While the EeePC is a sucess story, it seems ASUS is shooting itself in the foot now.

To satisfy demand in Europe, ASUS started shipping the old 701 model with 4400mAh batteries instead of the more expensive 5200mAh. In a statement for heise.de, Holger Schmidt, PR-Spokesperson for ASUS, told them a fire at LG Chemicals forced them to use the low-yield batteries because batteries got more expensive overall and they want to keep the price of the notebook at the same level.

If ASUS does this in the U.S., a class action suit will be a sure bet. We would like to hear from our readers in the U.S. and find out if the same is happening stateside.

The same story seems to be happening with the new EeePC 900, which has been launched in Hong Kong. Some users are very furious, because all the review-sites tested the 900 with the 5800mAh battery, and so they told everyone battery life was improved. Now, all customers get all the machines with 4400mAh batteries, which decreases the runtime by about one hour.

For more details read here - if you can read Chinese well.