Asus EeePC 4G

Overview

Asus EeePC 'Black' 4G Surf Edition: Ultra Portable sub-notebook
By now, everyone and their mom has heard of the Asus EeePC, and if you haven't, now you have. This tiny gem comes in a few flavors and styles, so it's important to note that this review is specific for this model only, which happens to be the Surf 4G edition. It comes loaded with a 900 MHz processor, 512mb of Ram, a 7' widescreen LCD, and tailored operating system provided by Linux (Xandros).

What makes this thing so special is that it is relatively cheap, packs a very small footprint, and decent specs for such a tiny laptop. You would be hard pressed to find a 7' ultra-portable that has a standard (although small) qwerty keyboard, track pad, solid state disk (although not very big) 3 USB ports, and monitor output...for under $400. That's right - small in form, and not too big on price either. That is perhaps the biggest selling point for the unit, other than its coolness factor :)

But, let's get something out of the way right away, this isn't the cheapest solution you could go for portable computers. There are deals out there with laptops with larger screens, bigger hard drives, faster processors, better graphics cards and optical drives to boot; for nary a penny more nowadays. It's the fact that these laptops (often falling into the 14-15' range) is that they are NOT ultra-portables. And it's another note, that the Asus EeePC should be defined more as a glorified PDA than a laptop (out of the box). However, it does support Microsoft Windows XP, and has some following for modding the internal hardware to 'beef up' its power. However, it's still only a mediocre powered performer...but does all that power supplied by other laptops really matter when all you really do is play music, surf the net, or do casual typing - which is exactly what this is marketed as? We'll find out...

On another note of casual typing - this entire review was written on the Asus EeePC, so if you are worried about typing a lot, it can be done :)

Design

Case look and feel

The case for the EeePC is...small. Yes, ok, we know its small but it's interesting to note that it doesn't flex, it has a solid feel to it. Again, thats next to the T42 14.1 notebook its very small. The actual dimensions for the unit are 8.86" x 6.30" x 0.79 at the front, and 1.26 inches at the rear due to the battery.

The lid has a pretty big range for being open, which is nice, and it has very little flex. It also closes nicely and doesn't latch closed but rather kept closed by what seems to be a spring loaded mechanism. At a certain angle, the lid will gently snap shut, and stay that way. And depending on your flavor the case comes in either a matte black or white. Our model is the black model and has a certain mini-vader look to it with its contrasting chrome-like Asus logo on the top.

Sporting connections on the left and right, and opting for a clean front and rear (minus the AC plug-in port), it's inviting to note that this looks just like a normal laptop...only smaller. And I believe the larger siblings could take a few design cues from the Asus. Simplicity is just not simple to pull off anymore, yet the Asus EeePC does it with flare and finesse.

Keyboard

Some will complain that the keyboard, even though a full QWERTY layout, is useless. I'm here to debunk that notion, and unless you have horrible finger tactile/dexterity you will get used to it rather quickly.

I actually believe I can type faster on this keyboard now than a regular keyboard because my fingers don't have to stretch as much to hit other keys. Go ahead, and think about it, you only really need to use the tips of your fingers to type (if you type correctly) and moving your tips further away on a larger keyboard means you are typing slower and less efficiently....so just think about that before you knock the keyboard on the Asus. I'm not saying the breathing room and other ergonomic features that larger keyboards present arent appreciated by all means I love them. But the EeePC keyboard does the job, and does it reasonably well.

However, it is important to note, that using the keyboard JUST to type isn't what people always do. The layout plays an important role on how efficient you will be. If you can't relearn some button placement (most notably the right Shift key as shown in the picture)it will be very frustrating. But otherwise, I have no complaints other than in the dark with our black model, it's hard to see the Fn key sets and it tends to get dusty/dirty rather quickly. Other than that, I type away just fine.

