Asus EEE PC 1005PE

The Asus 1005PE is a general-purpose netbook from the company that came up with the idea of the netbook. Like its predecessors this is a cheap computer designed with portability in mind – it’s light and easy to carry around – and with enough computing power for office tasks but not much more.

This model uses the Intel Atom N450 processor, this year’s model, and has 1GB of memory which is enough to run the Windows 7 Starter operating system that's supplied. As with all netbooks there is no CD or DVD drive but there is a 250GB hard disk that is enough for most people’s storage needs.

Looks-wise it’s pretty good. It won’t win any design prizes but the 1005PE looks much better than most netbooks, with nice tapered edges and an all-white finish that doesn’t pick up much in the way of fingerprint smudges. The display is a good 10in widescreen model that was both bright and clear, and the keyboard has widely spaced keys that were easy to type on.

We are not keen on the current style of Asus’s touchpad: a frameless square below the keyboard that, save for its dimpled surface, is camouflaged, not easily seen and hard to get used to.

It has two power buttons. The one at the top-right of the keyboard is the main one for switching it on and off. When the netbook is switched on and in Windows, the one on the left switches between power-saving modes, which is very handy.

When the computer is off, though, pressing the left-hand power switch puts the computer into a special Express Gate mode in which you can quickly surf the web, make Skype calls, see photos and play a few online games without having to go through the hassle of waiting for Windows to load.

When computers took ages to start up this kind of thing would have been extremely useful but in truth Windows 7 doesn’t take much longer to load and offers far more flexibility.

There are three USB ports, a VGA connection for monitors (disappointingly there’s no HDMI for flat-screen TV connection), a memory card reader and headphone and microphone sockets.

There are also connections for wired and wireless networks, and Bluetooth devices. A webcam is built into the top of the screen surround and the built-in speakers were quite impressive given the computer’s small size.

The processing power is fine for office and internet tasks, as well as playing video, though high-definition video isn’t a good idea, and it’s no good for recent games even with detail levels turned down.

Battery life was reasonable at around five hours in general use (Asus quotes ten but you will need to cut the wireless network connection and dim the screen, among other things, to achieve that).

The Asus EEE 1005PE has a recommended price of £290 but it’s on sale at Amazon for £259 at the time of writing. A cheaper 1005P model lacks Bluetooth, has 90GB less hard disk space and costs £259, although it’s on less of a discount in the shops, costing £242 at Amazon.

If you are on a tight budget the 1005P might be the better model, but otherwise the 1005PE is a good computer for a reasonable amount of money.