Is a usable laptop for less than US$ 400 believable? Does it work?

The short answer seems to be - yes.

The Asus Eee PC. At first, I glanced right past the in-store display - then I saw the price - less than US$ 400. It was a genuine Hollywood moment worthy of Spielberg himself - the sound faded, lighting in the room dimmed and the Asus Eee PC glowed with a heavenly light....

While this laptop will not pick the kids up from school and predict the weather, it's a fabulous bargain!

Today, many laptops boast features that compete with full-sized desktop computers - and prices to match. Undoubtedly many of us opt for such machines due to the allure of portability but later find, that in fact, it's still a heavy and cumbersome beast to haul around town.

According to reports, the Asus Eee PC is flying off shop shelves. Schools are ordering them in bulk for use by students and other professionals are buying the machine in order to have a truly light-weight option for internet communication and portable document editing.

In terms of pricing, the next range of laptops which approach the size of the Asus Eee PC are roughly 7-8 times more expensive. Granted, the machines which occupy the next tier up have many other features which may motivate a purchase - but the astonishingly low price of the Eee PC will definitely turn heads and provoke some deep thought about which features might be sacrificed for light weight and small size.

The Asus Eee PC - just the facts

There are a few models of the Asus Eee PC - and they're all the same size: 22.5cm x 16.5cm x 3.5cm. The footprint of the machine is smaller than a standard letter sized / A4 sheet of paper which is 29.7cm x 21cm! The 7inch display has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, which isn't huge - but still quite usable. The entire unit, including battery, weighs in at only 920g! It sports 3 USB ports, a video-out port for an external monitor, an SD card reader, ethernet, WiFi, webcam, microphone and speakers. Some models come with solid state hard drives up to 4Gb!

The keyboard is tiny - but this potentially is a non-fatal flaw to which a new user could become accustomed. Two-fingered-typists may suffer less than those who have all their fingers on the keyboard. However, those blessed with the gift of super-fast typing speed could cringe a bit at their cramped digits. And if you're in the latter category and planning to race out of the shop with your shiny new toy to blast out some boastful emails to your friends, you'll probably want to simply send them all the same email as it will certainly take some practice to become accustomed to the itsy-bitsy keys. Those who have fingers more suited to WWF wrestling may want to think twice before picking up the Asus Eee PC...

So... will the Asus Eee PC run your MS Windows applications? Read on to find out more....