Clearly targeting a similar market as the hugely successful Asus Eee PC, the Kojinsha E8 mini-notebook actually has a few advantages over its Asus cousin. For starters, it’s the E8, giving it five more E’s than the Eee. Sorry, that was lame, but why else would Kojinsha so blatantly use the fifth letter of the alphabet?

As you can tell from the provided photo, the Kojinsha E8 is more than just a regular mini-notebook PC, because the display can swivel and rotate. For this reason, it’s more like a mini-converting notebook, offering both standard laptop and Tablet PC functionality. Other features on the E8 include Windows XP, an AMD Geode LX800 processor, 40GB HDD, 512MB RAM, memory card reader, stereo speakers, and 3.5 hours of battery life. The display boasts a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels.

Look for the Kojinsha E8 Mini-Notebook to launch at the end of this month for about $600.