Adjust the placements of the mouse buttons (or had the middle finger "thiny"), include an Atom (with HT) and I'd be sold.

something that keeps me baffled is the continuation of using that stupid trackpad on the subnotes. I mean, I suppose someone did some market research and found that people like trackpads more than they like nubs. but seriously - rather than putting your buttons on the side of the trackpad, why not just install a nub in the keyboard and be done with it?!

What we need is a shootout...

Msi Wind
Asus EeePC models 701, 901, 1000, 1000h
Dell's subnote
Acer's Aspire One
HP 2133 Mini-Note

HP really should have waited to see what the Nano/Atom was going to bring.... The C7 is alot of things but not a laptop processor. Also who in their right mind is going to set the brightness at just 40%???!!!! at that level you would have to squint to the extreme just to see --- and if there is any kind of lighting around you, you are done for. The EEE PC was a great step in the mobility direction but all these other players are just trying to jump the bandwagon with no recourse and then mop up their mess when better tech comes out.

I'll pass on HP --- and keep my Samsung Q1 Ultra for now.

Mojo

I like the overall design. I don't like the guts. But I've said that before. It's good to know the keyboard is nice (and that a nice keyboard can get shoved into a box this size). I hate glossy coatings though, and this one sounds worse than most. Ugh.

I am a little worried that their over-optimistic battery life, particularly when they move on to Nano (or Atom with its currently-thirsty chipset).

Fortunately, I'm not going to be shopping in this segment until September or so, so with luck the situation will be better sorted by then, competition will have held prices down, and HP will be onto a refreshed model. Or something better will be offered by someone else.

As an aside -- granted, I haven't used a touchpad with the buttons on the side, but it doesn't sound so bad to me. Can't you tap to left click? And right click is what the context-menu key is for.

I'm very impressed. The high resolution is very tempting... hmm...

Nice design. A few quirks on the included hardware and so on, but that's because it's a generation one product. When this moves to Nano and VX800 things will be different.

I agree that there should be a 1024x600 Low-end Linux version with a different feature set (no GigE, +802.11n, etc), but in the same chassis.

The MSI Wind is easily the most interesting entrant of the upcoming crop of UMPCs, and I'd like to see a review of it.

(Was meant to be a reply to #3)

11/04/2008AD -- Well hopefully that means they worked out the bugs in those systems built back in the BC years. :-D

Mmmmmm Matt Bellamy. Favourite lead singer ever. Liking this review a lot.

The machine is beautiful. Too bad it sucks.

I've mentioned this before and I'll mention it again; it is difficult to see an all-white product against an all-white background. Placing the Asus Eee next to the Mini-note does little good because it's really hard to figure out where the background ends and the Eee begins. It reminds me of that joke about drawing a small black t-shaped squiggle on a white piece of paper, and calling it a drawing of polar bear in a blizzard.

Please, get a table with that blocky-grey carbon fiber print--or anything not pure-as-heaven white, and photograph your white products on it.

HP have completely missed the point, these Eee PC type devices shouldn't be considered small PCs but large PDAs. If you need to do some serious document editing on the go then a 13" screen is required IMHO. I’ve an iBook with a 12” screen and it’s usable for word processing but still a little small for my liking.

While a device with a 7" screen is perfect for casual web surfing, v/bloging or those on a serious budget. A larger screen would be nice, but then you lose the sweet price and battery life becomes an issue. These things aren’t meant for power users trying to do lots of things at once, as their money can be better spent going for a larger form factor. I know it would be great to have all the options but the screen size becomes the limiting factor. Like you said screen real-estate becomes more important for power users. Well designed websites generally play nice and resize themselves to suit the surfer not the other way round.

Where the Eee PC excels is that it’s perfect for non-demanding work and you just need a PC to do something simple or keep up to date, kind of like a phone and SMS culture. It’s really an internet gateway device. Even with a 7” screen and WiFi off the battery life on my Eee PC 700 is only about 2 hours which is on the edge of what’s needed to watch movies/tv on the go. So I don’t see this as a portable media hub.

But trying to load it up with XP, a Gigabit network port (seriously who gets a thing this small and then plugs in a network cable) 2GB of RAM for a lightweight CPU, the large disk space’s usefulness is limited by the battery length. Even with the larger battery which at this size is actually quite large in comparison to the unit’s base size and ends up making the PC bulky. Then if you need to keep the thing plugged in all the time it just loses its portability. The machine just doesn’t add up.

The trackpad having buttons on the left & right is all about saving space to allow for the larger keyboard. Plus if you haven't learned how to tap on a trackpad to left click then WTF! seriously. Now the double tap dragging mode I will concede this requires a good deal of dexterity but still possible.

Thanks for the review. It needs a dual core CPU and the reflective screen kills it completely for me. My current laptop has "True Bright" or whatever Asus's term for that is and H-A-T-E it I do.

i hope there's going to be a version with Via's Nano processor. that should relieve some of the performance issues.

I own the EeePC 700 and I am looking to upgrade, as many regular posters here know. The HP was in my mind but the god awful C7 turned me off and this review even more so. Right now I am trying to get my claws on the MSI Wind as that seems the best deal for my money right now.

I would like to see at what price break the 900 comes to once the 901 is released into the wild. Again, as much as I love my 700 I need a bigger screen and hopefully the Wind will get my cash for the upgrade.

If they went through the trouble of making the keyboard 92% of its normal size, why not just make it its plain old normal size? 8% larger can't mean /that/ much lager dimensions.

It's really great to see such a capable system at this size. How did the system perform as a remote desktop client (if you tested it that way)?

Eh. Looks nice, but what I love about my Eee (old-skool 700 series) is its smallness (and that it cost less than my last phone). Also I have tiny, child-like hands.

Loving the rock-bottom-and-dropping prices of laptop hardware though. Once someone makes something the size of the Eee with a dual-core CPU, I'm buying three. (If they double the battery life too, I'll buy five.)

On tuesday the MSI Wind is supposed to come out. I hope you guys have a review of that tomorrow.

Very nice review (once you get past the repeated cracks about the Eee and users with small hands...yes, yes; Geoff Gaisor is a sexy beast. We get it, dude).

Your impressions seem to reinforce what I first suspected about this model: HP rushed it to market and, consequently, missed the "point" of the subnotebook market. It wants to look and feel like something much larger, which the price for a fully optioned unit confirms, but has a perplexing array of poorly-thought-out hardware to hinder the fun.

Cut back the screen to 1024 rez width and a less aggressive coating, drop the Gig-E and Bluetooth pretensions, bring 802.11g into the base model, scrap the Vista option until the end of the year and make the price lineup start at $399...those would be a good start.