the best bang for buck aimed at kids and housewives...
Pros:
Small, Light, Great wireless range, Battery Life, Low price
Cons:
cramped keyboard, screen size could be larger, plastic may feel cheap, gets hot very quickly
The Bottom Line:
The price is not a mistake, this product is the epitome of value for money.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
Design & Portability
This is by far the best valued ultraportable notebook on the market for the price. It has a compact design and weighs about 2 pounds. Its screen real estate could have been few inches larger and I would suggest placing the speakers under the screen rather than the sides. It's actually a portable notebook because I take it everywhere I go and not break my back.
(While there are notebooks which qualify as ultraportables because they are under 4 lbs, the EEE is so small and light that it can also be considered as an ultramobile pc because it weights just about 2 lbs. This product blurs the line between an ultramobile pc and a ultraportable pc. It is basically a UMPC in the form factor of a UPPC.)
Even though the black piece looks better according to most folks, the white body stands out from the black and grey laptops. However the white plastic tends to look cheap. But I really dont care about that, I just like go for the contrary.
The keyboard actually feels cheap, and this can be noticed in the left side. When a key is pressed, the keys surrounding it, tends to act like a sponge. But this is no big deal, because it can hardly be noticed when in normal use.
The EEE PC also skimps on the optical drive, to accommodate its current size and weight. Who needs an optical drive anyway... how many times have you used an optical drive while in class or during commute. I dont need these features, I have a full blown desktop at the dorm and at my workplace.
(It is technically wrong to call it a laptop .... it's so small that it cant even sit steadily on your lap because of its small size =P {another reason why it can be a UMPC} if you really want to feel the relative size of the laptop, i have about 10 images on amazon you can look at)
Out of the box
As I have mentioned in my title, it is aimed at the non-regular crowd, even though its low price seems to attract any consumer in the market. It ships with Linux Xandros, which is the easiest operating system I have ever used till today. There is an "advanced mode" which gives you the classic windows look but you have to work your way through. It took me less than 5 minutes to assemble and connect to the internet. It was that easy... Out of the box> pop in the battery > connect to the wireless network
Performance & Features
It does what it supposed to do, browse the internet and edit basic office files like documents, spreadsheets and powerpoint slideshows. I take notes with it in class all the time and the 2/3rd size of a regular keyboard, takes few days to get used to. Its boot time is fantastic.. 25 seconds from pressing the power button to the desktop. When I browse the internet, the refresh time is so seamless that I cant even tell the difference in speed between that and my gaming pc. Its wireless range can beat most laptops on the market today.
It specs might mislead you to thinking that it is a slow piece of junk but its is more than capable of handling any application you throw at it, even games like warcraft 3, age of empires 2 or photo editing GIMP, and even the most widely used operating system Windows XP!
Its solid state drive may be small but it gives you better battery life and a more durable hardware. It has 3 usb ports and SD card reader, the possibilities for expansion are endless. But let me tell you that I dont need any of that either, all my media is streamed online (Imeem for music and youtube for videos) and i even have unlimited storage from Carbonite ($50/yr cant beat that).
Some of the other notable features webcam and mic for VOIP(Skype pre-installed). There is also a Learn and Play tab for kids, the games are actually pretty addictive and they have been derived from great console games.
Price
Coming out of the One Laptop Per Child genre, this $400 beast can kill any competitor in its class (Everex Cloudbook). There is this rule.. the smaller you and lighter you go .. the higher the price brackets. The Asus EEE PC has broken all boundaries and made a significant mark in the UltraPortable PC field.
The 4G offers great bang for buck but if you have an extra $100, I would highly recommend upgrading to the 8G which has twice the RAM and SSD SIZE. The 4G/8G models are considered higher end of the Asus EEE series of their longer battery life and a webcam. If you dont need any of these, and dont worry about upgrading.. I would recommend looking into the 2G surf which is about $100 less. But like most products the marginal value decreases as you go down.
