Asus EEE PC 4G

A small, lean, versatile machine with more to it than meets the eye...

Cheap, tiny, and ridiculously light at 920 grams, the Asus EEE is a remarkable surfing, writing and instant messaging powerhouse. You can take it, well, anywhere. It doesn't sport the biggest of screens, but at 7" and an 800 by 640 resolution, it's just fine for simple things like Youtube, websites and working on Word documents.

It runs a simple yet intuitive Linux operating system that has everything you'd need. There's open source Microsoft Office-equivalent OpenOffice and popular free browser Firefox. With just the basic operating system, this is the perfect laptop for a new computer user. The keyboard is remarkably tactile and the screen is bright and clear with obvious tabs for work, play and surfing. To top it off, it has built-in WiFi and will get even the staunchest luddite online.

Much like the MacBook Air, power users will want to seek out a USB CD-Rom drive and install Windows XP and the included drivers. Once that's done, this machine can do a lot, especially with an extra stick of RAM in there. It's reasonably easy, given some jiggling with Windows and a big SD card to run even beefier programs like Photoshop CS2 or simple games like Peggle. It's not got a strong 3D Card, but for this price, would you expect one?

However, there are some caveats to its miniscule demeanour. The speakers are big, thick black lines across the bezel and on the White model are somewhat ugly. The unit also only sports around 2.5 hours of battery life, which isn't amazing.

If you travel a lot, the EEE PC is a godsend, and an absolute bargain for what you can make it do. For your average PC or younger user looking to have a portable browser and word processor, or for the gadget-head who must have a capable PC on the move, this is absolutely perfect.

advertisement