Eee Laptop Full Of Useful

Under the Work menu youll find quick links to OpenOffice.org 2.0s various Microsoft Office-compatible apps, including Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations.

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For the same price, the Asus Eee PCoffers the same amount of RAM and Celeron processor but a smaller seven-inch display, a measly 4GB of storage space, and no DVD drive.

And yet theres no way we would give up this two-pound wonder for a regular notebook.

The Eee PC may be designed to appeal to children and older customers, but it should also tempt anyone looking for a lightweight budget PC that weighs next to nothing and connects to the Internet easily.

Its ten times simpler to use than any Windows machine, starts up twice as fast (no crapware), and is only about a fifth of the cost of other systems in its weight class.

Its a little rough around the edges, but the Eee PC is a remarkably versatile machine for the price.

For a look atthe latest Eee PC model, see our review of the Eee PC 4G Surf).

Refreshing Interface The reason why the Eee PC should appeal to kids and grandparents alike is the streamlined, tab-based interface that offers only six easy-to-understand options: Internet, Work, Learn, Play, Settings, and Favorites.

In some cases the Asus-designed menu (which runs on top of Linux) merely offers links to sites that Web-savvy users have already bookmarked, like Yahoo e-mail or Google Docs, but these choices are welcome for a target audience that may not be able to find these resources easily.

We also appreciated the option of using these quick shortcuts, as opposed to opening the browser first.

Users will love having a clutter-free desktop for day-to-day use and will likely find navigating the various options refreshingly simple compared with XP or Vista, as well as with Mac OS X.

Users who dont like the simplified Asus menu, can use this tip to switch to a regular KDE desktop, which looks just like Windows XP.

Small, But Not Too Small We found the small seven-inch, 800 x 480-pixel display pretty easy on the eyes, especially when compared with Ultra-Mobile PCs like the OQO model 02 (5 inches) and FlipStart 1.0 (5.6 inches), but most users dont have that point of reference.

A three-year-old accustomed to a 14-inch LCD didnt mind the screen while she was having fun with Mickey and friends on Playhousedisney.com.

On the other hand, we dont see many people above the age of 50 using this device as their primary computer unless they hook it up to a bigger external LCD, which start at about 170.

Overall, the Eee PCs design is fairly solid and incredibly travel-friendly for the price.

Our white model (black and other colors will come later) features an SD Card slot, two USB ports, and a VGA port on the right.

An extra USB port, Ethernet and modem connections, and headphone and mic jacks line the left side.

The keyboard is cramped but is just big enough to touch-type on; the biggest annoyance is the proximity of the Up arrow key and right Shift key; we accidentally moved up a line on several occasions while trying to capitalize a letter.

Eee Laptop Full Of Useful

Chock-full of Useful Apps So what can you do with this mini notebook Practically anything you would do with a Windows-powered one.

Teens and adults will likely spend the most time in the Internet area, where you can launch the Firefox browser, Wikipedia, Skype (for making cheap calls), and the instant messaging program (which includes clients for AOL, Google Talk, MSN, and Yahoo).

In fact, the Eee PC is the perfect device for households that fight over the primary PC (and its Internet connection).

Why waste money on a two-trick pony like the ZipIt 2 Communicator (which offers only IMing and MP3 playback) when you can get a featherlight PC that does those things and surfs the whole Web, too And thats not all the Eee PC can do.

Under Learn, for example, you can launch word games like Hangman and math games like Tux of Math Command (starring the Linux penguin), which gives flash-card-style math questions the space-shooter treatment.