The ASUS Eee PC 4G...

Hands on use, that's what I really needed to give an honest, non-speculative review of this thing.

It's great! Both for me and my girlfriend, we love the 4G. The built-in wireless, OS, usability of Xandros, the practicality of UnionFS in this application and the extreme difference between how we use it.

It's practical. While I've got PICASA on mine, (I don't recommend this in reality, though I store pictures to my external 40Gb drive. I can safely say I can do the following very well:

• Watch movies
• Play Music
• Keep My iPod Shuffle up-to-date
• Browse the Web and handle my GMail and Google Calendar use
• Blog
• Keep track of my time
• Create documents
• Use a full-sized keyboard and monitor (though I typically use Synergy)
• Toss my need for a PDA

If thet's not enough, what do you expect for the size and cost ($399.99 at Canada Computers, ~$450 incl. tax.)?

There's the 9" version on the horizon (May 12th), but I'm happy with what I bought. If you're looking for a system to do basic e-mail and browsing do two things:

1. Get a Google Mail (GMail) account
2. Buy an ASUS Eee PC.

Which Eee PC? If you're not going to upgrade the RAM (there's not much need to) and don't figure on using the built-in camera on the 4G, consider teh savings of buying the 4G Surf or 2G Surf, either will be fine for the base user, though if you expect to add any significant software get the 4G Surf.

There is an 8G. 8 Gigabytes of disk space. I think I could have found this useful, but the creative use of USB keys, external drives, or a larger SDHC card (say 4 or 8Gb) will allieviate any stress there.

BTW: to do Video Skype calls, upgrade Skype through the Eee PC default interface. For better video playback, get VLC.