I've been using a Asus EEE 701 PC 4G for about a week now. My initial plan was to purchase the Asus EEE 8G which has a 8 GB SSD and 1 GB of RAM. The SKU for the Indian market is the 4GB SSD unit with 512 MB of RAM and built in webcam so I bought that instead and included 1 GB RAM upgrade in the order.

I decided on a black version to reduce eye strain. I have a white ipod video but unfortunately viewing a LCD screen surrounded on a white background seems to induce more eyestrain than viewing the same on a black background.

I initially asked for XP Starter , which could be found in India for a third the price of XP Home, to be the installed OS but when I found out that XP Starter has a 3 program limit and no home network support, I changed the order to include XP Home instead. I could have settled for the default Linux install but since there are a couple of programs I use daily that don't have a linux variant, I chose XP instead.

The EEE is fine for viewing most websites. I've set it to use IE6 instead of IE7 so I could have a better view of how websites look to users with 15 inch screens (the EEE 700 series have a 800*480 viewable area and a 800*600 screen is supported with vertical scrolling) and have not installed IE 7 (users who have auto update switch off in XP would not have received the IE 6 upgrade.)

While I can type out IMs and reply to E-Mails using the EEE 701s small keyboard, I found it a bit too small to write out an entire blog entry from scratch. Viewing most websites is fine as most websites today support a 800px wide screen.

While no where near a desktop replacement, the EEE is portable enough to haul along on intercity trips as a full fledged internet device. I usually find myself supporting the device from under neath with one hand while typing out web addresses and IMs with the other hand. I actually produce less typos that way than by placing it on a desk and typing with both hands.

The Asus 900 series has been released in Hong Kong with a larger 1024*600 series and better webcam the day before I finalised the prder for my EEE.

However, I think the 700 series would be more likely to ship more units than the 900 series and it would be in web developers and software developers to design websites and applications to fit the EEE's smaller yet soon to be more widely used 800*480 screen.