Key Specs
1.6GHz Atom N2701GB DDR2
160GB hard drive
None
15.6-inch integrated touch screen
Integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics
Windows XP Home Edition
With its Eee family of netbook and nettop PCs, Asus seems to have cornered the market on small-form-factor, lightweight, low-power, inexpensive computers. A nettop can be a second or third system when space is tight and all you need to do is surf the Web, listen to music, or look at photos. (Nettops are sometimes referred to as the perfect PC for the kitchen; you can add looking up recipes to the list as well.) Asus had a hit last fall with its diminutive, $349.99 Eee Box nettop, and now it looks to repeat that success with the Eee Top ET1602.
Unlike the Eee Box, the Eee Top is an all-in-one PC that includes an integrated 15.6-inch, wide-screen display with touch-screen capabilities, so its $599 price is noticeably higher. But unlike devices such as the iPhone or iPod Touch that support multitouch interfaces, the Eee Top recognizes only single-touch input.
The Eee Top, which weighs less than 10 pounds, looks like an LCD monitor with built-in speakers and a white body. At about 13x16x1.5 inches (HWD), it's not much thicker than a regular monitor, either. The back of the unit includes a handle that also acts as a stand and a cable-routing clip; it's removable in case you'd rather use a VESA mount to install the system on a wall. The Eee Top has seven USB 2.0 ports (four on the back of the system, two on the left side, and one on the right side of the keyboard), a multiformat memory-card reader (on the system's left side), and an Ethernet jack, as well as audio jacks with six-channel support (on the system's back).
More than anything else, the Eee Top is about simplicity. Asus adds its own quick-navigation Eee Bar and an Easy Mode interface (which sits on top of Windows XP Home Edition and is entirely optional). Both feature large icons that help you access nearly all the system's applications and settings with just one tap of a finger on the screen. The system even includes StarOffice, a productivity-suite alternative to Microsoft Office. Depending on what you're doing, navigating the display with the touch screen is seamless, but sometimes, such as when entering a URL in the Web browser, you'll want to switch to the included keyboard and mouse.
