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Asus Eee PC 4G

Asus Eee PC 4G

Rohan Naravane, Mar 03, 2008 1443 hrs IST

The affordable sub-notebook that took the world by storm is here... and we've got our hands on it

Ultra-portable and ultra-light, attractive looks, good performance, near-perfect customized OS, good battery life, well-priced

Cramped keyboard, mediocre touchpad tap response, low usable storage space

Sub-notebooks or Ultra Mobile PCs (UMPCs) have been around for quite a while now. They have a smaller, lighter footprint than standard notebooks, thanks to their smaller screens and because some features (like the optical drive) having being taken off. Most of the sub-notebooks that were in the market till 2006, however, belonged in the premium segment, making people think twice before investing in one of theses. Then in 2007, Asus changed all that by giving the world the Eee PC. Considered as an offshoot of the OLPC idea, the Eee PC has made portable computing come within the reach of a large segment of the general public who couldn't afford it thus far. We're sure you'll want to know what it's like, and what we think of it, having spent a while using and testing it. The bundle consists of the Eee PC, the battery charger, a soft case, and a driver CD. I liked the one-piece adapter (it's not of the typical bulky kind laptops use) -- it's only slightly larger than your average cell phone charger, as you can see.

Specifications

A lot of things you usually see on standard notebook PCs are missing here -- a proper hard drive, optical drive, S-video port, Bluetooth module, FireWire port, and PCMCIA / Expresscard slot. This stripping-down, along with the smaller screen size, help to bring the weight down by more than a kilo. But in these times of plug-n-play, the presence of three USB 2.0 ports is greatly appreciated. But it's clear the Eee PC and traditional laptops belong in different leagues altogether; it wouldn't be right to compare them. <__PAGETITLE__The Basics__/PAGETITLE__> Design and Construction When I saw the Eee PC in print ads, I imagined the device to be bigger; I realized how small it really is only after I got my hands on it. The Eee PC 4G is available in black as well as white. The white model looks like a shrunk Apple MacBook, and the black one (which we received) has that "business-professional" appeal.

So you can see how small the thing is, here are a few pictures of it alongside my 15.4-inch HP Pavilion notebook.

They look quite the father-and-son pair

The Eee is a little more than half as large as my HP laptop
Here's a look at the placement of the components. <__PAGETITLE__Design and Construction: 1 of 3__/PAGETITLE__> Front: The status LEDs in the right corner are visible even when the lid is closed. They display the Power, Battery, HDD activity, and Wireless status.

Left: The Ethernet port, one USB port, and the mic and headphone jack are here.

Right: The SD/MMC memory card reader is here, along with two more USB ports and a VGA port. Back: The power port is here, along with the battery, which protrudes slightly downwards. This tilts the laptop's keyboard a little, making typing that bit more convenient. <__PAGETITLE__Design and Construction: 2 of 3__/PAGETITLE__>

The small 7-inch display has a good resolution of 800 x 480; it's pretty bright. Above the screen is the webcam; though it's not as high-res as the 2MP sensors on standard laptops, the quality is decent. In low lighting, I got around 10 fps, and a respectable 30 fps in good lighting conditions. The cam can record videos in the OGG format -- pretty usable all in all.

"Hand-held" -- in the true sense of the term
The screen is covered on both sides by two strips of speaker grilles. The speakers deliver decent output, though a bit lower on quality as compared to those on a regular laptop. Below the screen is the "compressed" sort of keyboard; in order to fit a full QWERTY keyboard into the shorter-width frame, the size of the individual keys has been compromised upon. The first time I used the keyboard, I was sceptical about it.

