Welcome to Gadget Brief.
The Eee Pc is a brand new miniature laptop, featuring a wonderful linux-based operating system, and great portability for a very affordable price. The Eee Pc is a great laptop with an 8" screen, and 8GB hard drive, featuring up to 20GB in the newer version.
The Eee PC is one of the smallest laptops on the market. At 225 by 35 by 165mm, it's about the size of a hardback book, and weighs 920g. Its petite dimensions give it a toy-like appearance, but this is countervailed by the pearl-white finish, which gives it a touch of sophistication. Ultimately, the Eee PC looks equally at home on the catwalk or in a child's playpen -- it is what you make it.
Because it's so small, some sacrifices have been made. The keyboard is exceptionally tiny and the keys are very closely grouped. Whereas keys on a standard desktop keyboard have a gap of approximately 5mm, the gap between those on the Eee PC is less than 1mm so it's easy to make mistakes. Some users with bigger fingers may have a hard time typing long documents, or making notes at speed, but don't let that put you off -- it's fine for drafting short to medium-length text.
There are plenty of ports scattered around the machine. There are two USB ports on the right, a third on the left, plus a VGA video output port for those who want to use an external display. You also get a memory card reader on the right side that supports SDHC memory cards (currently as large as 32GB). There's an Ethernet port so you can connect to a wired network, and it works on wireless too!
Video conferencing addicts will be pleased to note the webcam sitting above the screen. It's great for taking still self-portraits or making short movies of yourself for Facebook, YouTube, etc. Speakers sit either side of the display, but the microphone is strangely mounted on the underside of the laptop, which affects audio quality slightly. You can, however, connect an external mic or external speakers to the audio jacks at the left side of the laptop.
We tested the webcam quality and at first looking through it looked even clearer than the beloved iSight webcam, but after recording some footage and playing it back on the machine it was jumpy and out of sync with the audio; refreshing almost once every second. We then tried it out on a Skype call, and that was fine. So don't let the video playback put you off.
We then tried some of the addicting games, built in on the device. The webcam had seemed jumpy and out of sync, but the games were fine to play and the graphics seemed very smooth; much better than the video playback.
One final note about the design -- the Eee PC's power adaptor is proportionally as tiny as the laptop. It looks more like a mobile phone charger than a laptop charger, which is great since you don't have to lug an enormous power brick around. Points up on the portability.
You won't get much in the way of hardware for just over £200, but the Eee PC shouldn't be written off. It uses an Intel Mobile Celeron-M ULV 900MHz CPU, which is designed for long battery life rather than hardcore number crunching. The Asus version ships with 512MB of RAM as standard, though other resellers such as RM offer versions with 256MB of RAM. If you intend to tinker heavily with the machine or install Windows, we'd recommend getting the 512MB model.
One of the machine's biggest selling points is the fact it uses a solid state hard drive (SSD). The largest model Asus supplies is 4GB, 33 per cent of which is already in use when you buy the machine. Again, some manufacturers offer a 2GB SSD and it is possible to connect a large memory card to the SD card slot for extra storage.
It's portability means it is suitable for bloggers and businessmen, and the battery life means it will last long enough to write a good blog or medium length text file. The price means it is affordable for most businesses and even people wanting a basic laptop, as it goes on the internet, you can check emails and instant message as well as video conferences. All for the same price as an iPod touch or PDA. This laptop is a rival to models almost ten times it's price such as the MacBook Air.
Thanks for reading Gadget Brief and we hope you enjoyed the show.
We urge you to watch this weeks' video as it's our first High Definition episode!
New Website coming soon, and don't forget to send us your comments and feedback to
gadgetbrief@googlemail.com