Shortages of Intel's new Atom chip have forced Asustek to use older Celeron M353 chips which were first released four years ago in its Eee PC.

PC World said that the shortages meant that Asustek also realized that the Celeron chip was a lot cheaper than the Atom anyway and decided to plug for the older model.

Quoting an unnamed Asustek official, the EeePC range was competing on cost in some markets and so the Celerons would be targeted there. The more expensive PC 901, 1000 and 1000H models will get the limited number of Atom chips that Asustek can get its paws on.

These are the higher end Eeepcs which are slightly more expensive than the newer 904HD and 1000HD, which use the Celeron chips. Intel said that it didn't sell Celeron M processors for netbooks these days, but it still had lots of old ones lying around doing nothing.

It said that it would have the Atom supply issue resolved by the end of the third quarter. X

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