A chic netbook is in the offing from Asustek Computer! On Tuesday, the company released a light, ultra-thin netbook, the S121, which is laden with two new technologies - still-to-be-released Windows 7 OS by Microsoft, and 512 GB SSD, the biggest solid state drive.

Appropriately being termed an "Ultra Slim Mobile Notebook", the S121 is slightly less than one inch in thickness, and almost 2.6 pounds in weight. It makes use of Atom-based Menlow platform from Intel - which fundamentally is a restructured edition of the presently-in-use Atom CPU in most Netbooks.

For an additional upper edge over the rest of the netbooks, the latest Asus' offering includes a 128GB solid-state hard drive, a leather palm rest, and display hinges with Swarovski crystals.

The netbook, which also features Linux-based quick-launch environment to facilitate access to the Web and documents, has a touchscreen that runs specific software that has been developed by Asustek for effortless touch navigation.

The use of Asus' touch mode software on Microsoft's Windows 7 OS is indicative of the fact that the two companies are working in close association. At a news conference prior to the CES, David Fester, general marketing manager of OEM division of Microsoft, said: "We're deeply partnered with Asus on Windows 7."

Though the price and availability details of the S121 are still not clear, Jonney Shih, chairman of Asus, said it would "cost quite a bit" - nearly US$1,649 - particularly due to the 512GB SSD on board!