"Easy to Learn. Easy to Work. Easy to Play."

The Eee PC made a big splash when it came out a few months ago. Here in Vancouver, on launch day people literally qued up outside of the local hardware shops to be the first to get their hands on the innovative new product from Asus. That level of excitement is very uncommon at a hardware shop -- and it's a testament to how innovative and interesting the Eee PC was, for so many people.

Here at Neoseeker, a Eee PC came in for review recently. While the Eee PC has been available for a few months now, there are still many people wondering if the Eee PC is 'enough' of a computer to meet their needs. Instead of a writing up a standard review of the Eee PC, a few of us at the office here decided instead to hang on to it each for a little while, and then share are impressions of using it with you.  With something as different as the Eee PC, we felt that merely testing it over a day or two would not be sufficient in getting a true feel for how different this product is. So three of us Neoseekers spent time getting to know the Eee PC on a more personal basis, in order to share our hands-on experiences.

First, a little background: the Eee PC is a subnotebook computer (also sometimes classified as a UMPC / Ultra-Mobile PC), with it's diminituve size as it's most noteworthy feature: compared to a regular notebook, the Eee PC is a dwarf. With a weight just over 2 lbs, the 225 × 165 × 21 is small enough to slide into a medium sized purse. But even though it is as small as it is, with a 800x480 7" inch screen, a 900 MHz Intel Celeron-M processor (down-clocked to 630 MHz to save power and produce less heat), and a pre-installed Linux operating system with host of applications, the Eee PC is designed to have the functionality of machine much greater in size.

The Eee PC can be considered a disruptive technology - and conventional notebook manufacturers are well aware of it. "If (the Eee PC from) Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble. That's just a race to the bottom," said Mike Abary, Senior VP, Sony IT Product Division. Now one could say that this is just sour grapes from Sony, who has made quite a bit of money selling stylish thin notebooks and very expensive UMPC's - but the fact is, everyone seems to be responding to the Eee PC threat. Everex has been marketing the "Cloudbook" - which is clearly based on the Via reference design. OLPC started it all - and since Asus has shown the form factor to be a viable one, manufacturers such as MSI, Gigabyte, Acer, Hasee, ECS,  GeCube, Lenovo and others are bringing out EEE PC like sub-notebook computers at heretofore unheard of low prices.

Here is a chart with some of the Eee PC's specifications. The Eee PC we have is the 4G model.