Product Reviews

Since Asus launched the groundbreaking Eee PC last year, nobody could accuse them of standing still. While every other laptop maker is jumping on the runaway ultraportable train, Asus is still pulling ahead with new machines. Two months ago we reviewed the Eee PC 900, which replaced the unsatisfactory 7 inch screen with a 8.9 inch panel, among other improvements. But Asus has already moved on again, and the revamped 901 is, at last, the definitive Eee PC.

Asus have taken on board the criticisms (of which ours were among the harshest) of the 701, and the lesser gripes about the 900, and largely fixed them. It may not look like much of a refit: there are new silver ends to the hinge, and the Asus logo has been left off in favour of the Eee PC brand, while the rest of the chassis has been rounded off at the edges. It still feels cheaper in the flesh than it looks in photos, but at least now it doesn't come across like a 1980s calculator.

The touchpad is pretty much the same, but the mouse buttons have been restyled. A silver plate surrounds the touchpad, with the two buttons formed out of the front edge. They're a little stiff and clicky for our liking, but it's not a huge change. Bigger improvements have occurred on the inside. Like the Acer Aspire one, Asus has opted for Intel's Atom processor, and in our benchmarks it showed a slight improvement - around 10% - over the Celeron-based 900. It's still not comfortable multitasking, despite the inclusion

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of a relatively capacious 1GB of RAM, but then this isn't meant as a do-it-all laptop.

The Atom is an extraordinarily power-efficient processor, consuming just 30mW when idle - that's barely a trickle - so we had high hopes for the new Eee's battery life. Asus got a bit of stick for shipping smaller batteries with the last Eee than appeared to have been intended, but this time you get an impressive 6600mAh unit, which gave us eight hours of light use. No full-size laptop we've seen could get anywhere near that, and compared to the 900's scant three hours, it's a phenomenal improvement. It's worth bearing in mind that the Atom processor automatically clocks down to 1.2GHz when you're not on mains power, saving energy at the expense of performance, but for basic web browsing and document editing this won't be very noticeable. We couldn't run our usual DVD playback benchmark, which tests battery life under more intensive use, since the Eee PC has no DVD drive, but we wouldn't expect the time to fall by more than a couple of hours.

Flash carry

Bluetooth has finally been added, and the WiFi module now includes support for draft 802.1n, the fastest current standard. Our review sample came with Windows XP installed on 12GB of flash memory, known as a solid state drive (SSD). A Linux version is also available, with the money saved on Windows buying you 20GB capacity for the same price.

The old Eee PC 900 will soon be removed from sale, so this is the only 8.9 inch model to consider. But is it the best mini-laptop out there? The Acer Aspire one is around an inch wider, and crams in a larger, more comfortable keyboard. It also feels like a proper mini-laptop, which the cheap-looking Eee still doesn't quite manage, yet Acer's lowest model is incredibly cheap. On the other hand, it has too many bugs for us to recommend it at the moment. The Asus is ready to roll, offers draft-n wireless, and goes nearly four times longer on a battery charge. It seems just a little pricey, but it's going to be hard to beat.