Asus Eee PC Seashell 1015PED-MU17

Like many of Asus' recent Eee PC Netbooks, Asus Eee PC Seashell 1015PED-MU17 has a sleek, teardrop shaped side profile, thicker at the back and tapering down to a sharp point at the nose. It's largely the same tapered/curved design we've seen on most Asus Eee PC's over the last year or so, particularly the 1005PEB, making it hard to muster excitement for a design that's barely distinguishable from others. Smooth matte surfaces on the back lid and keyboard deck guard against fingerprints, but still give off some ambient gloss.

Asus Eee PC Seashell 1015PED-MU17 line comes in red, blue, white, and black our red model had an attractive, coppery, brownish glow. The back lid's rather thick and whole unit feels solid, even a bit dense, but the compact form feels easy to tuck away. Having no protruding batteries or edges other than a slight bump on the rear bottom is a plus. The edge to edge raised chiclet style keyboard features well responding keys and no flex, but the smaller than full size keyboard felt cramped after a while.

In particular, the tiny wrist rests underneath feel too small for easy lap typing. A wide multitouch touchpad is composed of the same comfortable matte smooth lid/palmrest material, and is delineated by thin silver strips on the left and right, a slight change from previous Eee PC models. The touchpad felt wider and nicer than on previous models, though our thumbs tended to land on the pad when typing. A thin plastic button bar beneath is a bit small, but has a solid click.

Above the keyboard, a small plastic power button sits to the right and a quick-start button lies side by side with a Wi-Fi on/off button on the left. Asus' Express Gate Cloud quick start OS is a pared down environment with its own browser, photo app, and a few other features. Despite its faster boot time, we doubt many people will be satisfied with its performance and limited options most will opt to simply boot up Windows and keep Asus Eee PC Seashell 1015PED-MU17 in sleep mode between sessions.

The 10.1 inch LED matte screen on Asus Eee PC Seashell 1015PED-MU17 has a maximum pixel resolution of 1,152x864, which is highly nonstandard and produces a squished look. The resolution can be knocked down to 1,024x600 common for Netbooks. We've noticed 1,366x768 10 inch Netbook displays becoming increasingly common, but there's no such luck here. Pictures and videos looked crisp, and viewing angles were reasonable for the size and hinge limitations of Asus Eee PC Seashell 1015PED-MU17' lid, but Web pages feel cramped at this limited resolution.

Stereo speakers, located on the bottom front edge of Asus Eee PC Seashell 1015PED-MU17, offered louder than average audio that actually sounded quite good for video viewing. They're not musically extravagant, but they're definitely good enough for most needs. Asus chose to add a physical lens cover slider to its VGA Webcam, ostensibly to protect people against being unknowingly recorded.

It seems a little silly and is more likely to cause panic by making some people think their Webcam is broken when it's really just covered. Regardless, the picture quality is suitable for basic video chat, but its contrast levels created dark silhouettes. Cyberlink's YouCam software, which can be launched from a pull-down software widget on the desktop, is included on the system and has links to various Asus cloud-storage services and shortcuts.