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Asus EeePC : The Little Laptop That Could

Introduction
Back in June 2007, Asus launched a new line of ultra portable laptops known as the EeePC series that’s been making waves. The EeePC is essentially a feature rich Linux laptop targeted at students, budget conscious users and folks who are always on the move.

I managed to get my hands on a review unit of the EeePC based on the 4G Surf model. Booting up the EeePC took no longer than 15 seconds thanks to the solid state drive and the customized OS. It runs quietly with little or no moving parts at all.

The overall build quality of the EeePC feels sturdy and durable for an UMPC of this class. The display folds down smoothly and closes without a latch but it is held securely by the hinge.

Keyboard
One of the weaker points of the EeePC is probably the keyboard which is smaller than a standard laptop’s, so typing on it requires some patience. I still fat finger on it after several hours of usage. It is acceptable for general web surfing, short documents and emails, but I wouldn’t recommend typing your next best seller on it.

Screen
The EeePC uses a 7″ TFT display with a native resolution of 800×480. Its brightness and contrast is brilliant for indoor usage but appears washed out under the sun. Browsing at this resolution can be a pain as many sites cannot be displayed fully resulting in lots of scrolling about. However, the built-in VGA port allows you hook up to an external display at 800×600 resolution.

Expansion
The EeePC comes equipped with a pair of headphone and microphone jacks, a 10/100 Ethernet and a USB port on the left side while the right has the VGA port, a SDHC card reader and 2 more USB ports. The built in card reader is nice touch as it offers an easy upgrade (up to 32Gb now) should the internal drive is insufficient and you have the option to even boot from it during the system startup allowing you to run multiple operating systems instead of booting from the internal drive only.
The EeePC does not come with an optical drive nor could it be fitted with one either, so your only option is to use an external USB drive to read optical media.

Multimedia
EeePC’s speakers, although not of the highest quality does offer decent audio at a reasonable volume. Listening through headphones is probably the best way to enjoy your music and movies.

Battery Life
Asus’s official site rates their standard 4-cell batteries at approximately 2.8 hours of usage but from my testing, I could only get 1.5 - 2 hours out of it with the Wi-Fi enabled and disabled audio. Cranking the audio to the max, with Wi-Fi enabled and playing an AVI video, the battery lasted only about an hour. I would suggest using headphones and disabling the Wi-Fi when not in use to extend the battery life.

Networking
Both 10/100 Mbps Ethernet as well as 802.11b/g Wi-Fi interface comes standard on all EeePC models. Connecting with either interface was flawless. Bluetooth would make an excellent addition on this device for people intending to use their cellular phones as a modem to connect to the Internet.

Operating System
I’m happy to say that Asus has taken every effort to ensure that the EeePC is as user friendly as possible. The OS is a derivative of Xandros Linux with a custom desktop. It comes installed with support for reading NTFS drives and connectivity with SMB networks making support for existing computers a breeze. Plugging in my NTFS formatted drive worked out of the box and connecting to my Windows shared drives was straightforward. If you are still doubtful about using Linux, the EeePC is also compatible with Windows XP. There are numerous articles out there that guide you on installing XP on the EeePC with official drivers provided and supported by Asus.

The EeePC desktop uses a tabbed interface with icons to commonly used applications grouped into 6 tabs. The Internet tab consists mostly of links to web applications such as web mail shortcuts (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL), iGoogle, Wikipedia, Internet Radio and Google Docs. Web launches the default web browser Firefox. The other applications in this category are Skype which works great with the built in microphone, a Wired and Wireless Network configuration utility, Pidgin Instant Messenger and a World Clock utility.
In the Work tab, we have the OpenOffice suite of applications, Adobe PDF reader, Thunderbird, Longman Dictionary which offers English to Chinese translation and Notes, an application which spawns yellow stickies on your desktop.

The Learn tab has some fairly interesting education software. In the Play tab, we have games like Solitaire, Tux Racer, Sudoku, Tetris clone and others. The rest of the applications consist of media players such as SMPlayer, KDE Music and Photo Manager and a sound recording tool.

The Settings tab provides your standard access to configuring the various features of the EeePC such as the display, volume, printer, touchpad, date and time, software setup utility and a voice command application. The voice command feature only allows basic application launching and there are no settings for configuring other applications or actions. To use it, you simply say “Computer” followed by one of the predefined application name. The last tab allows you to place your favorite short cuts to websites and applications.

Conclusion
Overall I’m very pleased with the EeePC. Everything works out of the box, the software, the hardware and it is very snappy. If you are looking for a laptop that you can carry everywhere with you, look no further than the EeePC for its price and feature set.

Final Rating:

Full Specifications
Display：7″ WVGA TFT at 800×480 native resolution
CPU & Chipset: Intel Mobile Chipset and CPU @ 900Mhz
OS: Linux
Communication: 10/100 Mbps Ethernet
WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
Graphic: Intel UMA
Memory: 512MB, DDR2-400
Storage: 4Gb Flash (SSD)
Audio: Hi-Definition Audio CODEC; Built-in stereo speaker; Built-in microphone
Battery Life: 3hrs (4 cells: 5200mAh, 2S2P)
Dimension & Weight: 22.5 x 16.5 x 2.1~3.5cm, 0.89kg
Estimated Retail Price: RM 1300

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Asus Eee PC

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