Verdict: Weighing in at less than1kg and costing under £250, you'd think this laptop would a shoo-in for an award.
We first saw this laptop at Computex in Taiwan in June. Asus promised to make a small sub-1kg laptop with an SSD that cost less than $200, and would make it 'Easy to Learn, Easy to Work, Easy to Play' - hence the name. The Eee PC is now ready to launch, although Asus hasn't kept all its promises. It's a lightweight laptop with an SSD, but the price has increased.
Part of the price increase is the cost of the screen, which measures a tiny 7in diagonally. With a resolution of 800 x 480, you'd think that it would feel cramped. However, Asus has tailored the interface - a pretty front-end for Xandros Linux to fit on the miniscule screen. Other non-Eee PC-specific applications run less well though. Web pages are usually more than 800 pixels wide, so you need to scroll horizontally or make use of the F11 full-screen mode in Firefox (one of the supplied apps).
For £234, you might expect the Eee PC to be flimsy, but it's elegant and well-made. The screen is well protected from the back, and the plastic body feels thick and firm. The keyboard is firm and responsive - once we became used to a few odd key placements, we could type fairly naturally. Dotted around the Eee PC are three USB 2 ports, headphone and microphone mini-jacks, and a D-SUB output. There's also 802.11b/g WiFi for sofa-based web browsing.
The Eee PC has pre-installed applications for Skype, IM, web browsing, word processing and some basic games. All you need to do is shove in the battery, press power and you can start using it. This version uses a 5,400mAh battery for a quoted 3.5hr battery life, while others (notably the '4G Surf', which shares all other specifications with this model) have a 4,400mAh battery for a quoted 3.8hr life. We managed around three hours use with maximum screen brightness.
However, the quality of the pre-installed applications varies, as they're all open-source (since the OS is Linux-based and free to use, this is one area where Asus has been able to keep down the overall price). The highlights are the Firefox 2.0 web browser, the Thunderbird 2.0 mail client and OpenOffice 2. These three applications are strong enough to be worth using instead of the paid-for alternatives. More obscure applications, such as the IM client and Music Manager, show their open-source nature far too readily.
Music Manager, for example, should play music quickly and easily. However, launch the app and you're confronted with one of the messiest front-ends we've seen in years; tabs are scattered horizontally and vertically, while the split viewing panes, unnecessary buttons and EQ graphs look amateurish. You can hook up an iPod to play music, but you have to drag and drop your music from the left-hand viewing pane to the right-hand playlist pane to populate the playlist, a task that takes upwards of five minutes for even a modestly large collection of music. Music Manager is no threat to iTunes or Windows Media Player, neither of which like running on Xandros Linux. Other notable oddities include the IM client, which is about as user-friendly as a knife with no handle.
Oddly, you can't uninstall any of the pre-supplied applications via the Add/Remove Software tool, and when we tried to install WINE (an emulator that lets you run Windows programs on Linux) to replace some duff apps with better Windows versions, we couldn't find a Xandros version nor a compiler on the Eee PC with which to compile the source code we downloaded. The Xandros installation is reasonably full on, though, so hitting Ctrl+Alt+T brings up the terminal for command line use.
We've seen hacks and mods that add handy extras, such as a Start menu on http://forum.eeeuser.com and http://forums.xandros.com but, unless you're willing to put in the time to learn Linux CLI (Command Line Interface) commands, you'll be stuck with the pre-supplied software.
You could install Windows XP for a more polished OS and better application support but, as this Eee PC has 512MB of PC2-5400 RAM (others have 1GB or 256MB), and all versions use either a 900MHz Intel Celeron M ULV 353 or 333, XP would probably chug horribly. The 4GB SSD of this version (2GB and 8GB versions will be soon available) will also be troublesome, although you could use nLite (www.nliteos.com) to shrink the XP installation size. You'll also need a 1GB USB flash drive as well as an external optical drive.
Conclusion
The Eee PC is the embodiment of open source - it looks attractive and cheap, but it will be hard to live with on a daily basis if you're used to Windows. Asus deserves praise for the simplified interface and wide range of applications, but once you move away from the holy trinity of open-source applications (Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice), you'll feel as though you're using apps that a bunch of teenagers have written while skiving off school for a week.
On the other hand, Windows would have required faster, more expensive hardware, massively inflating the price. Our misgivings concerning the small, low-res screen could also have been avoided, but this would also boost the price, although a10in screen is expected next year. If you just want three excellent open-source apps, however, the Eee PC is worth a look.
