March 5th, 2008Review: ASUS Eee PC 701
There’s a new player in the great budget market, and this one isn’t future for developing nations. Meet the ASUS Eee PC 701–an ultraportable laptop that costs as little as £169 (S$506.79).
Design
The Eee PC is one of the negligible laptops on the market. At 225 x 35 x 165mm, it’s about the size of a hardback book, and weighs 920g. Its petite dimensions give it a toy-like look, but this is countervailed by the pearl-white finish, which gives it a touch of complexity. Ultimately, the Eee PC looks evenly at home on the catwalk or in a child’s playpen–it is what you make of it. Because it’s so small, some sacrifices have been made. The keyboard is exceptionally tiny and the keys are very closely grouped. While keys on a standard desktop keyboard have an approximate 5mm gap, the gap between those on the Eee PC is less than 1mm so it’s straightforward to make mistakes. Fat-fingered users will have a hard time typing long documents, or making notes at speed, but don’t let that put you off–it’s fine for light wind short to medium-length text.
There is bounty of ports scattered around the machine. There are two USB ports on the right, a third on the left, plus a D-Sub video output port for those who wish for to use an external display. You also get a memory card reader on the right side that supports SD/MMC media. The modem jack on our review sample was blanked out, as there’s no internal modem, but there’s an adjacent Ethernet port so you can connect to a wired network.
Narcissists or video-conferencing addicts will be satisfied 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 exhibit, but the microphone is oddly 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. One final note about the design–the Eee PC’s power adapter 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 a huge power brick around.
Features
You won’t get much in the way of hardware for just over £200 (S$599.76), 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 engine or install Windows, we’d recommend getting the 512MB model. One of the machine’s major selling points is the fact that it uses a solid state hard drive (SSD). The largest model ASUS supplies are 4GB, 33 percent of which is by now in use when you buy the machine. Again, some manufacturers offer a 2GB SSD and it is possible to attach a large memory card to the SD media slot for extra storage. The Eee PC comes by means of an integrated Wi-Fi adapter that supports 802.11b/g wireless networks. It’s great for jumping online at a wireless hotspot, or for casually browsing the Web at home, checking film reviews before you buy or just for staying in contact via a messenger program. ASUS says some versions of the Eee PC ship with an integrated 3G data card–an extra £40 (S$119.95)–so you can go online over cellular networks. We did not see this implemented on our review sample.
The Eee PC doesn’t use a Microsoft operating system, which is part of the reason it’s so inexpensive. in its place, ASUS supplies its own Linux-based graphical user interface. The laptop also ships with some 40 applications, which is arguably more than you’d get with a standard Windows laptop. It includes Firefox for browsing the Web, Skype, Open Office and SMPlayer for video playback. Obviously, it being a Linux machine, users can download any amount of open source software–so long as it’ll fit on top of the hard drive. The Eee PC is theoretically fast enough to run Windows XP, which is great news for those of us without beards (i.e. old enough to be familiar with command-line and early graphical user interfaces).
Performance and Battery Life
The Eee PC isn’t as quick as most laptops, but its 900MHz CPU and 512MB of RAM are just fast enough. Applications generally open a couple of seconds after clicking and it’s powerful enough to edit photos without becoming a cause of frustration. It generally boots up in about 30 seconds, which is quicker than most Windows-based laptops. The Eee PC is in no means designed as a gaming machine, but it ships with a couple of Flash-type games, and runs these well. Just don’t expect to play F.E.A.R. on it. Battery life was quite inspiring. ASUS claims it will last approximately 3 hours 30 minutes depending on what tasks you’re performing, and this was in line with our own knowledge. With very light use, the machine lasted as long as 4 hours, though your own mileage may vary. It’s hard to fault the Eee PC mainly because of its price. It can be tricky to use because of the cramped keyboard, but it’s better than similar-sized laptops like the Toshiba Libretto. If you’re in the market for a second PC, or looking for something you can take with you almost anywhere, the Eee PC is definitely worth buying.
