The Eee PC is about to face some very stiff competition indeed, in the form of Micro-Star International’s (MSI's) new low-cost Wind, which runs on Intel’s diminutive Atom.

The company has announced that it will be releasing two versions of its low-cost offering, one sporting Windows XP, and the other Linux, in the US this coming June.

The Windows XP version, which runs on the 1.6GHz Atom microprocessor, has a 10-inch screen and six-cell battery, offering an impressive six hours of power. Also, instead of an SSD flash memory drive, the Windows based Wind comes on an 80GB hard disk drive, all for a retail price of $549, which trounces the Eee PC’s 8.9-inch, 20GB model, which sells for $100 more at $650.

The Linux version of the Wind is even cheaper, at $399. Running the Novell SUSE Linux OS, the laptop also boasts a 10-inch screen, Atom microprocessor and hard disk drive, but only has a three-cell battery, which means that power is reduced to a rather paltry two and a half hours. DRAM is also halved from 1GB in the XP version to just 512MB in the Linux version. It also doesn’t include Bluetooth, which both the XP version and Asus’ new Atom-based Eee PC 901 have.

Still, considering that both MSI offerings are cheaper than Asustek’s, and even launch on the same day (purportedly June 3rd), the Eee may have to rethink its sales strategy, and fast. X