Not wanting to let Android have all the fun with its new Transformer, Asus has also introduced a Windows-powered tablet: the Eee Slate EP121.

It’s a hefty piece of kit, with a massive 12.1in screen and a 17mm-thick chassis weighing 1.15kg – almost twice as heavy as the iPad 2. Still, that makes room for some impressive hardware, with an Intel Core i5-470UM running at 1.33GHz and bringing two cores, Turbo Boost technology and Intel’s latest integrated graphics within a TDP of just 18W.

It has 4GB of RAM and a 64GB SSD but, despite the lower-power parts included, battery life inevitably takes a hit. Asus claims that the EP121 will last for two-and-a-half hours when playing 1080p video.

The screen itself is bright and, using either a finger or the supplied stylus, our time with the machine revealed that the 1,280 x 800 panel is both responsive and accurate, and there was little lag to speak of. It feels a big step up from the sluggishness of Windows 7 tablets with Atom chips.

While we’ve never been keen on tablets sporting Windows 7, at this size it works quite well, and Asus will hopefully introduce some neat features to try and make the experience easier. For instance, an iPad-style home button at the bottom of the screen uses the Windows Aero theme’s 3D scrolling effect to switch between apps.

Asus ended our meeting by dropping a rather large bombshell, though – the Eee Slate EP121 will cost £999 inc VAT. At more than twice as much as an iPad 2, all that processing power inside will have to do the tempting.

We’ll have a full review next week, so keep checking the site for our verdict.

It’s a new part that’s only been used by Acer up until now, in its netbooks and A-Listed Aspire Revo R3600.

That ambitious claim comes courtesy of Matt Wuebbling, a senior manager in Nvidia’s notebook division, who’ll understandably talk up the chances of his own product in the face of endless scepticism. However, having been hands-on with Lenovo’s latest offering and seeing the Ion in action, we’ve seen plenty of evidence to support his claims.

Our own testing on the Acer Aspire Revo has shown that Blu-ray playback can be handled with barely a whimper from the Ion, as most of the work is shifted onto the GPU – a trick that was repeated by the new S12 – and accomplished far easier than the old Intel integrated parts, which delivered results that were almost always too juddery to be watchable.

Video encoding had been added to the S12’s box of tricks: the ION-powered machine encoded a 1080p movie trailer for smartphone playback in approximately four minutes, with an Atom-powered equivalent struggling through the same task in almost 15 minutes.

It’s clear that the Ideapad will have more power than most of its Atom-equipped netbook rivals, then, and we’re pleased to report that the rest of the package looks just as solid.

Intel’s Atom N270 processor partners with the GeForce 9400M graphics chip and, in a break away from most of its netbook rivals, 2GB of RAM is included rather than one, which should make the operating system that little bit more responsive.

There’s also HSDPA and a 320GB hard disk, so connectivity and storage looks to be about as good as we’ve seen from any netbook, and the native resolution of 1,280 x 800 is larger than most netbooks on the market today.

The chassis felt rock-solid, too, with the wrist-rest showing no flex at all and the back of the screen barely twisting as we tugged at its glossy rear. The keyboard felt just as comfortable as those included with Samsung’s A-Listed NC10 and NC20, and was sat above a responsive trackpad with an excellent pair of buttons.

In fact, Wuebbling’s prediction seems to be coming true: the netbook does seem to be turning into a notebook: this one, for instance, sports Nvidia’s more powerful components, plenty of storage and RAM, a notebook-sized screen resolution and build quality that shames many laptops that cost twice as much.

If Lenovo can provide this specification at a reasonable price – say, near the £326 you’d be paying for a Samsung NC20 – then the Ideapad S12 could be a contender. We’ll let you know when the S12 arrives at the PC Pro Labs and it gets the full review treatment.

Right on cue, MSI have just sent us a few shots of their forthcoming Wind U120, which will be officially launching in January. Draft-N and HSDPA 3.5G will be integrated as standard, and we presume the rest of the specification will be the usual netbook fare. So you can expect an Atom N270 processor, 1 or 2 gigabytes  of memory and probably a 120GB hard drive as a bare minimum given MSI’s propensity towards mechanical disk drives in their notebooks. We have a gut feeling that it might even be the first netbook in the range to sport Intel’s forthcoming N330 Dual-Core Atom processor.

We’re pleased to see that the slightly boring, curvaceous form of the original Wind has been supplanted by a more angular, stylised two-tone design – perhaps in an attempt to inject a bit of a much-needed style into the netbook blueprint, in a similar vein to the Asus’ S101. 

Ergonomically, the U120 looks like it shares its predecessor’s keyboard, but those aggravated by the U100 single, rockable mouse button will be pleased to see that it seems to have been replaced by two discrete buttons.

Casting an eye around the U120’s chassis reveals 3 USB ports, 2 audio minijacks, VGA and an Ethernet port. Whether MSI’s newest arrival has any more surprises up its sleeve, we’ll just have to wait and see. Rest assured, we’ll be pestering MSI for a first hands-on look on an aggravatingly regular basis.  But, until then, you’ll just have to feast your eyes on the rest of the press shots below. 

Since we first caught a glimpse of MSI’s Eee rival, the Wind, we’ve been eagerly waiting to get our hands on one, and just an hour or so ago, one of our lovely contacts at MSI obliged us.

And while the pictures may have looked promising, the Wind is even more alluring in the flesh. The matte white finish looks good, and feels good too. It’s no match for the model looks of HP’s Mini Note 2133, sure, but as our recent review made abundantly clear, looks aren’t everything.

The base feels sturdy enough, and the gentle curves do look rather attractive in a pleasingly plain, understated kind of way. The lid is a little more pliant, and really tugging on it left ripples waving across the display, but it’s clearly strong enough to fend off the odd knock here and there.

