News of an updated Asus Eee PC at CES is coming into focus, as this post at Dailytech summarizes

Intel and Sprint are putting a lot of muscle behind WiMAX. Intel’s Montevinanotebook platform will support WiMAX in Q2 2008 and the Menlow UMPC platform — presumably the foundation for ASUS’ next generation Eee PC — will also feature 3G and WiMAX integration. For its part, Sprint plans to invest $5 billion USD into WiMAX over the next two years.

Should ASUS choose to adopt the Menlow platform for the next generation Eee PC, huge power saving will be realized for users. The current Eee PC uses a 90nm, 900MHz Celeron M processor running at 630MHz with the current official BIOS. Intel’s Menlow platform includes a 45nm Silverthorne processor which promises ten times the power efficiency of first generation UMPCs using Intel Celeron M, Pentium M and A100/A110 processors.

Other big news coming from the Commercial Times is that an 8.9″ screen is in store for the next generation Eee PC. The current Eee PC uses a 7″ 800×480 widescreen display. Many have complained about the lack of real estate with the 7″ screen, but an 8.9″ display with a 1024×600 screen resolution could quiet a few critics.

According to the Commercial Times, the current 7″ panels used in the Eee PC cost $40 USD. The larger 8.9″ panels are estimated to cost between $55 to $60 USD.