Touchpad

The built-in touchpad isn't anything fancy, but is smaller than most are used to. It takes some time to get used to but once you do, you find it does its job alright. I will suggest purchasing or using an external pointing option as most users will find this to have better response and less frustration moments, as sometimes the touchpad is either too sensitive, or not sensitive enough. You can adjust these settings within the touchpad user settings. Also, it features a up-down scroll pad that works relatviely well. Again, sometimes really well, sometimes not very well. It also features a "one button" click pad, but is seperated by a toggle format. Meaning if you press the "left" side of the chrome button, it will engage a left click, wheras the right side engagesa right click. Sometimes the pad is a little hard to press, and gives some frustration. Of all the things I have to complain about it, it would be the touchpad, but it works in a pinch. Otherwise, like I suggested earlier, the simpler (and more comfortable) solution is to plug in a simple external device, in which case, most the problems disappear.

Size & Weight

This is the Miata of sports cars. It's small, and it's shows it. When I pull it out of my messenger pack, the reaction people say is what is that? A portable DVD player? And they are pretty close, as they share almost identical dimensions...8.86" x 6.30" x 0.79. However...the EeePC has no DVD drive. Weight is just an ounce or two over a whopping 2 lbs fully loaded (unless you have lots of heavy peripherals loaded on the USB ports). Seriously, its pretty light but feels as if it has a little heft to it. And considering the alternatives while still packing a full keyboard it's amazing. Throwing this into a backpack or messenger bag is like throwing a standard small hardback book in there. It's a nice change from the 15-17 laptops most users are used to.

Heat, Noise, Upgrading

Heat

Heat well, despite this unit having a solid state disk drive, and a ULV processor, it does generate some heat. The fan will kick in after a few minutes of working depending of course on ambient temperature. The keypad can get rather warm, and in the users manual it strictly tells you NOT to rest this little thing on your lap as it could cause burns. Now, I think that's a little harsh, but it does get rather warm. You will find most of the heat being generated towards the right hand of the keyboard, and this is to be expected without a larger chassis to disperse amounts of heat more efficiently.

Noise

Press the chrome like power button to turn it on and expect to hear....nothing. Well, almost nothing, depending on how loud your speakers are and how warm it is in the room you will hear nothing. An almost eerie feeling...you will ask yourself if you even pressed the power button. But moments later you will see the power indicator spark to life, and the splash screen come on the LCD.

As noted above, falling into a more demanding workload (streaming music, typing this review, chat client and email running) the computer was being put to its multitasking demands, and the little fan came on in short time. It's not loud by any means, more of a subtle whine than a hum - if you were to be taking notes in class or using it on the plane/train/car no one would be bothered thats for sure.

Upgrading

Well, where to begin? Upgrading the EeePC all depends on which model you have, which version of that model, and where you bought it from it seems. There's a Wiki documentation that collects what model can be upgraded, and how. I'm not going to delve further into the topic other than that, because upgrading the Asus also depends on if you want to void your warranty. However, it really is defined by your countries laws and our model, a 701 4G Surf model has a SOCKETED SO-DIMM slot, meaning that we could (READ: will) update the unit with a larger capacity stick. Other than, first off on users lists are to purchase MMC cards (SD, MicroSD, etc) to help on the storage issue. Even though the EeePC comes with a 4 GB Solid state hard drive, only about 1.32 gigabytes are available for the user to store stuff, the rest is taken up by the operating system. So keep that in mind.

Connectivity & Images

Connectivity comes in 3 USB 2.0 ports, a MMC card slot, and a standard Ethernet port. Under the hood is a B/G wireless card as well. It has a standard analog RGB monitor output as well.

The Front is nice and clean, as stated before. The lid is firmly shut, and you would think it would be easy to open one handed, but youre wrong. The thing is pretty tight lipped!

The left side has a RJ45 jack, a disabled phone port, a USB 2.0, Vent, Mic-in and audio-out ports.

The right has the MMC card slot, two additional USB 2.0 ports, RGB analog out, and Lock slot.

The rear has only one port and thats your power jack. It also houses the battery.

Features

The Asus packs a decent amount of hardware under the tiny hood. It has a built in B/G wireless card, a 4gb solid state hard disk, 3 USB 2.0 slots, mic-in and headphone port, along with a MMC card reader slot supporting SDHC cards. It also has acceptable speakers flanking the LCD screen. It's important to note that the newer 8G models have a larger 8 GB SSD, and larger battery. Speaking of batteries...

