Eee PC, The extension of your productivity.

The ASUS Eee PC is a subnotebook computer launched by ASUS and Intel. EeePC became popular because of it's cheap price and it's light weight. It runs on Linux-based operating system. At present the Eee PC comes in three different models 2G, 4Gand 8G all having a 900 MHz Intel Celeron-M. The main difference between these models being the battery back-up, RAM size, presence of web cam and storage media size. Configuration details of various flavours of EeePC is given here.

The loading of the Operating System ( Linux ) was pretty fast, approximately 15 seconds. All the application are grouped into tabs( Internet, Work,Learn, Play, Settings and Favourite ). Much of the detail is hidden from the user. I din't work around much on the factoru fitted OS. To be sincere, I could not configure wireless connectivity to connect to RMIT University Subnet. Asus should add other authentication methods, in my case I missed wap2.

The screen is impressive for this price. It does not eat the whole space on the lid. The screen is bracketed by 2 speakers on the either sides. It is bright and readable. In fact, I got over with an e book on it. My only complaint would be its resolution. The wide screen resolution of 800 by 480 is pleasant while you read. It fails to provide other standard resolution without a scroll screen. This is sometimes a real pain when a window ( none resizable) fails to fit in the screen. Other resolution should be an option without the ‘scroll screen’.

The Keys on the keyboard are pretty cramped up. A look at it would make you feel uncomfortable. Don’t be mistaken by it’s size. I am getting used to it. As a matter of fact I am typing this review on a 4G EeePC. The keys, at the edges of the keyboard turns out to be a bit small. Not to spacey for my pinky to punch it. According to me there are few keys oddly located like the right ‘SHIFT’ key. The Ctrl key is missing on the right hand side; a very important one for people like me who relies on short cut keys. It’s quite an interesting thing to know that there is hardly any LED or on screen indicators to show if the scroll lock, caps lock and num lock are enabled or disabled. But it did not take me much to get used to it.

The touch pad if used by thumb to point rather then index finger is pretty comfortable. It’s a bit unresponsive in terms of clicks and scroll on the surface. This annoyance can be reduced with a bit of a tweak with the Synaptics touch pad configuration tool located on the system tray (on windows xp installed ones :P).

The Eee PC comes with a single bay for RAM. If you are thinking of expanding it, your preinstalled RAM goes for a waste ( auction it at ebay). It is a 200 pin SO-DIMM DDR2 slot. The slot is as same as the one found in laptops. The RAM is expandable upto 2GB. But the factory installed OS Xandros support only 1 GB. Microsft Windows ® can support 2GB on it.

The speaker’s output is fair enough. I would not use it for listening music. It is located on the either side of the screen. The Speakers should have been placed at the sides of the palm rest rather next to the screen giving more space for the screen.

MMC SD drive is located on the right hand side of the sub-notebook making the media size dynamic. It support a range of memory card. After doing my home work, I have found that solid state hard disk is the best options. An SDHC of 8GB size would make a better option if you need more space.

The microphone is located right under the touch pad. This seems to be pretty weird location. It was pretty sensitive to all audible sound around me. According to me the location of the microphone under the laptop makes it more bass sensitive rather then treble.

To sum it all, it is an exceptional machine with a weight of 0.92 KG. The best thing that tempted me to buy it is its portability. It comes in handy when you are out the whole day. I use mine to read e books and remotely connect to other machine through puTTY. Though the EeePC came along with customized Xandros OS, I din’t use it for an hour or so. I had to change the OS to Windows XP as I extensively use MS Office and a lot of .Net Framework. EeePC comes with a good collection of application required for daily use. Eee PC is an wise choice for student ( in fact anyone) on low budget.

Note: This being is my first review on a product. I have tried my level best to keep it simple and give all the data I came across and what I felt about the product.