For years I’ve been wanting a laptop that is cheap, portable and yet still a fully usable PC. Sure I already have a couple of laptops, but after you’ve lugged them around the country by train, or tried to use them on an airplane you quickly come to realise that they’re not really all that portable. Nor are they cheap, as traditionally laptops have commanded a premium price over their desktop equivalents. The alternative has long been a PDA or Smartphone, but lets be honest you can’t really work on them.

Well a couple of days ago I found exactly what I have been looking for. It’s the Asus EEE PC. It weights just 920 grams and measures a tiny 225mm × 165mm × 35mm in other words it’s about the size a weight of a thin hardback book. Yet into this tiny package Asus have squeezed a 7″ 800×480 screen, an Intel Mobile Celeron 900MHz CPU, 512MB of RAM, integrated 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, three USB ports, one Ethernet port, one SD/MMC memory card slot, a 0.3 Megapixel webcam, microphone, stereo speakers and a D-SUB port for hooking up an external monitor. On top of all that, one of the EEE PC’s biggest selling points is the fact it uses a 4Gb solid state hard drive which means it boots very quickly and is more shock resistant than the average laptop.

As far as Operating Systems (OS) it ships with a version of Linux that includes an installation of Open Office (to create and edit with Microsoft Office documents), an instant messaging client, Firefox for Internet browsing and Thunderbird for email and a whole host of other applications. It took only a few minutes and it was very easy to get it working on the office WiFi network, including setting up access to the NAS and network printers. The only downside is that the Open Office dictionaries for UK English where not pre-installed (and they aren’t too easy for a non techie to install). If Linux is not your cup of tea however they also include instructions on how to install Windows XP along with a driver disk to help. I believe they’ll also shortly be shipping a version with XP pre-installed however that’ll no doubt drive up the price. More about the price in a moment.

Ok so why am I reviewing this on a blog about business opportunities and ideas? Simply because it’s a great laptop for the business person on the move. It’s the laptop I’ve wanted for ages (cheap, portable and usable) and it’s what I’ll be writing about many future posts on.

So how much does this little beauty cost? Well it’s shipping for around $399/£200, which has to make it one of the best, if not the best value laptop ever. It’s certainly the best value laptop I’ve ever brought!

Have you got one, if so what do you think of it?

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