Asus' Tiny Laptop Hits All the Right Buttons

They're the hottest things in portable computing -- super-portable laptops at super-low prices.

The Asus Eee is setting the standard, so far. The Eees are so popular that the May edition of Popular Science magazine ran a feature story on upgrading the original Asus mini.

But now, there is are a bunch of Eees on the market, including the new model 900, which is the first to sport a nearly 9-inch screen (8.9 inches, actually; 1,024 by 600 pixels). The new models have IntelINTC processors and come loaded with 1 GB of RAM, and either Linux (with 20 GB of internal memory) or Microsoft'sMSFT Windows XP (12 GB of internal memory).

Big Love for Tiny Laptops

The new 900s also have bigger batteries. Asus claims as much as three hours of battery life per charge. Your mileage will definitely vary. The Eee 900 weighs 2.16 pounds.

The competition hasn't been sleeping, though. There is the One Laptop Per Child XO (designed for third-world schoolchildren), Intel's Classmate (release expected soon) and the brand new H-PHPQ 2133 Mini Note PC.

The H-P also has an 8.9-inch screen (1,280 by 768 pixels), but it runs Windows Vista Home Basic. The H-P people told me that it's easy to "downgrade" the operating system and have the 2133 run on Windows XP. That may be a good idea. One GB of RAM is standard. Another GB is optional.

The 2133 runs on processors from Via, and sports hard drives of 120 GB or 160 GB, as well as an optional (and expensive) 5GB solid-state flash drive.