ASUS Eee PC Hands On Preview

Just read a review of the Asus Eee PC 701. If Asus can really deliver this unit with all the specs and at the announced price levels, my gut feel is that this will transform the UMPC/Intel Classmate PC segment into a major platform. We can expect similar products to be introduced in the coming months. As for the Eee, expect a lot of mods and innovative apps within six months of introduction.

Following are photos from HotHardware


Being a UMPC cum Intel Classmate PC product, by default, the Eee's main competition is Negroponte's OLPC, which originally aimed to bring to market a laptop priced at $100 for children in developing countries. However, after much delays and a price increase to the $170 range, the OLPC has yet to be delivered. In the interim, the Eee might actually become available in two months.

The Eee is running a version of Intel’s 910 mobile chipset, it uses a 900MHz Intel Dothan based Pentium M CPU, and comes with 512MB of DDR2 memory, full 802.11g wireless capability, and a flash-based hard drive. There will be at least two different models of the Eee, with the $199 version using a 4GB flash drive and the $299 version using a 8GB drive.

Although 4GB of storage is extremely small when you consider desktops these days ship with 750GB drives on the notebooks with 200 GB drives, the 4GB flash drive keeps costs very low, and cheap external storage can very easily be added to the Eee PC.



One of the first things that you notice about the ASUS Eee PC 701 is the fact that it is so light. The Eee PC weighs in at only .89 kilograms or around 2 pounds. The keyboard is slightly crammed and smaller than most notebook keyboards due to the smaller form factor. It very closely resembles the size of the keyboard used in the Dell Inspiron 710, which makes it ideal for emails, web surfing, or short papers, but could become a nuisance when writing for extended periods of time and for those that are used to full-sized notebook and desktop keyboards.

On the Eee PC’s left side panel, the notebook has two USB 2.0 ports, an audio and microphone port, a 10/100 Ethernet port, and a 56K phone modem port.



The right side panel of the Eee PC 701 has two more USB 2.0 ports (that is a total of four USB ports!), a VGA output, and even a flash card reader. The notebook uses a 4 cell battery that gives it just around 3 hours of battery life when it is on the move. As you may have noticed, there are no optical drives included with the Eee PC, and there is no room to add any to the notebook itself, so any DVD burners will have to be installed externally through one of the USB ports.

Heat wise, the Eee PC 701 feels a bit warm to the touch. It was however very quiet and the lack of spinning hard and optical drives made for a near silent experience.

The following is part of the review from HotHardware:

The ASUS Eee PC: First Look at Linux

Due to the fact the ASUS Eee PC 701 is aimed at booth computer novices and experts alike, there are two basic GUI designs included with its built-in Linux operating system. The first of which is called “Easy”, which as you might guess, is targeted at first time, or novice computer users.



In Easy mode, there are six tabs: Internet, Work, Learn, Play, Settings, and Favorites. Each of these tabs has icons that can link to a website, file, or application on the Eee. The internet tab has a few interesting links, one to web storage, one to Wikipedia, and even one to Skype. The Eee PC 701 will likely have Skype pre-installed, and coupled with the notebook’s onboard webcam and microphone, will open up VOIP communications to an entire new set of users.



The Work tab opens up 15 different applications, ranging from standard Office-type software to a dictionary. The documents, spreadsheets, and presentations icons all lead to their respective applications in the free, open source office software suite Open Office. The Eee PC even comes with its own Anti-Virus software and in the learn section, has a typing and a painting program. Asus plans to include more open source education-related software when the Eee PC hits the market later this year, but didn’t give any more information on specific titles.



According to ASUS representatives, Standard mode was made to be “Windows-like” and looks and feels just like a typical Windows OS. The Windows Start button is replaced by a Launch icon, and navigating through files and applications is just like Windows. Even the minimize, maximize, and close buttons in the top right of each application window on the Eee PC 701 look identical to that of the Windows XP Silver style theme we run on our own standard notebooks. It seems as though ASUS is trying to bring as much “Windows-like” functionality to the Eee as they possibly can. With Windows in mind, ASUS has said that the Eee has already been tested to work on Windows XP, but to keep costs down it will not come pre-installed on the Eee.



The ASUS Eee PC is expected to be available, worldwide, in full production quantities by this fall. It is rumored to have a street date of mid-August, and will likely be one of the hottest selling computers in recent history, come the holiday shopping season.

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From the looks of it, the Eee PC will function much like a web appliance. Guess we better start thinking of appropriate apps to develop from this perspective.