Asus U35JC-A1

Much like the UL30A, Asus U35JC-A1 is slim, angular, and decked in lots of brushed metal in many ways, it comes across as a throwback design, like a DeLorean in laptop form. The very thin upper lid is backed in brushed aluminum, the small centered Asus logo looking more EPCOT-era than ever. Inside, a light gray silver, patterned, glossy plastic surrounds the keyboard deck, while glossy, black plastic surrounds the inset screen. Asus' keyboards are almost universally of the raised Chiclet style kind, but they're not all made equally.

Some Asus laptops have exhibited serious keyboard flex but that isn't the case with Asus U35JC-A1. The very solid feeling keys were great to type on, and aside from our gripe with the awkwardly placed arrow keys and a right hand side of page up or down buttons that needlessly squish the Enter and Shift keys, it makes for an excellent experience. There's just enough palm rest space beneath for good lap typing. Overall, it's nearly as good a keyboard as the MacBook Pro's.

A medium size multitouch touchpad lies flush with the keyboard deck around it in the same color to boot but textured with a subtle matte grid that works better than expected. A thin button bar beneath feels too slight, but the whole package gets the job done well and, most importantly, responsively. However, we'd put an asterisk next to "multitouch" the Elan software driving the touchpad allows only for a limited set of gestures, such as two finger scroll and multifinger tap, leaving out obvious ones like pinch to zoom. Two buttons sit atop the keyboard : one to the far left, one to the right.

They look identical, but the right one is the power button, whereas the left boots up the laptop in Asus' Express Gate quick start OS. We're not a fan of quick-start environments, simply because their limited applications, quirky setup, and need to boot up Windows 7 for access to the rest of your PC's features make for an annoying experience. Do yourself a favor and just put your laptop to sleep instead. When Windows 7 is already booted, the left button switches between custom battery saving modes.

The LED-backlit, glossy 13 inch 16:9 screen has a native resolution of 1,366x768 pixels, standard for this size. Viewing angles were tighter than we'd prefer, with color and contrast drifting into a washed out look unless the screen was perfectly centered. For videos, Web browsing, and general everyday use, pictures and videos look fine as long as excessive tilting is avoided. Front firing Altec Lansing stereo speakers situated under the keyboard on the lower front edge of Asus U35JC-A1 are loud enough for movies, Webchat or any other conceivable use, with notable crisp punch during gameplay. They're better than standard laptop speakers at this range, but lack musical depth and powerful bass.

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Asus Eee PC Seashell 1015PED-MU17

Like many of Asus' recent Eee PC Netbooks, Asus Eee PC Seashell 1015PED-MU17 has a sleek, teardrop shaped side profile, thicker at the back and tapering down to a sharp point at the nose. It's largely the same tapered/curved design we've seen on most Asus Eee PC's over the last year or so, particularly the 1005PEB, making it hard to muster excitement for a design that's barely distinguishable from others. Smooth matte surfaces on the back lid and keyboard deck guard against fingerprints, but still give off some ambient gloss.

Asus Eee PC Seashell 1015PED-MU17 line comes in red, blue, white, and black our red model had an attractive, coppery, brownish glow. The back lid's rather thick and whole unit feels solid, even a bit dense, but the compact form feels easy to tuck away. Having no protruding batteries or edges other than a slight bump on the rear bottom is a plus. The edge to edge raised chiclet style keyboard features well responding keys and no flex, but the smaller than full size keyboard felt cramped after a while.

In particular, the tiny wrist rests underneath feel too small for easy lap typing. A wide multitouch touchpad is composed of the same comfortable matte smooth lid/palmrest material, and is delineated by thin silver strips on the left and right, a slight change from previous Eee PC models. The touchpad felt wider and nicer than on previous models, though our thumbs tended to land on the pad when typing. A thin plastic button bar beneath is a bit small, but has a solid click.

Above the keyboard, a small plastic power button sits to the right and a quick-start button lies side by side with a Wi-Fi on/off button on the left. Asus' Express Gate Cloud quick start OS is a pared down environment with its own browser, photo app, and a few other features. Despite its faster boot time, we doubt many people will be satisfied with its performance and limited options most will opt to simply boot up Windows and keep Asus Eee PC Seashell 1015PED-MU17 in sleep mode between sessions.

