2. Keyboard, Trackpad and Screen

The undersized keys on the smaller Eee PCs have meant that most people with normal fingers have found it awkward to type anything longer than a URL or a short email. The individual letter keys on the keyboard are larger on the Eee PC 1000, as are the Enter, Backspace, Tab and Shift keys—there’s more space between the keys, and the keytops have more of a bevel on their edges.

While it’s still a small keyboard to type on, and your fingers can still feel cramped, it’s actually possible to touch-type and write long documents without frustrating typing errors. In fact, this review itself was written on the Eee PC, something that wasn’t comfortable on the smaller keyboards.

There’s also room for a second Ctrl key on the right of the Eee 1000’s keyboard, but the layout is still slightly compromised—the right Shift key is over to the side of the cursor keys when you’d expect it to be above them, and the spacebar doesn’t quite feel wide enough. And now that you can type at greater length, having the cursor keys double up as Home, End, Page Up and Page down is a little more frustrating, because typing more means you’re likely to want to move around in your text more as well.

The individual keys on the Eee 1000 are larger and spaced further apart, which makes typing more accurate.

The feel of the keyboard is also somewhat odd. There’s more travel on the keys than before, and the action has a slight bounce, cushioning your fingers as you hit the keys. Yet on the unit we tested, the keys clicked and rattled excessively as we typed, making the keyboard feel flimsy and plastic. The keys in the centre of the keyboard flexed further during typing than those at the sides, so as with previous models, this may be an assembly issue rather than a problem with the design. Asus tells us that this was a pre-production version of the keyboard, and it plans to make improvements on the final model. Even so, the Eee PC 1000 isn’t up to the standard of the HP Mini-Note 2133 here—which has an extremely well-designed keyboard—but it beats almost every other mini-notebook on the market.

The trackpad has a widescreen ratio to match the screen, and it has a slight texture, which makes it easier to make small, precise movements that put the cursor where you want it. It has separate buttons rather than the single rocker switch on earlier models; these are positioned on the very edge of the case and have a firm, positive action. You can press both buttons at once to simulate a third mouse button, and again you can change what action that invokes.

The trackpad has simple multi-touch features that let you scroll using two spread fingers or open the context menu by tapping with three fingers together. It’s not as powerful or intuitive as the multi-touch features on the Eee PC 900—you can’t scroll with your fingers held together or pinch and spread your fingers to zoom in and out of images - but it’s still useful, especially as you need to use two keys for paging up and down in documents.

The touchpad offers basic multi-touch scrolling, zooming and tapping, or you can click both buttons at once to emulate a middle mouse button.

There are four action keys above the keyboard; the first two turn off the screen backlight to save power or swap between different screen resolutions. The other two are set to switch CPU speed—between 1.2 GHz power saving and auto modes, 1.6 GHz high performance mode and 1.8 GHz super performance mode—and launch Skype. You can change them to run any application of your choice, however.

The shortcut key rotates among four screen resolutions: 800x600, the default 1024x600, 1024x768 (which makes the on-screen image taller than the screen area) and a compressed 1024x768 (which fits more on screen but gives a rather distorted image). The screen resolution of this 10.2” screen is actually the same as the smaller Eee PC 901. You may prefer the slightly larger icons and scrollbars this produces, but it means the display isn’t as sharp, and you see much less of a document or Web page on screen than you would on a 12” ultra portable, which typically has a 1280x800 resolution.

The screen is matte rather than glossy, but it still suffers from a little glare and reflection in direct sunlight. The viewing angle is good, and the image is generally high in quality, but colors are not as rich or vivid as on more expensive ultraportable notebooks. You can adjust the brightness from the function keys, but if you set it below half brightness it’s very difficult to read in daylight.

The Webcam sensor is from Omnivision, a supplier best known for cellphone cameras, and the quality is adequate for IM and Skype.