I'm prepared to take this unit at face value and I'm hopeful it will be profitable for Asus. I'm an electronic engineer and I've been looking for this kind of device for some time, even before the one laptop per child initiative.
My expectation has been that a pc company would follow the model of those all-in-one plug into your TV game systems that have been popular for a few years. Think about it, first they have an atari 2600 on a chip with 10 games, then China bootlegged the Nintendo system and included 50 or more games all built into a controller. Now they have the Sega Genesis on a chip inside most of those newer version with Spongebob and Spiderman games etc. These things have sold for around $20.
http://www.jakkstvgames.com/
It should not have taken this long for a company to develop an x86 cpu on a circuit board with usb ports. I figured the first version would be a keyboard with an AV cable that ran on a few AA batteries and plugged into a TV. In my mind that could/would have been a pentium 1-3 equivalent that supported usb, flash cards, and had everything else built into a single circuit board like those games. The EeePC seems to be targeting a more upscale market than that by including a faster cpu and a built in LCD. That's understandable with the cost of small LCDs coming down so much in recent years. I think this thing will exploit a large untapped market, but it will probably also upset system hackers and modders when they realize the electronics are greatly consolidated into a few chips. I don't think they can mass produce these with any kind of modular construction like regular laptops.
I'll get one, but I'll still be looking for the $20-$50 computer in a keyboard version to come along too.