ASUS Eee PC 1201N NVIDIA Ion netbook quietly appears

ASUS have kicked out a new 12-inch netbook, the Eee PC 1201N, packing NVIDIA's Ion graphics chipset and 2GB of RAM.  The Eee PC 1201N is yet to make an official appearance on ASUS' own site, but is currently listed with a Chinese web retailer; for your 3,504 yuan ($513) you get Intel's Atom N270 1.6GHz processor and a 250GB 5,400rpm SATA hard-drive.

The 12-inch display runs at 1,366 x 768 resolution and is 16:9 aspect with LED backlighting.  Connectivity includes WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth and 10/100 ethernet, together with an unspecified number of USB 2.0 ports, VGA and a multiformat card reader.  There's also a 1.3-megapixel webcam.

The Eee PC 1201N uses a 6-cell battery, which ASUS claim up to 11hrs runtime from, while the OS is Windows 7.  Because of that last element, we're not expecting to see the 1201N officially hit shelves (or ASUS' own press pages) until late October, when Microsoft launch the new OS.

[Thanks Nick!]