The Asus Eee PC 701 won a permanent place in history. He almost single-handedly defined the sub-notebook - a kind of PC that have been slow, inexpensive laptops hottest properties in the world. Many have tried to imitate his success, and most have failed miserably, it remains to Asus to push the envelope with a new version of its product.

Step forward the EEE PC 900. This brings with it several improvements, including a high-resolution 8.9-inch screen, more storage, more memory, a multi-touch mouse pad and improved webcam. In other words, it is much more interesting as the original. But is it enough of an evolution to avoid competition from its rivals? Tell us what you think about our Asus Eee PC 900 forum.

The Asus Eee PC 900 is available on 1 May for about £ 329.

Design

The EeePC 900 is not too different from its predecessor, at least aesthetically. Compared to the Eee PC 701, it is always white and ivory is still the size of a hardcover book. It is, however, 6mm more than its predecessor and about 100g heavier. Speakers who was seated on either side of the screen were removed to accommodate the largest group - a provision that makes the laptop immediately more attractive.

Stakeholders are now living at the bottom of the laptop below the wrist rest - a provision that affects the sound quality, especially if you use the Eee 900 PC on your knees. We’ll forgive this oversight, it, however, because the quality of players on the original Eee PC 701 garbage was the first place.

We rather hoped the Eee would have a 900 PC keyboard larger than the 701, but this is not the case. We still tap the same problems as we did before and had to adopt a four-finger - and major index - approach instead of typing at our level of all action, all figures typing. It slows you, but you’ll have to use after prolonged use.

The mouse pad has been improved, among others. It now has a wide aspect ratio equal to that of the screen, which means that your finger inputs more closely mirror what is possible with the cursor. The left and right buttons selection have also been improved. They now sports a silver finish and are easier to press.

Better still, however, is the addition of several fingers of entry, often referred to as multi-touch. The trackpad now lets you scroll horizontally and vertically through documents by sweeping two fingers up or down through the surface of the trackpad. You can also zoom in or zoom out photos by pinching or stretching movement with the fingers - just like on a MacBook Air.

The selection of input-output on the Eee PC 900 is identical to that of the 701. The left side consists of an Ethernet port, a single USB port and microphone and headphones. The right is a home to D-Sub VGA video output, two USB ports and an SD card reader. The latter can accommodate third SDHC cards up to 32 GB of additional storage. Larger cards are expected in due course.

Features

These 8.9-inch display is not simply to examine the laptop pleasant. It is also a very good level. It operates at a native resolution of 1024×600 pixels, which is significantly higher than the 800×480 pixel screen on the old 7-inch model. The quality of the screen is also commendable, especially given the price of the laptop. The vertical viewing angle is somewhat limited, so you’ll need to adjust the angle of the horizontal to get the image right. However, the horizontal angle of vision is broad enough to allow two users to watch a movie DivX side by side in relative comfort.

While the world awaits the new Intel processors Atom in the Eee PC 900 will be very disappointed. This iteration uses the same Intel Celeron 900 MHz CPU that the former 701, but it now has the support of 1 GB of RAM DDR 400 - twice as much as you got in his predecessor. The geek in us yearns for an atom - or similar - CPU, but we must wait at least until the summer before Asus updates to the EEE. In the meantime, we will thank our Lucky Stars Asus has not opted for a VIA C7-M CPU as seen in Packard Bell EasyNote XS.

The amount of storage in your Eee PC 900, depending on whether you opt for the version containing Linux or Windows XP operating system. The Linux model comes with a fairly capacious 20 GB of storage, while the Windows XP model has 12GB. The reason for this gap is not as grim as some fanboys might imagine.

Asus wants to keep the price of two identical models. If the model Windows comes with a 20 GB drive, the price of this model would have jumped significantly because of the cost of user license Windows. Asus has been able to provide more storage in the Linux edition as a result of Linux cost of approximately zero pounds. Sterling.

Both versions of the Eee PC 900 Samsung use of flash memory chips rather than an actual off-the-shelf disk drive. The only drawback is that this is not larger than 32 GB or 64-gigabyte SSD entirely cultivated as laptops MacBook Air, but this is not a big issue. The EEE 900 PC storage is still solid-state variety, so that you can run the machine on the ground in frustration, safe in the knowledge that your data will not be lost. The screen and keyboard will probably burst into a million pieces - the machine is actually quite robust, do not worry - but your data will be secure.

Those who opt for the Linux version of the Eee 900 PC will not be disappointed. It uses the same Linux-based operating system as the Eee PC 701, and comes with 40 applications pre-installed. You can add your own applications as can be expected, but we found almost everything we needed was already in the system, including the OpenOffice productivity suite, Firefox browser, a media player and more yet. Applications are logically arranged in groups tab labeled “Internet”, “work”, “learning”, “play”, “Settings” and “favorite”, then everything is easy to find.

The Eee PC 900 is not designed to replace your main PC - despite what fanboys say otherwise. It is at its best when used as a second PC or a tool for Web access, and is well equipped to do so. It has an Ethernet port, plus 802.11b / g Wi-Fi adapter so you can go online, regardless of whether you’re in your living room, your garden or a local Starbucks. Unfortunately, there is still no support for 802.11n high-speed wireless, but we can not say that we really miss this feature.

Performance

The Eee900 PC feels quickly to everyday use than its predecessor - something to put us to have twice the memory. The 1 GB DDR 400 RAM has also helped the system to better cope with managing multiple applications simultaneously. We were able, for example, surfing the Internet while watching a movie in a window without dropping frames. It should be noted that this capability is only possible now that the EeePC has a screen size larger and higher resolution resolution.

The EeePC 900 is not yet the ideal candidate for playing games. Yes, there are a few titles with fairly modest system to be compatible, but they are rare. It is also important to note that you will need to install Windows XP to launch the vast majority of them, and even then you’ll only have a limited amount of space to install your favorite games.

Asus says the Eee PC 900 last about three hours on its battery standard - a half-hour less than its forecast for the EEE PC 701. In our own reading test DivX movies, he ran for 1 hour 29 minutes, which was almost long enough for us to enjoy a feature film or two episodes of our favorite television program. Your mileage may vary, but expect it to last a little longer if you run applications that are not CPU-intensive and with the wireless adapter cut.

Conclusion

The Eee PC 900 is a nice update to the Eee PC 701. We are disappointed with its keyboard is still difficult to use, but adding a larger, high-resolution screen, multi-touch mouse pad better storage and give him an advantage over virtually all its rivals. It falls a little short of a recommendation without reason referred to the touch screen and the enormous risk that Asus will start using the new Intel processors Atom, but for those who can not wait, it is a fantastic purchase.