The battery is a 4400 mAh battery and tests ring it nearing 2.25 2.75 hours depending if wireless is enabled, speakers are on, and the LCD brightness. Other models (8G and regular 4G) have a 5200 mAh batter pumping out nearly 3.5 hours. Another nice feature, often overlooked, is the small wall power supply. It's proportionally sized (small!) and about the size of a Mac book power supply, and comes with a very nice cord length nearing 9 feet! It's almost overkill, but I love it. Simply plug in and let it recharge (which by the way, takes about 4 hours to recharge from a complete battery drain with the unit off)

Display & Misc Features

The display, even though only at 7 inches, and only at 800x480, the ppi (points per inch) is almost 133. Considering other small displays, such as a 13.3" Mac book with its resolution at 1280x800, and 113 ppi it doesn't look bad at all. The text is pretty clear, and is plenty bright. The viewing angles aren't horrible from side to side, but the vertical viewing angles leave a little bit to be desired. But at this price point, you can't expect much more than what is presented.

Here are some screen shots showing the menu layout of the easy interface supplied out of the box. You can do a command to enable advanced mode, but we'll leave that for you to find out and discuss in our forums :)

The internet Tab pretty self explanatory. However, notice that there are two connection icons, in easy mode, its best to use the Network icon to access your wireless connections as it remembers any passkey information, the Wireless Networks tab doesnt for some reason. Or if it does, its doesnt for me. Also, don't have your Wired Network come on with boot if you have a Wireless only connection. Having more than one "network" connection REALLY confuses the EeePC, and you will have to disable one completely, do a restart, and then have only one be the startup for it to connect "automatically" on bootup. By default, wireless is enabled on boot up. Oh, and make sure your wireless is enabled by pressing Fn+F2!

Hitting the Work Tab brings you to your office programs and items. OpenOffice 2.0 comes pre-loaded on the machine, so you can take advantage of typing, viewing, presenting, and calculating just like its big brother (read expensive) Microsoft Office.

In the Accessories icon in work, there are a few hidden programs that are useful. I wonder what screen capture does?

The Learn Tab is definitely geared towards the classroom or children environment. It has basic programs to help in aid with the topics such as math, language, science and art. Theres also a quite interesting web learn tab that you should check out just for kicks.

What would a sub notebook be if there was no PLAY and all WORK? Boring, thats what. Thank god you have some options.

Some pre-loaded games, media player, photo manager and video manager. The sound recorder is a noveltyespecially with the microphone stashed next to the touchpad. It records a LOT of internal static/noise.

And heres the Settings tab heres where a lot of the controls for the unit can take place. You can add printers or programs. You can check your system with diagnostic tools and maintain it with the anti-virus. Everything here is pretty self explanatory. Oh, and VoiceCommand reminds me of Star Trek. Kind of geeky, but kind of fun!

Clicking the system info brings up some numbers that you might want to know. Motherboard is Xd outI dont know why?

Clicking on Personalization pops up the password and desktop theme stuffnotice in our picture there is a Full Desktop Mode availablethats a feature you have to enable with a little bit of finagling.

Add and Remove programs are as simple as clicking the button, having an internet connection available, and letting the program check for updates/new programs. If it finds anything, it will display it immediately following, and might look something like this:

Performance & Conclusion

Performance

Since this comes with a Linux operating system, there are no real benchmarking systems that fall into place with our normal routine, as followed by our standards found HERE. However, we can note a few things about the processor, memory, and SSD.

The processor is a 900MHz Intel Celeron Process however, using the default BIOS, it only operates at 630mhz. Boo hoo. Well, good news for those who opt to run Windows XP - you can do normal software hacks to bring the FSB back up to the 100mhz and utilize those extra 270mhz, but for users who have the custom Xandros Linux, we just have to wait until Asus officially releases their stable BIOS update. There is a BIOS floating out there that enables the 100 MHz FSB...but it's plagued by bugs and display problems...

