A budget hardware tour
The Eee PC's sub-notebook form factor and budget price tag are really what makes the device appealing, but they also impose some limitations on the hardware under the hood.

With such little real estate available, the Eee PC naturally comes with a smaller screen than you get with full-sized notebooks. The wide-aspect screen measures just seven inches diagonally, with a display resolution of only 800x480—less than half the number of pixels available on a standard XGA panel with a 1024x768 resolution.

Screen size has always been a sore spot for the Eee PC, and its move to Windows doesn't change the fact that 800x480 is a very low resolution, especially since most web pages (TR included) are designed for a minimum width of 1024 pixels. Fortunately, the screen itself is of decent quality, with brightness and colors that rival the screen on my 14" Dell notebook.

Since the Eee's screen is flanked by a couple of wide speaker panels and a 0.3-megapixel webcam up above, there's actually room for a larger panel. Asus' next-gen Eee PC will feature a larger 8.9" display, but it's not quite ready for prime time yet. To be fair, only one of the Eee PC knock-offs currently on the market has a larger screen; HP's new 2133 Mini-Note PC features an 8.9" 1280x768 display. The Mini-Note costs $500, though, and that's $100 more than the Eee PC.

At least Asus will be able to grow the Eee PC's screen without compromising the form factor. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the keyboard, which already stretches to the edges of the device. Even then, it's still too cramped for fast, comfortable typing with my larger hands. Slender lady-digits might fare better, and I'm sure children would have no problem adapting to the smaller key size.

The Eee PC's small keyboard is one of those things you just have to learn to live with. It takes a little getting used to, but it's really not all that bad. You wouldn't want to write a thesis on the Eee, but for banging out quick notes, forum posts, or emails, it's more than adequate. Be prepared to see more typos, though. They're impossible to avoid, although in my experience, far less common with the Eee's keyboard than with the Blackberry-style thumb keyboards more common on smart phones, UMPCs, and Internet tablets.

While I'm griping about size, I should probably address the Eee PC's trackpad. Like the rest of the device, it's a little on the small side. The problem here isn't that you need a lot of trackpad area to move the pointer around the Eee's relatively small desktop, but that the right edge of the trackpad reserved for vertical scrolling is so narrow. You're liable to spend a lot of time scrolling given the Eee's low-resolution screen, and it would be much easier if the trackpad's scroll bar were wider.

As you've no doubt realized by now, the Eee PC is really all about trade-offs and compromise. The compromises Asus had to make to bring this system down to the $400 range are perhaps no more apparent when we look at what the Eee PC has under the hood. An "Ultra Low Voltage" Celeron M 353 runs the show, and although the chip is designed to run at 900MHz, Asus underclocks it to just 630MHz in the Eee PC by lowering the front-side bus speed from 100 to 70MHz.

Intel's 910GML covers chipset duties, packing an integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 900 that doesn't nearly have enough horsepower for games but does just fine on the Windows desktop. On the storage front, XP-based Eee PC models all come with 4GB solid-state drives that, while slow, should be able to withstand more abuse than mechanical drives. The Eee also features a single memory slot that Asus populates with a 512MB DDR2-667 SO-DIMM. 512MB is what we'd call a functional minimum for Windows XP, and since the Eee PC's limited horsepower and screen real estate don't exactly encourage multitasking, it's probably adequate for most folks. However, if you're craving more RAM, you can unscrew an access door on the bottom of the system and swap in a 1GB or 2GB module of your own.

The Eee PC's hardware payload isn't exactly power-hungry—the processor alone has a TDP of just 5W, and that's at its default 900MHz clock speed—so Asus can get away with equipping the system with a four-cell lithium-ion battery that offers 5,200 mAh of power. Battery life clocks in at around three hours if you're fiddling around, or slightly less when video playback is involved. That's not exceptional, but for a budget sub-notebook, it's certainly reasonable.

With relatively modest hardware inside, the Eee doesn't require that much cooling. A few vents dot the underside of the case, while a fan pushes air through a side exhaust port. When on, the fan is audible, but not annoying. It seems to come on more often when the Eee is plugged in and charging its battery, though.

Around the left side of the system are a USB port, headphone and microphone jacks, and a 10/100 Ethernet port. 802.11g connectivity is provided by an integrated Atheros AR5007EG Wi-Fi adapter that had no problems connecting to several wireless networks I tried.

Spinning the Eee PC to the right reveals two more USB ports and a VGA output. From here we can also see the beefy hinge that anchors the screen. Build quality is often an issue for budget notebooks, but it's not a problem with the Eee PC. Asus has been building notebooks for years, and it shows. Despite an all-plastic body, the Eee feels sturdy, solid, and durable. That's more than we can say for even some high-end sub-notebooks.

Also along the right edge of the system is the Eee PC's SD slot. Popping in an SD card is the easiest way to bolster the system's 4GB internal SSD, and although it's probably not the fastest storage solution around, it's a simple and inexpensive upgrade that even inexperienced users should be able to handle.

Asus actually bundles an A-Data Turbo 4GB SDHC card with a more expensive version of its Eee PC 4G XP that sells for $469. The card nicely doubles storage capacity while keeping the total cost below that of the $500 Eee PC 8G model, which comes with an 8GB SSD. However, you're better off sticking with the standard Eee PC 4G XP and adding an SD card of your own. You can find A-Data's Turbo 4GB SDHC online for around $20, and an 8GB model can be had for less than $30.

The $469 Eee PC XP bundle also includes an Asus-branded mini optical wheel mouse. The mouse is a nice little addition, particularly because it would be silly to lug around a full-sized mouse with a sub-notebook like the Eee. I don't think it justifies the bundle's $70 price premium, though.