I was gradually able to get used to it; I can now type decently fast, though there is the occasional typo. People with large hands might have a problem when they try typing on it for the first time, but let not that first impression be the last -- you can get used to it, even if it's got to be called "cramped" in the end. The touchpad is smaller than usual, and there's only a vertical scroll line on this one. Space restraints probably dictated that a horizontal scroll line couldn't be incorporated. I had one problem with the touchpad from time to time: although the pointer navigation was all right, it did not respond to tapping well enough -- I sometimes had to use the buttons. The Eee PC is built of traditional hard plastic materials like the ones used in typical notebooks. The build quality is good; it doesn't feel cheap at all, even though it is, price-wise. Even the screen hinge is pretty strong. <__PAGETITLE__Design and Construction: 3 of 3__/PAGETITLE__> The Operating System The Eee PC runs a heavily-modified version of a Linux distribution called Xandros; yes, it doesn't run Windows. This, in all probability, was done with the idea of keeping the price low. But I must mention that configuration-wise, the Eee PC is capable of running Windows XP. Asus also provides a CD with Windows XP drivers, should you feel the need to install XP on it after purchase. Coming back to the OS, I was surprised to see how fast it boots up. It took the laptop just 20 seconds to power up and be ready for action. Main Interface The Home screen comprises a couple of tabs with large application icons that take up the entire screen. These app-icons have simplified names according to the task they perform. Here are a couple of screenshots:

The Internet tab consists of Web-related apps like a Web browser, a multi-protocol messenger, and a wireless manager

Here we have the OpenOffice.org office suite, which is fully compatible with MS office documents

This tab gives access to a couple of games, a media player, a media manager, a webcam app, and more

The settings tab has various tweaking, setting, and diagnostic tools
<__PAGETITLE__The Software: 1 of 2__/PAGETITLE__> There's Mozilla Firefox for Web browsing; as you know, it has a tabbed interface and performs nicely. It's generally considered faster than Internet Explorer. One problem while browsing: due to the small screen size and resolution, and the fact that most pages are designed for bigger screens, there is the unwanted -- and dreaded -- side-scrolling. What's worse is that the touch-pad doesn't have horizontal touch-scrolling, and it was irritating to drag the sidebar every time I wanted to see the cut-off portion of a Web page.

See what I mean?

Streaming a YouTube video
One thing I wasn't able to try out was video-chatting, because the inbuilt multi-protocol messenger (which supports Yahoo!, MSN, Gtalk, and more) doesn't have support for video-chat. I do hope they update the messenger to one that supports it. The OpenOffice.org suite is a very good alternative to Microsoft Office. Check out a review (from long ago) here.

The interface in Writer is similar to that of MS Word

Calc is the MS Excel alternative in OpenOffice.org
Overall, I think the Eee PC's OS is one of the best iterations of Linux I've ever seen. Everything is simplified, and can be easily understood even by people used to Windows. Installing third-party applications may not be as simple as it is on Windows, but the OS comes with a sufficient number of applications required for everyday use. One prominent disadvantage of the Eee PC is its low usable disk space. The use of the SSD gives only a measly 1.4 GB for the user to play with; that kind of space would barely fit one DVD movie rip along with a couple of music albums. If you're considering it only for regular office use, though, 1.4 GB should be more than sufficient for word processing documents and spreadsheets, for example. The problem can be somewhat countered: a 4 GB SD card or pen drive (which retails for a little more than 1,000 rupees nowadays) can be used along with the laptop to boost storage space. <__PAGETITLE__The Software: 2 of 2__/PAGETITLE__> Performance Since this is a Linux-based notebook, we couldn't run our standard benchmarks to gauge performance. But my overall experience was that it runs pretty fast. Most of the time, multitasking doesn't make the OS drag. Videos were played back pretty smoothly, and data transfer rates were pretty decent, too. Battery Life, Heating, and Operating Noise: My first battery test consisted of the Eee PC being put in full brightness mode and connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi. I surfed wirelessly, played music off a memory card or the Internet, watched YouTube videos, and used the word processor from time to time. With all this, the battery lasted two hours and forty minutes. In the second test, I played a DivX video off a memory card. Here, the laptop's battery stayed alive for almost two and a half hours. That means good battery life; under power-saving conditions, the laptop should definitely be able to give you more than three hours. With respect to heating, my experience suggested that the Eee PC heats up about the same as compared to standard laptops, if not more (when used for longer periods of time). It is definitely not a chilled-out machine, but you can't consider this factor a deal-breaker. Finally, when it comes to operating noise, there is almost none. That's mainly due to the absence of a rotating hard drive and an optical drive which also cause vibrations along with noise. The only little noise that is emitted is from the system fan, but it's hardly noticeable. This one's pretty much a silent worker. Our Conclusion The Asus Eee PC is available for a retail price of Rs 18,000, and that's well-priced for sure. That much cash will fetch you an upper-mid segment smartphone; the Eee PC can do a lot more. It's easier and more comfortable to type on its keyboard than on QWERTY-pad cell phones. The target audience would include pretty much anyone -- right from school-kids to business professionals. The Eee PC definitely can't be considered a primary PC; it simply is not meant to be one. It can very well be a perfect companion to your home PC. I'll sign off with this: this laptop is a worthy investment. I do think it has ushered in a new era of portable computing, and other manufacturers are come up with similar offerings. Review unit sourced from Asus India <__PAGETITLE__Performance, and A Verdict__/PAGETITLE__>

