Eee Top review

Typical price: £399

What is it: 15.6-inch touchscreen desktop PC

What we think: It's something of a novelty, but we like that -- plus it's attractive, easy to use and affordable

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Eee Top Review

Reviewed by: Rory Reid

Reviewed on: 7 November 2008

Unlike the Eee PC netbook, the Eee Top has a relatively large hard drive. A 160GB Seagate ST9160821AS is supplied, which will provide enough storage for a couple of hundred DivX movies, around 50,000 MP3s, or around a million JPEG images. This is of the standard 2.5-inch laptop variety, so it's entirely possible to upgrade it yourself to something as large as 320GB.

The Eee Top lacks an optical disc drive, so it's not possible to burn a data backup CD. Asus doesn't supply the free online storage you get with Eee PC netbooks, either, so sooner or later, you're going to have to buy a USB hard drive or network-attached storage device to back yourself up.

Speaking of networks, the Eee Top comes with a Gigabit Ethernet adaptor, so you can connect it to a high-speed wired network without much fuss. It also comes with an 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi adaptor, so you can link it up to your existing wireless network at home.

The Eee Top's software pack includes StarOffice, Adobe Reader 8.0, a 90-day trial of Norton Internet Security, and Skype. Asus has also provided some interesting software of its own. Among our favourites are Eee Memo, a sticky-notes reminder software with a slick touch-and-drag interface, and Eee Cinema, a Media Center-type application that places your multimedia files literally at your fingertips.

Performance
The Eee Top performs almost identically to the Eee PC 901, 1000H or the S101, which is hardly a surprise given the fact it uses the same components. It racked up 1,525 in PCMark 2005, so it isn't particularly fast, but it's plenty quick enough to play 720p video, surf the Web and run games that don't require 3D hardware acceleration.

The Eee Top can be a little slow to launch some applications, and it does get sluggish when you're multitasking, but it's rarely frustrating. So long as you keep your expectations low and don't start editing HD video on the thing, it'll serve you well.

Conclusion
The Eee Top is gorgeous to look at, easy and fun to use, and is also affordable. If you're looking for a second PC for multimedia, Web surfing or general tinkering, we'd definitely recommend it.

Edited by Marian Smith