ASUS Eee PC 901
The keyboard layout for the Eee PC 901 is a bit cramped but not nearly as bad as some of the other netbooks on the market. The keys are quite small but it still has all of the function keys and has a mostly standard layout. The change that had just thrown us off the most was the tilde key being moved to the function key row and all of the number keys then being an extra key to the left. However, that was easy enough to get used to. Above the keyboard itself is the power button on the right and on the left are four additional keys. These keys are for backlight, resolution, and Skype. As a note to those interested in loading a different Linux OS on the Eee PC, these four keys aren't mapped out by default to an X Event (as read through xev) nor are the unknown keys shown within dmesg.
Below the keyboard is a well-sized track-pad and the left and right click buttons. Next to the tracking area are four LED indicators for power, battery, disk activity, and wireless/Bluetooth. The screen on the Eee PC 901 is 8.9" and its native resolution is 1024 x 600. While we prefer 10" netbooks to the 8.9~9.0" models, the screen size isn't that bad to get used to using. Above the screen is a 1.3 mega-pixel web camera.
One of the features we like about the ASUS Eee PC build quality the best is its hinge for connecting the display to the rest of the netbook PC. Some of the similarly priced netbooks don't have a nearly as strong design or are just connected together via two small hinges. The Eee PC is composed mostly of plastic, but we are very pleased with its build quality for being a product that goes for just a few hundred (USD) dollars.
On the left side of the netbook is the Kensington security lock slot, 10/100 Ethernet, one USB 2.0 port, headphone jack, and microphone jack. There is also a very small ventilation area on this side for cooling the innards of this Atom netbook. There are no ports on the front or rear of the Eee PC 901. Moving to the right hand side are two USB 2.0 ports, memory card reader slot, one VGA output from the Intel UMA graphics, and the AC power adapter port.
The top of the ASUS Eee PC 901 is bare except for the Eee logo while on the bottom is the netbook's serial number, battery slot, ventilation areas, and a removable area to access the internal components (primarily for upgrading the system memory).