Touchscreen 40GB Eee Hack On eBay For Crazy $3,200

Could you ever bring yourself to spend more on a ASUS Eee than the price of a new MacBook Air, Lenovo X300 or Sony VAIO TZ?  Currently up on eBay for a whopping $3,200 (or open to bids from $2,800), this uber-Eee takes an innocent new 8GB model and adds a built-in 32GB Patriot XT drive, a touchscreen and updated WiFi card supporting A/B/G/N.  There's even an FM transmitter, to play audio through a car radio, and the overclocked ultraportable is running Windows XP SP3 with 2GB of RAM.

The end result weighs under 3.2lbs, although its creator, David, doesn't specify exactly what sort of battery life you can expect after all the mods have taken their electricity tithe.  Still, the biggest stumbling block is the price; $3,200 is a huge amount to pay, and even David admits that he's set his expectations high:

"Yes I think the price is a little high. But reasonably so, Parts cost was right around $1200 USD and the time invested into hardware hacking it, installing all the appropriate software and testing all functionality, was well over 30 hours. Around $50.00 per hour in labor" David

The build has been partially documented over at the EeeUser forums.  Personally, I don't think any Eee is worth that much – unless it's a charity auction, perhaps – but I'd be interested to try the ultraportable with a touchscreen mod. 

Full Specs:

• 8gb solid state drive

• 32gb Patriot XT drive

• 2gb RAM

• Intel Wi-Fi A/B/G/N upgraded card

• 7" LCD with touchscreen

• Air Play installed so you can transmit all of your sound to an FM radio

• Custom copper heatsink installed because it's overclocked

• Bluetooth adapter

• 2 USB hubs so all the USB devices can hook up to the Eee PC

• web cam

• speakers

• microphone

• 3 USB ports

• one external VGA port so you can hook up an external monitor

• Windows XP Professional SP3 with all the drivers installed and tested

• Screen resolution is set a 1024x768 with the hacked Video Driver

[via Gizmodo]