The memory, as stated WAY early in the review, is a single SO-DIMM DDR2 chip at 512mb clocked in at 667 MHz. However, other units come with 1 GB (the 8G version). It was originally noted that our model (Surf) would have a SOLDERED stick of RAM, which crushed us to the possibility of upgrading. Not to mention the warning stickers plastered to the bottom of the units saying that if you DID open the little door to upgrade you would void your warranty. But, the upgrading gods smiled upon us by Asus's latest press release stating that upgrading your RAM will NOT void your warranty (in certain countries like the US anyways). Check out our news post HERE.

And our unit came with a Non-Soldered SO-DIMM chip, which means we can upgrade! But again, this unfortunately varies by model, release date, and origin of purchase as reported on various blog and forum sites.

The battery test however, can be performed, although not as thorough as our other tests running a DVD we can do a normal browsing/operating battery test. Running on full display, full volume, and wireless turned on streaming an internet radio station our 4400mAh battery powered EeePC just ticked over 2 hours and 5 minutes before it shut itself down automatically. Not too bad...but somewhat disappointing in my eyes. I sought off to see how much I could get out of the battery....

Running the same test again only this time using mp3's loaded onto the SSD, we lowered the LCD brightness to 75%, the volume at 50%, and wireless turned off, we squeezed 2 hours 33 minutes out of it! A little better! Next, we lowered the LCD to its absolutely lowest setting, turned the speakers off, and didn't have the wireless card enabled. We managed to squeeze right past 2 hours 46 minutes. Of course, this all depends on what you are DOING with your EeePC. Watching movies on your SSD or flash drive will task the processor kicking on the fan which causes faster battery drain, and listening to music through the speakers will chew up power faster than using small headphones.

Since this has an embedded SSD that cannot be upgraded, you will need to know that 1.3 GB can fill up quickly if you're not careful. However, personally, using this device with a 1 gig flash drive, and a 512mb microSD card both plugged in I store enough music to last me through the day, save all my word and simple PowerPoint presentations, transfer over about 25-30 high resolution images, and still have PLENTY of space left for an EBook or two, and that's not even touching the 1.3gb available on the SSD. But, if you are worried about space, you should consider other alternatives that have larger hard drives, however, if you use the machine as it is marketed for you won't have too much problems.

If you got a little MacGyver blood in ya, you can get handy with a soldering gun to add some fun gadgets utilizing the internals. And of course, if you would like to, you could install Windows to reap the 2GB Ram utilization for your unit. But, if you're not down with voiding your warranty, or changing your OS, your upgrading options are pretty limited...as of now anyways. That however won't stop some (including myself) from upgrading some other aspects of the Asus EeePc.

Conclusion

Pros:

• Very user friendly
• Surprisingly good performance with stock hardware and supplied OS
• Small footprint
• Reasonable Price
• Works as described

Cons:

• Wishing for a slightly larger LCD
• Could use better speakers
• Battery life could be improved.
• Gets warmer than anticipated

Even though the price climbed from the original quotation oh so many months ago, the unit still leaves a sweet taste in my mouth. Being new to Linux, I had no idea what to expect, but I have come off pretty impressed. It's impressively easy - definitely shakes the fear of using computers for newer users or even children. And with that stated, the unit has solid performance for its hardware. I do wish it had a larger display, better ways of implementing more permanent storage solutions, and had about an hour or more of battery life, but otherwise I can't complain too much. For being a sub notebook, fulfilling everything a sub notebook this size should and coming in HUNDREDS less than the competition, the cons listed above are perfectly acceptable. So as long as your going into the ultra portable game with this mind sets in place, you'll find yourself having a winning combination. And if you need a little more hard drive space, longer battery life, and 1 GB of RAM standard, well Asus has answered yours (and mine) answers with the 8G. Oh, the lust for technology...it's never ending is it.

Recommendation:

RECOMMENDED missing a few features/performance issues, but a great little machine.

And if you're interested, I'm starting a weekly blog stating how well the unit holds up for ONE year in our forums! Go ahead and register if you haven't already and read for yourself what I'm doing, where I've been, and how it's holding up.