That’s why it’s nice to see Asus apply some common sense, in the form of its teeny and affordable Eee PC. This 7-inch wonder promises to transform the daily commute, at a price you’d struggle to buy a decent smartphone for (it costs just £219 including VAT).

The Eee PC sticks to a traditional laptop layout, in a 1:2 scale form. It’s similar in style to larger Asus laptops, and looks particularly good in black. Weighing in at under 1kg, it’s similar to carrying a hardback book around with you. Comments from fellow commuters ranged from highly favourable to contempt-stained jokes about my-first-computer. 

The full width of the Eee PC could offer enough space for a larger display, but instead the seven-inch screen is flanked by speakers. The viewing area is more than adequate for most applications, although a 10-inch model is also in the pipeline. The screen is a standard TFT panel, and does without a glossy Super-TFT coating. That’s a shame, as colours are slightly washed out as a result. It’s still highly usable though, and reflections were well contained when used in direct sunlight.

Asus has achieved the surprisingly low price by fitting budget components, avoiding unnecessary features and doing away with the costly and resource-intensive Windows operating system. Because the Asus-tweaked Linux OS is refreshingly simple, the lack of cutting-edge hardware doesn’t prove a problem. You’ll discover that, despite what you’ve been told for the past few years, you don’t actually need eight quad-core processors, 32,768MB of DDR3 RAM or five terabytes of storage space to whip up a document or spreadsheet.

In place of this, you’ll find a spec that looks worryingly under-nourished. Processing power is provided by a 900MHz Intel Celeron chip, with just 512MB of memory in place. Put simply, however, it doesn’t matter. The Linux OS is intuitive to use, and runs smoothly with little lag. Most impressively, you’ll be able to turn the Eee PC on in just 15 seconds – a world away from the wrinkle-inducing start-up times seen on Windows Vista.

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