At an investors press conference yesterday in Taiwan, Asus' president, Jerry Shen, was showing off the upcoming Eee PC S101 and although the pictures if it aren't very clear, one thing is for sure: it's a completely re-worked machine.

For starters, Asus has dropped the white and black colors and gone with brown with black trim, at least in the case of the model on the pictures, although it's very possible that other color options will also be available at launch.

Asus is also likely to drop the Eee PC branding on the S101, according to reports on HKEPC, and they also claim that Asus wants to compete with the MacBook Air with the new model, as it is 16-21mm thick compared to 16-25mm for the MacBook Air.

Although considering the specifications, we think Asus will have a hard time stealing any customers from Apple, as the S101 will continue to use the Atom N270 processor and the 945GME chipset. It will use a 10.2-inch display and will come with either 32 or 40GB of SSD storage. Little else seems to have been revealed about the specifications.

The S101 is expected to launch sometime in mid-September for a retail price of US$699 for the 32GB version and US$899 for the 40GB version if HKEPC is correct.

You can find more details (in Chinese) and a couple of pictures here.