The 10.1 inch LED matte screen on Asus Eee PC Seashell 1015PED-MU17 has a maximum pixel resolution of 1,152x864, which is highly nonstandard and produces a squished look. The resolution can be knocked down to 1,024x600 common for Netbooks. We've noticed 1,366x768 10 inch Netbook displays becoming increasingly common, but there's no such luck here. Pictures and videos looked crisp, and viewing angles were reasonable for the size and hinge limitations of Asus Eee PC Seashell 1015PED-MU17' lid, but Web pages feel cramped at this limited resolution.

Stereo speakers, located on the bottom front edge of Asus Eee PC Seashell 1015PED-MU17, offered louder than average audio that actually sounded quite good for video viewing. They're not musically extravagant, but they're definitely good enough for most needs. Asus chose to add a physical lens cover slider to its VGA Webcam, ostensibly to protect people against being unknowingly recorded.

It seems a little silly and is more likely to cause panic by making some people think their Webcam is broken when it's really just covered. Regardless, the picture quality is suitable for basic video chat, but its contrast levels created dark silhouettes. Cyberlink's YouCam software, which can be launched from a pull-down software widget on the desktop, is included on the system and has links to various Asus cloud-storage services and shortcuts.

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Asus Eee PC 1201PN

Asus Eee PC 1201PN, however, only has a single core Atom N450 CPU to go with its Ion GPU, a combination that results in general performance that's weaker than its same priced predecessor. If the 1201N can be found for sale somewhere, it's probably the better buy for now. While the keyboard feel and general build of Asus Eee PC 1201PN are very similar to what we enjoyed in the 1201N before it, its limited processor slows things down, whereas the Ion graphics don't seem to add much more than what we'd already seen in Ion last year and, in some cases, it even seemed to offer less.

In a post iPad era, a Netbook has to offer a low price or an impressive performance, and this Asus really has neither. From the outside and inside, Asus Eee PC 1201PN looks a lot like both the 1201N we reviewed in early January and recent, more affordable Eee PC Netbooks. A plain, glossy black plastic lid that flaunts its fingerprints also comes in red or silver. Inside, more shiny black plastic frames an edge to edge raised Chiclet style keyboard. The double hinge on the lid straddles either side of a battery that has minimal bulge on Asus Eee PC 1201PN's bottom and fits right into the back.

The keyboard's easy to type on and comfortable to work at on a desk or perched in one's lap. The dimpled multitouch touchpad below is flush with the rest of the keyboard deck but responds well to finger gestures. A thin chromed plastic rocker bar for button pressing could have been a little more ergonomic. The LED-backlit 12.1 inch glossy LCS screen has a native resolution of 1.366 x 768 pixels, which matches most laptop displays around 13 and 14 inches. Most importantly, it's a common resolution; browser windows and other programs won't feel shoehorned in like they do with the pixel restrictions on most 10 and 11 inch Netbooks.

Images and video looked as bright and crisp as they did on the Eee PC 1201N we reviewed previously. The stereo speakers on this laptop, embedded on the front bottom edge of the base, are notably louder than other Netbooks. They don't exactly produce well defined music, but we appreciate their volume for TV viewing. Above the screen, a 0.3 megapixel Webcam offers video conferencing and picture taking capabilities, with a passable frame rate and middle of the road image quality.

To its credit, Asus Eee PC 1201PN includes Bluetooth but it better at this price. HDMI is common on any non-Apple laptop, but in the case of this Ion equipped Netbook you might find it more useful than with others, as Nvidia promises smooth 1080p playback of video files on an external HDTV. While that's nice, we imagine more people will want to stream video onto an HDTV (for Hulu, for instance, or YouTube).

Streaming video playback, which relies on Adobe Flash 10.1, worked well sometimes and stuttered at others depending on the site and level of graphic overlay. 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive are increasingly standard offerings for higher end Netbooks. Windows 7 Home Premium is preinstalled, which is an improvement over the Windows 7 Starter many Netbooks offer.

While Asus Eee PC 1201PN is technically the first Netbook with next gen Nvidia Ion graphics, the CPU is decidedly current gen. Unlike the dual core Atom processor we saw in the innovative but hot running Asus Eee PC 1201PN, the single core Atom N450 at the heart of this Netbook is the same one in nearly every Netbook currently for sale. Its performance when augmented with its Nvidia Ion integrated GPU does fair better than other competitors, but Asus Eee PC 1201PN actually is a slower laptop than its dual core predecessor, which cost the same back in January. If you can find the 1201N on sale somewhere, you'll have a faster Netbook.

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