2. Solid And Solid State

Only the white model is available so far but black-and-pastel models are promised.

The (it stands for easy to learn, easy to work, easy to play) will come in white, black and three pastel shades; so far only the white version is available. It looks a little chunky at first, but that’s partly because it’s sturdy and partly because it is so small (9" by 6"). The laptop is as thin as the sleek-looking Toshiba R400 and only just thick enough for the Ethernet port on one side and the VGA out on the other; along with three USB ports, microphone and headphone sockets, a memory card slot (SD/MMC), a Kensington lock point and a hot air exhaust grill.

Standard connections: Ethernet, modem, USB, headphone and microphone.

Use the memory card slot for much-needed extra storage. The VGA out port lets you connect to a standard monitor.

The replaceable battery almost runs across the full width of the base, which lifts the back of the notebook at a slight angle to make typing easier. The power supply is smaller than usual, as well.

Not only is the case robust and designed to stand up to a few hard knocks in the schoolyard (we dropped it from a coffee table and let it tip over as if it had fallen out of a backpack several times without any damage). The solid state hard drive is also very reliable. It won’t crash like a hard drive; the heads don’t need to be parked (no accelerometer adding to the cost); and it’s quieter than a hard drive and it uses a lot less battery.

We saw very little difference in battery life between Linux and Windows on this system. Asus claims a three-hour battery life, which reflected what our test results indicated when using both operating systems. With Wi-Fi on and the screen set to turn off after five minutes, we measured two hours 47 minutes using the BatteryEater utility. With the screen set to turn off after a minute, the hard drive set to spin down after five minutes and wireless off, we measured a maximum of three hours 23 minutes.

The battery is removable so you can carry a spare.

With a screen this size, running many applications at once is not recommended because you want the window you’re using to get the whole screen (this applies to Linux and well as Windows and several of the Java-based applications supplied with the run full screen anyway). That makes performance a little less of a problem. The 900MHz Intel Celeron M ULV is the same CPU used for the Samsung Q1, Asus R2H and Founder MiniNote UMPCs so this isn’t a high-performance system but it’s extremely usable - and installing Windows doesn’t slow the down.

In Windows XP, we streamed DiVX video over an 802.11g Wi-Fi connection from a NAS box. We used Miro player to watch the video, which did not stutter, freeze or break up (and depending on the source file, the video quality is good enough for watching movies). With multiple 4Mb images from a seven-megapixel camera loaded in Paint Shop Pro Photo X2, the application remained responsive, with even complex filters taking no more than 15 seconds to complete, although we did see some artifacts when scrolling at extreme zoom.