But, flip that lid open, and the Wind starts to reveal its star qualities. Its chassis might be a touch larger than any either of its Asus or HP-branded rivals, but MSI has put the extra space to good use. The 10 inch display is bright, crisp and free from any unsightly graininess, and although the resolution is still a mite on the low side, just 1,024 x 600 pixels, it does equal that of the Eee PC 900 and, on the upside, keeps text nice and legible.

And the keyboard? Well, it’s clear that someone at MSI has been listening to the complaints levelled at the Eee and its ilk. The keys stretch right to the edges of the chassis, are well spaced and blessed with a good, impressively positive action. The half-height enter key is a minor annoyance, as is the left Ctrl key being shunted to the right of the FN key, but given the keyboard’s surprisingly spacious layout, we think, given time, that we’ll be able to forgive such minor transgressions.

The Wind’s larger frame also allows for a sensibly sized trackpad. In our brief encounter it proved responsive and true, and the buttons responded with a light click. It’s a far cry from the Mini Note’s curious layout, that’s for sure.

But despite its larger chassis and screen, the MSI doesn’t give anything away to its rivals in the weight department. It tipped the scales at 1.264kg, but as the model we saw had a six-cell battery, and retail units will ship with a three-cell, we’d expect weight to end up much nearer the 1kg mark.



And going by the six-cell battery, stamina looks like it just may be another feather in the Wind’s cap. Windows’ battery meter is far from accurate, but with screen brightness at minimum and wireless on, it projected a battery life of seven hours and 10 minutes. If that’s to be believed then, sitting idle, the Wind’s three-cell will probably last about the same as Asus’ Eee PC 900.

MSI will be producing two versions of the Wind, one with Linux – apparently SUSE Linux of some description, but no word on whether it’s been tweaked to accommodate the beginner user – and the other with Windows XP.

The pre-production model we tinkered with had Windows XP on it, and the transition from Power On to Windows desktop was impressively swift. We tried loading up standard Windows items such as the Control Panel, Device Manager and Windows Media Player and each sprung into life with appreciable haste.

MSI also mentioned the nifty ability to over or underclock the processor as required, depending on whether battery life or absolute performance is the priority.

But, even without any recourse to overclocking, it’s clear that the Wind’s specification looks to be an impressively potent one. The initial batch of Winds will all be the top of the line models boasting an as-yet unnamed processor, 1GB of memory, an 80GB hard disk, 802.11bg, Bluetooth, a 1.3 megapixel webcam and a three-cell battery. Given that those high-end models will be selling for just £329 including the VAT, the Wind begins to look very reasonable indeed. Cheaper, less well-specified models will start to flesh out the line-up around August time.

Even given our brief encounter, MSI’s Wind could finally be the laptop to claim the Eee’s low cost crown. And, dare we say it, it certainly seems the breath of fresh air that the form factor so desperately needs. With review units promised in a matter of weeks, we can barely wait.

My motivation is that while I’d like to work on the train, getting anything done at the moment requires more effort than I’d like. Which, ideally, is no effort at all. At the moment, hammering out a review on the journey home involves lugging a (relatively) heavy laptop in an extra bag, with the respective power cables in case I decide to use it when I get home, too. I’d like to condense this down somewhat, and some sort of smaller, lighter laptop stands out, as I’d be able to slip it into my backpack with everything else.

Given its runaway success, the Eee PC stands out, but there’s already two models to choose from – the original 701, and the newer, slightly bloated 900. However, both, while being undoubtedly brilliant little machines, come with caveats. The original Eee, for instance, has a screen that could be generously described as cramped and, while I use FireFox and OpenOffice at home, they’re both on Windows XP. The Eee’s custom Linux distribution doesn’t sound like it’ll co-operate with Football Manager, and Windows XP costs a bit more. The keyboard also looks a little cramp for my sausage-sized fingers – my colleague Sasha Muller has warned me away from the 701, as I’ll probably spend most of my time on the train deleting letters that I’ve inadvertently hit.

It’s fair to say that the 901 does address many of these problems. The screen, thankfully, is larger, supporting a resolution of 1,024 x 600. The hard disk can be up to 16GB in size – far better for Football Manager, as well as all that work I’ll be doing – and the Celeron processor now uses all of its 900MHz, as opposed to being clocked down to 630MHz, as it was in the 701. It runs XP comfortably thanks to the doubling of RAM – 512MB to 1GB – and weighs not far over a kilogram. It sounds like the ideal train companion, and one that I can slip into my bag with ease. It’s also a better performer than the original Eee.

However, these improvements come at a price – £280 excluding VAT, to be exact. Which is another sticking point – for not much more than that, I could invest in a genuine laptop with a 13in screen. Back in Issue 161’s Light Laptops Labs, nothing stretched beyond 2kg in weight, with 12 and 13in screens the norm. Almost all of these, though, were far more expensive than the little Eee that could, and benchmark scores indicate that virtually all of them are far more capable performers than the Eee.

And then there’s the raft of pretenders to the Eee’s ultra-cheap, ultraportable crown. MSI’s forthcoming Wind should be arriving in the PC Pro Labs pretty soon, and that is promising to be another contender for my cash. However, the top specifications of that model could cost up to £700 which, again, would buy me a very tasty laptop with a 13in screen and, no doubt, a better specification.

The battlelines have been drawn for my wallet’s affection – the Eee 900 will sate my train-working needs, sure, but the price could be a sticking point when better-specified laptops – I’m thinking larger screens, better processors, hard disks and optical drives – could almost as easily fill a niche in my bag, and be far more versatile and powerful for it.

So, any ideas or clues as to where my cash should go? What’s the best small, light and cheap laptop you’ve seen? I’m open to suggestions.