  
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USER COMMENTS

increase ur hardisk capacity

by akash joshi, malkapur, on Aug 08, 2008 02:53 PM, Report abuse   Reply

pls let me know the price of above laptop

by Amjith, Kollam, on Jul 10, 2008 04:06 PM, Report abuse   Reply

What I am worried is the price! Still in india, it is not become famous. This laptop is not available in ritchi street. Once it get into ritchi st, then I am sure the price may go down tremendously. Now at present this laptop is selling at 17,000 in show room. I am sure that the price may come down to 12000 within 3 to 4 months. what say?

by vignesh, chennai, on May 10, 2008 11:12 AM, Report abuse   Reply

Hi, This laptop is very much availble in chennai for Rs.13500 and 16000 for 2GB and 4 GB respectively. Moreover i saw it for 15000 in ebay.

by Anand, Chennai, on Jun 16, 2008 04:59 PM, Report abuse

no windows no thanks

by Puneet, Mumbai, on Mar 04, 2008 01:51 PM, Report abuse   Reply

I wish India implemented the strict rules about software piracy and then it would be fun seeing the expression on your face.

by Viru, New Delhi, on Mar 04, 2008 02:38 PM, Report abuse

u can install windows if u want. Its supported.

by vignesh, chennai, on May 10, 2008 10:58 AM, Report abuse

Eee pc has horizontal scrolling, You have to enable it.

by Sam, Pune, on Mar 18, 2008 03:46 PM, Report abuse   Reply

is it visible??? when i see this eee pc, i cudnt see any horizontal scroll.

by vignesh, chennai, on May 10, 2008 10:26 AM, Report abuse

Gr8 agreed. But how dou compensate the lack of cd drive. Do we have cheap external drives here. Well until then....

by Pramod, Cherthala, on Apr 25, 2008 07:00 AM, Report abuse   Reply

If other brand like ACER is around 20,000/- with full feature notebook with Celeron, is it worth to buy Asus at 18,000/- with this spec.?

by Baiju Mehta, Vadodara, on Mar 12, 2008 06:00 PM, Report abuse   Reply

While this is a great ultra portable- i would much rather wait for the 9inch screen version with 8 GB SSD- which is going to hit the market in 2 months. Incidentally this is available on compare India- for 16k.

by vijayshimla, Shimla 171001, on Mar 04, 2008 08:43 PM, Report abuse   Reply

there is nothing as such on compare india,As per company, it will take more time & even at higher prices to hit the market with in 2 Months

by Rakesh, Bhopal, on Mar 07, 2008 10:48 AM, Report abuse

This looks pretty impressive.. i am reading about this just now.. well written article. also i would like to know more info on this on the price and where its available for me to go and check it out etc... i am writing from chennai

by sathish sampath, chennai, on Mar 05, 2008 02:06 PM, Report abuse   Reply

We are Authorized for ASUS products In TN, SETHIA INFOTECH .Ph.32982159/42149599/98841-20789

by Pradeep, chennai, on Mar 06, 2008 11:13 AM, Report abuse

wat abt cd write. can we upgrade it with 2gb ram n process. ORrrrr how can we run photoshop coreldraw max cad maya software on this is this capable to run this software if not so can we upgrade it.

by ushant, mumbai, on Mar 05, 2008 11:45 AM, Report abuse   Reply

you can connect external USB-based cd/dvd writers! Also you can upgrade to 2 GB if you can tweak the inbuilt OS a bit! The default OS only supports 1 GB but adding support for 2 GB is not a big deal! Although you *might* be able to run 3DMax etc. but please do not buy this machine for that purpose! Its in a different league althogether!

