Could this be the new king of ultra portables?

Damn, I failed. My original intention was to write this blog without ever mentioning the Asus Eee PC. I’m getting sick of people mentioning it, almost as much as I was getting sick of the whole Windows Vista versus Windows XP debate a year ago.

But it’s only natural to compare all new ultra portable laptops to the Eee PC because it was - in fairness - the first of its kind and one of the best. Times move on though, and many companies are trying to better it with their own version.

HP is relasing its own 8.9 inch ultra portable laptop with Windows Vista on it in May which looks very promising, but how does it compare to the newly-updated 8.9 inch Eee PC? Read below.

Good points
 
- It’s got a 120GB hard drive, so unlike the Eee PC, you can use it as your main PC as well as you portable one.

- It’s got a generously-sized keyboard, so those with larger hands can actually type more than an email on it.

- It’ll cost around £300, which is about £30 cheaper than the recently released 8.9 inch Eee PC.

- Its all-aluminium case looks a hell of a lot classier than the toy-like Eee PC

Bad points

- It weighs 1.27 kilos, which is a little bit heavier than the Eee PC, which weighs about a kilogramme. It’s hardly much though.

- The Via 1.2 GHz processor isn’t renowned for its speedy performance, and Windows Vista might chug along a little. The 2GB of RAM might offset this though.