First thing that struck us when we took EeeTop PC ET 1602 out of the box were dimensions of display that are really small. Because of this you can have problems with some applications. On the other hand touch functions are easy to use and almost whole display can be at the reach of your fingertips. The whole system is nicely designed with transparent segment below display that is lighted when system is powered on.

Thanks to simple mechanism that holds system in upright position, angle of display can be set accordingly to user preferences (35 degrees), but it also takes much less space on a working table than it was the case with MSI NetOn AP1900. Because of this ASUS EeeTop PC ET1602 cannot be raised which can be a problem if you have lower working table. On sides of display are placed two USB connectors and memory card reader. The rest of connectors (sound, LAN etc) are placed at the back.

ASUS EeeTop PC ET1602 is equipped with Kensington lock so “unauthorized” borrowing of this device can be prevented which is very important in offices. Front panel has buttons for brightness adjustment and volume control. Beside those, power button and two LEDs are also present on front panel. Those two LEDs are used to signal activities of hard disk and wireless card. ASUS added one nice function: display can be completely turned off when it’s not in use which can result in power savings in case when a lot of these devices are used in some company.

In the package, beside device itself, can be found power adapter, ASUS Eee mouse and keyboard, manual, cleaning cloth, recovery DVD and disc with software and drivers. Keyboard and mouse are in proportion with the rest of the configuration, so absence of numeric pad is mandatory. Despite small dimensions of keyboard ASUS managed to, nicely, pack in it stylus (on left side). This is nice touch since fingers will leave greasy marks on display. On the other side of keyboard is present one USB connector that can be used for mouse but not for USB flash drives since this port isn’t powered. Keys on keyboard are made out of rubber (very similar to Sinclair ZX Spectrum keys for those that know what we are talking about and for the rest of you here is the LINK ) and there is no noticeable “click” so typing large quantities of text will demand certain amount of practice on this keyboard.

ASUS EeeTop PC ET1602 has no optical device and there is no mounting position for one of those. If you need optical drive you need to purchase an external model which can be a problem with some copyright techniques. Since these techniques are mostly used in games and not in business software solutions this won’t be a huge problem, especially since price cuts on large capacity flash drives. Hard drive has a recovery partition so you won’t need an optical disc for recovery procedure, unless some catastrophic hard drive failure occurs or virus makes damage to data or partition. Recovery system is configured in a way that allows you to move important data to recovery partition before actual recovery procedure is started.

When it comes to software, ASUS EeeTop PC ET1602 is based on Windows XP Home SP3 and StarOffice 8 (which is very similar to OpenOffice), Adobe Reader, Skype and lot of ASUS utilities from which we will mention Eee Cinema (Media Player) and EeeCam that besides recording a video has an option of uploading it to YouTube. Upon Windows start ASUS Easy application will be started as frontend for most installed applications divided in categories which is option that inexperienced users will find to be very useful.

During our tests, ASUS Eee PC ET1602 was very silent, even quieter than MSI model. Heating up is minimal which is consequence of used components. We were positively surprised by integrated speakers that do their job very good. Unfortunately low power consumption was a goal for this system so integrated graphics card cannot be used for playing games where these speakers can provide surround sound. Hard drive is slow and its performances are not too good. This rig has enough processing power to play HD video but only in 720, while flawless 1080p reproduction is unreachable goal even after serious optimizations and tweaking.

Conclusion

Lack of optical drive, slow hard drive, small display and high price tag are “features” that will distract most users from purchasing one of these systems. On the other side are touch screen display, low power consumption and overall small dimensions, features that will attract some other users.

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