The unit is small, powers up very quickly and is great as a basic entry level PC for word processing and internet browsing. Unfortunately new out of the box it could not connect to WPA wifi until an upgrade had been done which again is very easy but will need a physical internet connection. The full desktop is not easy to switch on and due to the included operating system you will have problems installing and running any other software unless you are good with linux which is a million miles from windows. Asus do include the drivers for windows on the recovery disk and also full instructions on installing XP on the unit are included in the very informative manual but using them will require an external cd/dvd rom. There are ways to do it without the external drive using a usb stick / sd card, but you will have to do a search.
In its stock state you will be able to browse the net and work with word and excel documents. There are a few games included, although not the best and the educational software is not so hot, ( for childrens education you may be better of looking at the elonex one at £99).
The battery lasts for around 3 and a half hours although this does drop significantly with the screen brightness on high and wifi switched on but these can easily be turned down and off. It has an SD card slot and 3 USB slots that will allow connection of external CD-roms, USB sticks plus external Hard drives. There is also an external monitor vga socket should you need to hook it up to a bigger monitor or perhaps a compatible (VGA) LCD TV. Asus place a warranty sticker over the memory upgrade flap screw underneath to prevent anyone from upgrading the memory but them, (only available on some models), hairdrier to the ready!!
For the wifi users the built in atheros chipset wifi adaptor has great reception and range and does work in monitor and injection modes out of the box.
Speed wise it has enough power to run Windows Xp happily ( although you may need to get that hairdrier out as really needs more than 512k to do it happily) and under its stock os is happy running things like scummVM emulator with no speed problems.
The 900Mhz CPU only runs around 600MHz but can be clocked up with the correct bios back to 900MHz but with that the heat goes up, the fans have to run faster and so the battery life will obviously shorten.
To sum up, a great little sub mini laptop, fantastic for using the internet, messenger and email, watching movies (need to install vlc for divx), listening to mp3's and it even has a webcam built in. Install XP and it really comes to life.
Good quality and worth the money.
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Advantages: Small compact but infinitely useable, beating smart phones such as Blackberry or iphone. Disadvantages: Not many, I just wish it would work with my router.
awcarr 12.03.2009 (17.04.2009)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Asus Eee PC 701
Jul 15th, 2008
(Jul 16th, 2008)
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