The ASUS Eee Linux PC from the outside in

David M Williams
Sunday, 16 December 2007 08:55

Opinion and Analysis

Opening the lid reveals a conventional laptop design, albeit in miniature. There’s a keyboard, a touchpad, an LCD screen, speakers and a built-in camera positioned above the display. Status lights indicate power on, battery charging, hard disk activity and WiFi activity.

The keyboard size is as expected. Obviously, there’s no separate numeric keypad which you wouldn’t ordinarily find on anything smaller than a hefty 17” laptop anyway. The keys are noticeably smaller than on my regular 15” laptop but they don’t appear too frightening although some practice will obviously be required.

A "Home" button occupies the spot where you might ordinarily find a Windows key (ie to the left of the ALT key just left of the space bar.) The CTRL key occupies the far left slot on the bottom row with the special Fn (function) key to its right. This makes a departure from most other laptop keyboards but is likely arranged this way to help touch typists hit the CTRL key accurately, given the reduced key size – and with a secondary CTRL key to the right of the space bar absent.

The touchpad has a scroll area on its right-hand edge, which replicates mouse wheel functionality. It is capped off with a shiny single mouse button that can be clicked on either the left or right-hand side to effectively reproduce individual left and right mouse buttons.

What is a surprise is that the screen, in deft contrast to Dr. Who’s TARDIS, is smaller on the inside than the outside. The display does not make up the full width or height of the lid; instead a fairly thick bezel surrounds it, holding the camera, the speakers and another ASUS logo. This is a disappointment; there’s room to put in a larger screen without in any way increasing the size of the complete package.

The function keys have regular special purposes, when pressed with the Fn key held down, like volume up and down, switch screen display to external monitor or panel, toggle WiFi, increase and decrease brightness and so forth. The Fn key also causes the arrow keys to double-up as PgUp, PgDn, Home and End as well as providing a form of numeric keypad across the 789, UIO, JKL, M keys. These are all fairly standard; most any existing laptop user will be familiar with this overloaded use of keys.

But does it work? Let’s fire it up! Time to hit the button.

CONTINUED