PLUS
Solid, elegant construction
Clever multi-touch touchpad
Near-full-size keyboard

MINUS
Not ideal for extensive typing
No internal optical drive

ASUS Computer International kicked off the netbook craze in the fall of 2007, with its first Eee PC, based on a diminutive seven-inch LCD screen and low-voltage Intel Celeron processor.

Josh Norem, senior technical marketing specialist with ASUS in California, points out that while notebook computers have been getting more and more powerful, most users don't really need the maximum horsepower now on offer. Yet prior to the introduction of the Eee PC, there was no evolutionary path that would actually downgrade performance in favour of other characteristics, such as light weight, low price and long battery life. Today, it's estimated that netbooks account for about 17 percent of the notebook market.

While ASUS offers screen sizes from seven through 10 inches, the smaller models seem to be waning in popularity. "The general consensus is that our nine-inch model is too small," says Norem. The seven-inch models now go mainly to Toys R Us, where their tiny keyboard and tiny price make them ideal for kids.

I had a chance to test one of the recent models, the 10-inch Eee PC 1002HA, which sells for about $500. In most ways, it's a notebook: it runs Windows XP, has a near-full-size keyboard and a full complement of ports: three USB, headphone, microphone, external monitor and Ethernet. There's even a memory-card slot and a built-in webcam.

Overall feel is very robust, with an elegant brushed-aluminum case. Under the hood is a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, a gigabyte of memory and a 160GB hard drive. All of which feels very peppy in use.

Most amazing of all, battery life is rated at seven hours, which means the Eee PC 1002HA should easily get you through a full day of work or travel. Also, the power adapter is relatively tiny, and the system runs cool and silent.

The downside? The keyboard is certainly not ideal for touch-typing, and suffers from having a diminutive Right-Shift key positioned outboard of the cursor T. And there's no internal optical drive.

On the other hand, I was very impressed with the ElanTech touchpad, which lets you swipe with two fingers to scroll either horizontally or vertically. This works like a charm, and never gets in the way. Brilliant. The pad also recognizes two- and three-finger tapping, which can be used to substitute for things like the middle button of a mouse.

I had no trouble connecting to my Linksys 610N wireless router, subject only to the usual awkwardness of the Windows dialogs.

The Eee PC 1002HA is one of many netbooks that currently use Windows XP, acknowledging that Windows Vista is too sluggish and bloated to run on their slower processors, with lower-power graphics chips and minimal memory.

Many netbooks, especially the smallest ones, have used versions of the Linux operating system. Often, this was concealed beneath a custom icon interface that allowed users to simply access the basic functions of the device. However, Norem reports that these configurations are becoming less popular, and the familiarity of Windows is winning out.

Early reports indicate that Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 may run well on today's netbooks. If so, it could displace Windows XP next year.

Meanwhile, ASUS has been showing its next evolution of the netbook hardware: the Eee PC T91 Touch. Still only two pounds in weight and one inch in thickness, it's got an 8.9-inch LED-backlit display that swivels for touch-screen tablet-style operation. Final specs have not been announced, but it looks like multi-touch will be supported.

Further along, connectivity is an issue that will need to be addressed. Current netbooks are connected only when in range of a Wi-Fi hotspot. Norem sees 3G cellular as a very likely addition to future netbooks, so they could connect to the Net over public cell-phone networks.

WiMAX is another possibility, and would be ideal for this type of use. These city-wide networks offer wide coverage with the simplicity (and hopefully the low cost) of Wi-Fi. However, despite years of promotion by Intel and others, this technology has still seen only trial rollouts in two U.S. cities.

For now, in or out of Wi-Fi range, the Eee PC 1002HA is a very handy traveling companion. I wouldn't want to type a novel on it, but for general surfing and light office work, it performs like a trooper.

Article Tags:  ASUS, EE PC, windows, netbooks, 1002ha, touch, norem, intel, models, screen, notebook, netbook, XP