Introduction.

Do you dream of owning a netbook that truly is small and lightweight and yet can still give you at least a 10 inch screen. Well most netbook owners do – but quite understandably are rather reticent to pay out the $1000 that an Apple store will want you to pay for the 11 inch Apple Macbook Air. If you really do want to thin down for your next netbook purchase then perhaps you’d like to consider the new Asus Eee PC 1005PR.

Mac comparisons.

You could say a netbook is a netbook is a netbook etc – they’re all pretty well the same in terms of their functionality. We’ll look at some more tech. specs. In a moment but the two factors that, for me, make this Asus model stand out are it’s similarity to the Macbook Air in size and it’s dissimilarity to Macbook air in price. First off the sizes, the Asus sizes: Width 10.31 inch, Depth 7.01 inch, Height (at the thinnest point) 1.02 inch – now if those measurements don’t get you excited about being a real competitor to the Apple machine, well I don’t know what will. Hang on – yes I do, the price! This 10.1 inch screen netbook can be yours, when the model is released later this year, for around $400!

Asus Eee PC 1005PR – what’s onboard?

OK, so enough about the hype – just what is onboard the Asus Eee PC 1005PR that’ll tempt you into buying one beyond its size and price? Perhaps most significantly compared to previous incarnations of the Eee series is that this one is running Windows 7, rather than XP. To help with this it has the Intel Pineview-M N450 processor that is still fine with 1GB of RAM and will keep the 10.1 inch 1024×600 Backlight LED screen running smoothly. On board is a 160GB harddisk for storage plus a complimentary 10Gb allowance on the Eee ‘Cloud’ - very useful for a back-up to your most important files if nothing else. There’s LAN and wifi, of course, and built in stereo speakers with an external headphone jack, microphone, a stills and video camera and an onboard HD decoder. Finally, there are card readers and x3 USB ports and even with just the basic three cell battery you can get 4 hours of use, to over 10 hours of life from it with the six cell battery. Want a bit of personalization – then buy it in black, white, pink or blue and have yourself some fun.