Review: Asus Eee PC 4G 701 notebook computer
Date : 01 01 2008 Category : Technology
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Tom Royal, Personal Computer World, Wednesday 2 January 2008 at 00:00:00
A cheap alternative to an ultra-mobile PC
There's usually an easy way to estimate the price of a notebook computer. Very small or very large notebooks tend to be expensive, with cheaper models occupying the middle ground. The Asus Eee PC, then, is something of an anomaly: a truly tiny computer, with a tiny £220 price tag to match. The Eee PC really is miniscule, weighing just 927g. The lid of the PC is only a little larger than a DVD case, and when closed it's around one inch thick. Open the lid, though, and you'll find everything you'd expect from a larger notebook. There's a full Qwerty keyboard, touchpad, 7in colour LCD and even a VGA webcam. The specification inside is rather more unusual. The Eee PC uses a 900MHz Intel Mobile Celeron processor clocked down to run at just 630MHz, along with 512MB of Ram and a 4GB flash hard drive. Over 2GB of this is used up as standard, but it's easy to add more space with an SD card. This specification won't get the best out of Vista, so Asus has wisely decided to ship the computer with a version of Xandros Linux instead. This boots in around 15 seconds, and uses a custom tab-based user interface. It allows the user to launch applications by selecting a tab, such as Internet, and then a task. Applications are given friendly names - Web rather than Firefox, for example - so the whole system is very easy to use. Other useful applications installed as standard include Open Office 2, Thunderbird and a media player. More technically minded users will like the ease with which a full KDE desktop can be uncovered. Asus knows Linux is one step too far for many users, so it has included Windows XP drivers. Armed with a USB CD-Rom drive and a copy of XP, it took us around two hours to load XP. With Windows XP installed, PCmark05 wouldn't produce a full result but the hard drive section's score of 1,907 is on a par with slower 2.5in mechanical hard disks. It's powerful enough to play DivX movies smoothly and the stereo speakers deliver the punch of bigger notebooks. Using Linux as standard, though, the Eee PC works well as an internet device. Its built-in Ethernet and 802.11b/g Wifi makes it easy to connect to a network, although we found ourselves wishing for a Bluetooth adapter so we could connect to a mobile phone too....
