Asus Eee PC 900 is a ripper not a rip-off: review

By Stan Beer
Wednesday, 14 May 2008 12:47

Opinion and Analysis

You know how those stories start: I started writing this review on my loaner Eee PC 900 but...well this is not going to be one of those. The Asus Eee PC 900 is, as the Scots might say, a wee ripper. But is it worth the money?

To be honest, I would much rather be writing this on my desktop with its full sized keyboard and 22 inch monitor rather than a sub-notebook with half-sized keyboard and 8.9 inch screen. However, that's an unfair comparison.

I would be using the Eee PC on the road instead of say my Dell Latitude or a MacBook, not in my office. Then the comparison becomes more valid and the ratios reduce. At 21 cm (8.25 inches) the Eee PC 900 keyboard is a bit more than 70% the width of my Dell notebook's and the 8.9 inch monitor is about 65% the diagonal length of my notebook's.

Can I work comfortably with the Eee PC 900 proportions? Maybe not comfortably, but certainly acceptably. Add to that, the convenience factor of the sub-notebook and the scales become more evenly balanced. At just under 1 kg with a tiny form factor, the Eee PC 900 makes a far more convenient traveling companion than a comparatively heavy and cumbersome full-sized notebook.

Having had a play with the smaller screened version Eee PC, I probably wouldn't be writing this review. However, at 8.9 inches and a resolution of 1024x600, Asus has now produced a sub-notebook with a monitor that skirts the lower limits of usability in my opinion and that's just fine.

I'm writing this in OpenOffice.org 2.0 with the page zoom factor set at 150%. That gives me a page which comfortably fits within the width of the monitor and a large easy to read font size (even without my glasses). Then of course you can easily resize the page ala iPhone multi-touch style by "pinching" or "stretching" the Eee PC 900 mouse pad - the first time anyone outside of Apple has offered this feature.

When I unpacked my review machine, I was unsure whether I would be getting the Linux with 20GB of storage or the Windows XP model with 12GB. I am happy to say that I got the Linux version because I honestly believe the Eee PC concept was designed to meet a specific need that only Linux, Open Source and Cloud Computing can provide. I wanted to see if it met that need. CONTINUED