Asus Eee PC 900

Sasha Muller | Jun 16, 2008 11:03 AM
ASUS | http://au.asus.com
Recommended
RRP: $0 (time of review)
Performance:  4
Features & Design:  6
Value for money:  5
Overall Rating: 
User Rating: 
(from 2 reviews)
More storage and a bigger screen address the main issues that arose with the original, but the price has risen too.
Asus’ original Eee PC 701 lobbed a hand grenade right at the laptop industry. Sure, it wasn’t perfect: there was no optical drive, the 7in screen was restrictive and it certainly couldn’t match the style of its premium rivals. But here was a fully functional, ultraportable laptop for just $500, a quarter of the price of the Sony VGN-TZ36 (page 36) – as Sony said at the time, “if Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble”.

The new Eee PC 900 addresses the few complaints levelled at the original. The chassis remains the same size but the major change is that the tiny screen has been supplanted by an 8.9in panel. To make room, the speakers that framed the original Eee’s tiny screen have been moved to the underside of the laptop.

It’s a massive change for the better. Even with the specially tailored installation of Xandros Linux – a Windows XP version is also available, although we’ll discuss the compromises of it later – the new 1024 x 600 resolution is far more manageable, and it provides good image quality too.

A noticeable graininess leaves it trailing the likes of the Sony, but it’s amply and evenly lit, with vibrant punchy colours – it’s enough to make surfing the web an enjoyable experience.

There’s no sign of Intel’s Atom processors yet, so the same 900MHz Celeron processor as before beavers away under the hood. But the memory has risen from 512MB to 1GB, and storage has increased from the original 2GB or 4GB variants to a much more sensible 20GB. The first 4GB of this is the onboard flash memory – still just a shade too small for our liking – with the remaining 16GB coming in the form of a separate internal SSD drive.

Thanks to the solid state disks, the Eee feels fantastically snappy in use. We managed to get some of our benchmarks running under XP, and the 2D graphics and media-encoding segments returned scores of 0.28 and 0.33 respectively – that may not be fast, but considering intensive applications shouldn’t be its primary use, it’s not too bad.

The Eee’s battery life also shows signs of compromise. Sitting idle, with the screen at half brightness and wireless disabled, it lasted just 3hrs 20mins. That the power supply is light comes as some consolation, but we hoped for a little more from such a portable device. On the plus side, though, what hasn’t changed a jot is the Asus Eee’s compactness. It’s incredibly light, weighing less than 1.3kg for both the laptop and charger, making it perfect to sling in your bag on a daily basis.

The build quality is impressive, too. The lid is strong with a bit of give, while the base feels robust. Compared to the often delicate build of far pricier ultraportables, the Eee seems well up to resisting the abuse of a daily commute.
The small size and fine build are both a blessing and a curse, though, as the compact design does compromise usability.

One of the better additions is a MacBook-inspired multitouch trackpad, allowing you to scroll through or zoom in and out of documents. But the keyboard is cramped, and bigger fingers will struggle to reliably hit the intended key without the occasional mistype. Then there are the tiny right-hand Shift and half-height Enter keys, which will take a bit of getting used to for anyone.

Our test unit came with the Xandros Linux preinstalled on the onboard flash memory (just like the original Eee PC 701). It isn’t particularly resource intensive, and the simple tabbed interface is ideal for experienced and inexperienced users alike, with applications for web browsing, office documents and even some games and educational software.

It does all you could possibly ask from such a small machine, and we’d recommend leaving it as is – the whole point of the Eee is to be a stripped-down, cheap version of a full laptop, and the gradually creeping price is purely down to people clamouring for more advanced features. Linux will do everything this laptop is intended for.

But we understand many users will want the flexibility afforded by Windows XP, and it won’t cost extra to have it preinstalled on the Eee PC 900. Instead, the Windows version makes up its licensing costs by replacing the 16GB secondary hard disk with an 8GB model.

We’ve no doubt that many will hail the Asus Eee 900 as another rip-roaring success and, in some ways, we’d agree. But before you rush out and buy one, bear in mind that it isn’t without issues and, although that price looks very reasonable, it’s now nudging the prices of the cheapest fully fledged Windows laptops.

But for all its imperfections, the Eee PC 900 hasn’t got much competition if you’re after a cheap ultraportable. The larger screen makes a huge difference, and the price is worth paying for that – just. We wouldn’t buy it as a main laptop, but as a supplement to an existing desktop or laptop PC it’s still a steal.
This article appeared in the July, 2008 issue of PC Authority.