They'll sell plenty of Seashells...

Introduction

The mini-laptop or netbook is pretty much ubiquitous these days. People are turning up to meetings with them. They're appearing in train carriages everywhere. Someone you know has one. So is it time you got one?

Like other things in the Asus range, one of the first things that you notice when you get it out of the box is that it looks a bit like an Apple laptop. The Asus Eee range is making a name for itself. It has the Eee Box, the Eee Top and lots of netbooks in it. This "Seashell" model is another entry in the family...

Set Up

It's a doddle to set up. Get it out of the box. Plug the power in. Open the lid. Switch on. Good to go.

XP Home is pre-installed, and is so ubiquitous now that it's easy to get started. You have a choice of wired ethernet or wireless (up to 802.11n). Take your pick, configure what you need to and you're on the internet.

Install Avast, AVG or your choice of anti-virus software. Add on Microsoft Update and Secunia PSI, get everything patched up (replace IE 7 with 8), and you're ready for serious use. You can do all of that in about two hours with a decent connection.

In Use

It's small, it's light, it's portable. Whilst you can't use it as your main machine, it's pretty good for jotting down notes in meetings, capturing your thoughts on a train, or just gentle internet browsing in the evening.

As with most netbooks, the only thing missing is some form of optical drive. But you can pick up USB units cheaply nowadays, so if you want/need to use one, it shouldn't be a problem for you.

Whilst a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard-drive aren't going to win this awards for power and speed, it's more than enough for its target audience. Web browsing is fine. Working on documents is fine. Even when it's running in power save mode (lower brightness, lower CPU speed etc.) it's still adequate for most normal tasks.

So it won't replace your super pimped out performance gaming laptop, but it's a fine little workhorse. And the battery life is very good. It's good for a couple of evenings of web browsing, hanging in there for more than 7 hours in power saving mode. If you want faster performance all of the time, the battery life is shortened, but still good.

Conclusion

This is a cracking little netbook. Obviously it's not a big name like Samsung, Dell or Sony. But it's a nice little device. The battery life is good, the performance is perfectly acceptable. Most of the netbooks around use the Atom N270, so what you get under the hood is pretty similar. It looks nice too (not always a consideration for people, but there are lots more fussy netbook buyers out there nowadays!)

Despite not being a "big name", it's all very well put together and doesn't feel cheap. The keyboard is fine, the touchpad is always something that people have different experiences with. I found the "dimpled pad" easy enough to use and it supports some iPhone style multi-touch gestures. The power saving features mean that this should get you through a working day without the need to hunt out a charger.

Recommended!