Asus Eee PC 701SD

If you are buying the ASUS eee pc 701SD with XP on it... in its stock configuration, be prepared for frustration. The screen resolution only natively supports 800x480 resolution- so you're having to do this weird "move the screen around inside the bezel" thing to see the parts at either the top of the bottom of the screen. It will allow you to do a "compress" mode which squeezes the screen horizontally to fit 800x600 (or 1024x768)into the 800x480 space- so it makes watching video weird when everybody gains 50 pounds.
The good of it is that the thing has 3 USB 2.0 ports, a VGA out, LAN, wireless B/G and standard headphone and mic jacks. The keyboard is usable, and the touchpad seems to work like you would expect.

Where this machine starts to shine is when you "tweak" it. I bumped mine up to 2GB ram, put in a 32GB SSD... and now this thing just goes. Considering that it is only sporting a 900 mHz processor, it sure seems to handle many things very well while only being slightly larger than a paperback book. The unit I bought is a refurb, but you wouldn't know it. The restore disc is helpful (but you MUST do some research online to make it truly useful), but not laden with much more than what it basically takes you to get back running.

If you need a little netbook that is inexpensive, but has room to be tweaked... this one works well. There's a huge community of eee pc folks who seem more than willing to help those who have the ability to use the knowledge they'll freely provide.
This machine has no optical drive (but 3 USB 2.0 slots). You'll have to rip your movies or CDs to enjoy them on this device- but that seems to be what it was made to do! There are many extended life batteries available, my stock battery in the "Super Performance Mode" seems to last about 2 and a half hours (not bad for a refurb!) The neat thing is, the Super Hybrid Engine software that this netbook uses can be set to "throttle" or speed-up the CPU depending on what you are doing with it... so it is possible to throttle the CPU down into "Power Saving mode" where, presumably-- you'll get extended battery life.
If you need a little machine to check your e-mail on the go, play some simple games, and even watch downloaded movies- this little eee pc 701SD can do it... but buy some ram first... and load up the USB thumb drive with a few movies or some tunes and enjoy.

I love the speed and portability of the machine. The only thing that is disappointing is that we haven't been able to use it with Netflix yet. We are hoping to find a solution as we are wanting to use tis with our TV!

I decided to buy this small laptop because it seemed very handy and portable and I wanted to try it out. The price was right so I bought it right away.
I was pleased with the speed and the wireless connection and the sound is better than on my full sized laptop which was a nice surprize. It is very portable for sure due to its small size but I have to admit it has a down side. The 7" screen is extremely small so if you are buying one of these thinking its the same as a regular sized laptop,,,think again.
You cannot see the entire screen at once so you have to scroll down and side to side to see different parts of the page,,very annoying.
If you can get used to it,,,then you will love it. I however don't know if I can. I think this is a great little laptop for taking on vacation or for the kids to watch youtube or netflix on but if you are after alot of harddrive space and a nice screen view you should think of an alternative.
I would give it 3 stars out of 4 for performance,,,I'm leaving off a star for screen size.