Asus eee-PC features Clam-Shell design LCD hinges that are more durable than earlier hinge designs, making it suitable for rugged use. The LCD lid is also latch-less so there are fewer parts that can be broken easily. The latch-less lid can be open and closed effortlessly by just one hand. The LCD screen is powered by LED back-lights that are much more shock-resistant than CFL lamp back-lit LCD panels and also draws much less energy. LCD surface is not gloss-coated and is quite readable under sun light as well as low-light conditions.

There are two USB 2.0 ports, one VGA port for external monitor, Kensington laptop-lock and SD/MMC card reader on the right hand side. Left hand side features one Ethernet port, a third USB 2.0 port and Microphone In / Headphone Out ports.

All these ports are located on the sides and the only port in the back of the laptop is the power-in jack, making it much easier to access the port in the laptop.

The 7 inch wide-screen LCD is capable of 800x480 resolution which is much lower than standard 14.1 inch laptop LCD resolution of 1280x800. But it is much higher than any other portable device screen resolution including i-Phone's 480x320 and Sony PSP's 480x272. The screen has just enough resolution to type on and surf the web. It is recommended to use the applications in Full-Screen mode to utilize the most of out of the screen area. On the sides of the screen, the possible screen area is taken up by two black stereo speakers, which could have been used better as additional screen area and expand the resolution to 960x480.

The keyboard on eee-PC takes up most of the laptop surface area and yet it has 80 keys QWERT layout keys that are smaller than a dime. Medium to large adult fingers will have difficulty typing at a good pace on this keyboard. It is better suited for children and smaller adult hands. Many keys such as Page-Up, Page-Down and \ are also combined with the 'Fn' function key to fit into the tiny keyboard.

The touch pad is also very small with only 4x3 cm dimension which is not in direct aspect ratio with the wide-screen LCD. Left and Right clicks on the touch pad are put under a single button that can be pressed on either end for the two functions. It is an effective cosmetic feature many other laptop makers including Apple could learn from.

Web-cam on top of the LCD screen takes reasonable pictures and the included software can also record video in various settings, although the limited space on main storage would be too small for anything other than infrequent use.

Unlike most UMPC that are currently on the market, eee-PC has a selection of colors to choose from. The eee-PC in review is the Pure White color and the other color to choose from is the Galaxy Black. Next year (possibly with the release of Windows XP versions) there will be Lush Green, Sky Blue and Blush Pink.

Asus installed just about all the necessary everyday software on the eee-PC Linux edition and combined with a very easy to use interface, this is perhaps the most user friendly PC ever made for the masses. Internet software includes Mozilla Firefox and iGoogle. Email can be used with either Thunderbird or web-mail feature.

For instant messaging and chat there is Skype and for people who use other IM identities there is Pidgin supporting AIM, ICQ,MSN,Yahoo, GoogleTalk, GroupWise, IRC, QQ, SIMPLE, Sametime and XMPP protocols. As a very neat feature, there is a shortcut icon to Wikipedia for quick lookup on the facts (and fabrications) of the world.

Office related software includes OpenOffice 2.0 (as of the time of writing the latest version is 2.3), Google Docs and PDF software for Adobe Acrobat files.

For children (and some adults with interest) there are Science, Language, Math teaching programs and basic Paint software which has more features than MS Paint included in Windows XP.

For entertainment there are Media Player, Music Manager, Photo Manager, Video Manager, Games, WebCam and Sound Recorder. Most notable of these is the SMPlayer which can play just about any video and audio format as well as DVD movies from an actual disc drive (plugged into the USB port) or DVD files saved into a folder. Xandros KDE Music Manager has simple but similar features to Apple iTunes software. Video and Photo Manger software also have similar easy to use interfaces.

In the Settings menu, which would be the Control Panel in Microsoft Windows, there are settings and utilities to customize the laptop as well as free anti-virus software for KDE by Xandros. User can also change the interface into Desktop Mode (similar to Windows Desktop) from the Settings page, although most would find it harder to use than the custom interface for eee-PC.

The best part of the Settings page is the Voice Command feature. It takes only a second to load on battery mode and can provide voice commands for quick launch of the pre-installed software. The commands are pre-made and easy to recognize and use but also limited to the pre-installed software. There is also a Favorites page for storing bookmarks for quick access to websites.

Asus eee-PC is the first UMPC to finally nail almost everything down perfectly. Unlike other UMPCs it has lower price than most economy laptops. ($399 for 4G model in the review) It is somewhat user upgradeable. It has easy to use interface and better keyboard than any UMPC. There are more choices of Operating Systems than other UMPCs. It has as much power as any other UMPC while having a better battery life. Available selection of colors for the eee-PC also makes it appealing to just about anyone as well. This makes it the best choice among any UMPC that are currently on the market.

The only low point on the eee-PC is the warranty sticker on the memory expansion bay cover. The tiny keyboard is indeed hard to use for larger hands but it is certainly the largest size possible for any 7 inch UMPC ever made.

Page 1 Page 2 Reviews