ASUS eeePC 701

I have been using this small laptop for over 3 months now and I can say it’s a very nice piece of hardware. I can pop it in any bag an off I go. So without any more delays here is my review.

Construction:
It’s plastic, but of good quality. My only grief is the plastic area around the Ethernet port. When I remove the cable from the port, the plastic tends to move outwards. I’m afraid in a violent movement it will brake. The hinges are top knots. I haven’t seen such good hinges in bigger laptops.

Speakerphone/Microphone ports:
The speakerphone port was giving me heaps of problems. If I put my headphone with the L shaped connector at the end, it need lots of pulling strength to come out, and this is a worrying matter.

Inbuilt speakers:
Located on the side of the screen there are not the most fantastic ones (what did people expected? Honestly now!) but they do their work ok. I wouldn’t use them to light up a party though.

Screen:
It’s 7 inches. With 2 resolution modes. I have read a lot of criticism in technical magazines in regards how bad some Internet sites are looking and so on. Yes it’s true, you need to pan around a lot, buuuuuuuuut after a while you do get used to it and it doesn’t feels that much of a strain. I have find more of a nuisance that I can’t have the task bar on screen all the time. To make things better I have the bar on autohide and installed the excellent software RocketDock from PunkSoftware to give me the ability to clean up my desktop and have my most used shortcuts close.

The quality of the screen is very good, but it does gets tiring for the eyes after couple of hours.

Keyboard:
The keyboard is very plasticy and the weakest link on the laptop. The keys, again despite what technical magazines say, you can tough type if your hands are not of considerable size, aka tennis rackets. The only problem is that sometimes the keys are not responsive to hits resulting misspelled words. This is definitely something that ASUS needs to work on. A somewhat better quality keyboard it would very good.

Mouse:
The mouse that comes with the laptop is a wired optical. Quality is OK and the keys responsive. Nothing amazing but it does its job.

Hard drive:
Well it doesn’t have a mechanical HDD but a Solid State Disk. That has the advantage in case of drop that it will not scratch the platters. But on the other hand it doesn’t have enough storage (8 GB) and it’s welded on the motherboard so if there is any problem you can’t change it for something else. Speeds are not breaking any record. I wish it was a mechanical one. Anything better than this. Although the SD card reader (High Capacity one) gives you a bit of breathing space.

If you have the Windows version, like I do, it’s a good idea to install all programs to the SD card. This way you can back it up in an external HDD or flash drive and when the new 32 GB cards became cheaper to copy everything there. Presto! Instant expansion of space.

Battery:
With wireless on about couple of hours. Nothing different than any entry-level laptop at this time in the market.

Power brick:This is the BEST power brick I have seen EVER in a laptop. It’s small, with long cable and weights less than anything I have seen. If all laptops had a power brick as this we would all be much happier. Points to ASUS for this. And it comes in white too.

Conclusion:
The first try of ASUS to the ultra portable laptops has been a bulls eye. If ASUS fixes some small niggles with the 900, they have a big chance to continue be number one in the entry ultra portable laptops this year also. If someone asked me if I would buy again, I would say YES. Definitely!