by Pat, Mumbai, on Mar 06, 2008 10:30 AM, Report abuse

Hey Rohan, thanks for a most informative test review. I think you can improve on it if you can tell us of a few hacks that you have tried on it. Like running win xp off a usb drive. An 8gb flash drive is avaliable for 1500rs. With Xp running off a usb drive, the machine would become a killer app. This is very very imp to check out. how soon can you tell us about this? also how much will the slow transfer rate of the usb drive affect the performance in that case?

by madjack, mumbai, on Mar 05, 2008 01:06 PM, Report abuse   Reply

Xandros has sold itself to microsoft

by scorpio, new delhi, on Mar 05, 2008 12:48 AM, Report abuse   Reply

Can anyone tell me its power consumption? What is the wattage? A standard laptop, say the Dell Inspiron, uses about 70 watts. Also, anyone knows how it compares with the OLPC? Thanks

by Jagadish, Trivandrum, on Mar 04, 2008 05:13 PM, Report abuse   Reply

The Poll question "Do you agree with this review?" is logically incorrect. To agree or disagree with a review, I should have used the product myself and formed an opinion. I think the question should be "Did you find this article informative?". My answer: Yes. But, has the HCL laptop with similar features and a 1400 price tag been covered .

by iGamer, calicut, on Mar 04, 2008 04:09 PM, Report abuse   Reply

Call SETHIA INFOTECH , ASUS Royal Partner, and for DEMO. Ph.32982159/42149599/98841-20789.

by Pradeep, chennai, on Mar 04, 2008 02:12 PM, Report abuse   Reply

As you have mentioned in the screenshots, it shows Skype already installed, you could have tested video and audio conferencing by that, I wonder if you tried to install some packages?

by Viru, New Delhi, on Mar 03, 2008 06:08 PM, Report abuse   Reply

Yes, skype 1.4 was pre-installed but unfortunately it did not have the video chat facility, thus couldn't try it out. The 2.0 beta version (released recently) has started support for video though.

by Rohan Naravane, TechTree TechLabs, on Mar 03, 2008 10:45 PM, Report abuse

Thanks for your reply Rohan, you have my vote for one of the most interesting reviews, do post again when you test the webcam quality, I would love to gift one of these to my close ones. Also please provide a feedback if you install any linux packages as how they worked and if you are satisfied with their performance.

by Viru, New Delhi, on Mar 04, 2008 01:12 PM, Report abuse

Call SETHIA INFOTECH , ASUS Royal Partner, and for DEMO. Ph.32982159/42149599/98841-20789.

by Pradeep, chennai, on Mar 04, 2008 12:15 PM, Report abuse   Reply

Can a external 80GB usd hard drive can be used ???

by Sajeesh, Bangalore, on Mar 04, 2008 10:22 AM, Report abuse   Reply

yes, definitely. As easy as using a pen drive would be.It will drain the battery, though.

by Amit, Hyderabad, on Mar 04, 2008 11:20 AM, Report abuse

Please let me know how this is in comparison with HCL's 7 inch laptop

by swapnil, pune, on Mar 03, 2008 06:10 PM, Report abuse   Reply

There are 3 basic differences, 1.it carries weight of 0.92 KG, where as HCL carries 1.5 KG 2. HCL has 2 GB SSD Drive, while Asus Has 4 GB SSD Drive 3. HCL does not carry any VGA Port, while Asus does. It is important for presentaion over LCD Projectors & this feature very much important for Manages, Executives, Students who usally go for power point presantaion regularly. 4. HCL does not carry any Webcam, Asus has 0.3 meagapixel cameraof good quality.

by Rakesh, Bhopal, on Mar 04, 2008 10:19 AM, Report abuse

does it have a connector for an external screen, keyboard

by sudhir aggarwal, delhi, on Mar 04, 2008 03:48 AM, Report abuse   Reply

Yes, U can attach LCD, Projectors through VGA port.

by Rakesh, Bhopal, on Mar 04, 2008 10:09 AM, Report abuse

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