continuing to grow impressively is the netbook market. The reason for the continued growth of the netbook market is simple — the machines are cheap. The average netbook sells for under $400 and offers portability and battery life that makes working on the road less of a chore for many users.

Battery life? Who needs it when you have 12GB of RAM, 1TB of HDD a 1GB GeForce GTX 260M (or two if you desire), a Blu-ray Drive and a 17″ screen? That seems to be the question that Asus is posing here. Asus really pulled out all the stops with its newest gaming laptop, the G71gx.

They have our attention. Yes, it’s a true desktop in laptop form. No word on price or availability yet, so you have some time to save up. So what if toting this thing around will kill your back, and who cares if it has a battery life of about 5 minutes. We’re talking power!

At the recently concluded CeBIT expo in Germany Asus introduced a new line of energy-efficient LCD monitors as well as their EzLink series - the first wireless monitor from the company. Users will need to hook up their displays using a Wireless Host Controller Interface (WHCI) or Wireless USB Host Wire Adapter (HWA).

Word is that there isn’t any noticeable degradation of quality compared to conventional wired displays, which is welcome news. Both the VH192C and VH196 are energy-efficient models that look out for the environment and are manufactured using low levels of mercury and just a few lamps. The end result is a power savings of over 20%.

At CES 2009 in January I used a netbook, the MSI Wind U100, exclusively at the show. It didn’t take long to realize that the business world today still expects you to have access to an optical drive. The vast majority of information given at the show was on CD or DVD, which is a problem considering the netbook lacks an optical drive.

The Asus Eee 1004DN has hit the FCC website seeking approval for sale in the US. The netbook will fix the issue many netbook users have of the missing optical drive. The 1004DN is the first netbook to feature an integrated optical drive in the Asus line.

Asus is all about thin with their U and UX series of ultra slim notebooks that will show up in the second quarter of the year. Both models will havea chiclet-style keyboard and auto-adjusting LED backlit display for optimal viewing.

The U series also features a 15.6″ glossy LCD display and a touchpad that uses progressively fading lights to follow your fingertips. Under the hood there’s an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a NVIDIA GeForce G105M graphics card, up to 500GB of hard drive space and Altec Lansing speakers with SRS true surround sound.

Great news. Asus’s awesome Eee Keyboard will be available in May or June for only $400-$600. It’s essentially a home theater PC inside of a keyboard, complete with wireless HDMI and a secondary touchscreen. According to Asus CEO Jerry Shen, they’re working on two different models, one wired and one wireless. The wired version will cost around $400 while the wireless will be around $600.

The keyboard features a 5-inch built-in display, 1.6 GHz Atom processor, 1 GB of RAM, 16/32 GB SSD, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. It’s got all of the ports you want like wireless HDMI, 2 USB 2.0, VGA, HDMI, and audio in/out. We’ve been waiting for this one. It’s almost here.

Maybe you’ve been looking for an inexpensive all-in-one for your kitchen, so you can look up recipes or read the ‘Brick while burning dinner. If so, you might want to have a look at ASUS’s Eee Top.

It’s almost available in the US as it has a pre-order page on Amazon.com. The 15.6-inch touchscreen model has a 1.6GHz Atom processor, 1GB of memory, and XP installed on a 160GB drive. It’s available in either black or white flavors for $599.99 with free shipping. If you already have one by the time you read this…Something’s burning. Go check.

ASUS has us doing a triple take with its new Lamborghini VX5 laptop. The machine will sport a 1TB SSD, a Core 2 Quad CPU, 4GB of RAM and a 16-inch “Full HD” display.

You’ll also get a GeForce GT 130M graphics card with 1GB of GDDR3 memory, an illuminated “chiclet” style keyboard and a Blu-ray optical drive. It’s for those of us who don’t care about laptops with an astronomical price tag obviously, though the MSRP is yet to be announced.

Motherboards are always cool to look at, but soon Asus will be rolling out a brand new Marine Cool concept motherboard that is truly a sight to behold. The board will target hard core gamers and one of the main features is a brand new backplate with “micro-porous ceramic” technology, which is said to deliver quicker heat dissipation while improving the structural integrity of the board.

What this means is a better ability in handling overclocking, which gamers will love. The motherboard will also use a couple of SO-DIMM memory slots to save space for other components.

The Nuviphone M20 from Garmin and Asus will be out later in the year, but it won’t be the first collaboration to arrive. The first will be the Nuviphone G60 and here are the details and specs.

The device will feature a 3.5″ touchscreen display, HSDPA/3G connectivity, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, Built-in accelerometer, Pre-loaded maps of your region, 3 megapixel camera with geo-tagging ability, and the Ciao! location-based social tool

Asus is preparing to release into retail a new Eee PC netbook. This one is called the 1000HE and it retails for around $400.

The Asus 1000HE Eee PC, available in black or blue body colors, weighs around 3.2 pounds and is powered by an Intel Atom N280 processor which draws not too much power. Battery life on this netbook is rated for around 9.5 hours, made possible in part by a special power management feature called the Super Hybrid Engine.

Notebooks don’t have to just flip open and be one half keyboard, one half display. Designer Patrick Dotimas developed a concept known as the Asus Stealth, a personal computer that functions as a laptop or a desktop based on its application.

The second half can be removed for a traditional desktop layout, or can fold out like a normal notebook. So it gives you the best of both worlds. It’s a great idea and the timing is right in the marketplace, so we hope to see this one surface as a reality real soon.

The netbook category is posting record growth and leading the computer industry in terms of sales. Many consumers are going with a netbook when shopping for a new computer thanks to the low price most netbooks sale for.

Price isn’t everything though and many buy without realizing the performance difference between a netbook and a notebook or desktop computer. According to a new study from ABI Research, a whopping 79% of consumers believe that netbooks are secondary devices to a more powerful notebook or desktop computer.