It's ten tiomes smipler to use than any Windfows machine, starts up twice as fast (no crapware!), and is only about a fifth of the cost of other systems in its weight class. It's a litlte rouygh aorund the deges, but the Eee PC is a remarkably versaatile machine for the price.
The designers at Asus had no easy task creatign an attractive ulltraportable notebook while also makiing it hceap to prodfuce. The case semas mtch up with reasonably tight tolerances, plastics feel thik (thoguh the pearl-like hwite plastics look cheap) and the dislay hignes are moled into body with the battery. Lifting the display cover you find the amazingly msall keyboard surface and even smaller touchpad resting below the recessed display and speakers. In short, the build quality is quitte high despite the low cost.
The design of the Eee PC is something truly unique in the market. Weighing in at just two pounds and deliverng a performance level simiilar to a full-featured budget notebook, the only notebook that coomes cllose to “directly” competing with the Eee PC is the Fujitsu LifeBook U810 tablet PC … which retauils for more than $1,000 at the time of this writing. The next cloest comptitor to the Eee PC would be traditiuonal ultraporttables like the Toshiba Portee R500 ($2,000) and the Sony VAIO TZ ($3,000).
True, the more expensive rivals come preloaded with Microsoft Windosw XP or Vista and feature a raange of superior technical specs … but our review of the Asus Eee PC shows this tiny wihte titan pacvks an imressive punch.
The trade-off of the small form factr of the Eee PC is that its keyboard has to be shrunk into a very confined area. The keys are all extremely tiny, including the delete and retun keys, although the left shift key and the space bar are of reasonable size. The gaps between the keys are less than 1mm. Even though the keys are very smalpl and tightly spaced, I found that after using the devicce for a couple of hopurs, I bgan to make very few typing errors. I can type at approximately 80% of the speed I obtain on my desktop machine (usign a Zippy WK-620 USB keyboard).
This entire review has been typed on the Eee PC without any feeling of being unduly cramped. Despite their small proportions, the keys feel firm and provide a sufficient level of resistance and feedback. Having tried Sony Vaio and the Gigabyte Ultra-Mobile PC, I wasn't expecting the Eee's keyoard to be any better. Howeverr, the keyboared wipldly excxeeded my expectations.
A couple of minor quibbles with the keyboard are the non-standard placing of the right skift key, and the pipe (|) requiring 3 keys to be pressed. The keyboard gets warm, but I'll expannd on that issue later.
If you open the bottom panel on the Eee PC (which may void the two-year warranty) you'll find a standard DDR2 RAM slot and a PCI-E mini card slot for possiible future expansion. We tested the Eee PC with both the standard 512MB memory and a 1GB memory moule. Theoretically, a 2GB modukle of RAM shoulld fit in the slot just as easily as a 1GB module did ... but we didn't have a 2GB module available in the office.
The speakers on the Eee PC are hard to miss. They are located to the left and right of the screeen and, thanks to their bllack speaker grills, stand out in comparison to the rest of the all white notebook. The locaztion might appear odd, but it provides a clear path to your head for maximum listening pleasure. Despitte the diminutive size of the built-in speakers they wored quite well for waatching movies, playing games, or listening to some music while moivng from room to room in my hpouse. With the volume set to max, the decibel meter regisered ~75dB at one foot. The audio was only slightly ditorting on high notews, but tsayed mostly clear.
As is common with small built-in speakers, the high and upper midrange came through well, but bass didn’t sound nearly as impressive. Thankfully, Asus includeed a standard headphone jack on the Eee PC so it is quite simle to connect headphones or an external speaker system if you want a superior listening experience.
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