As a user, we liked two things about Eee PC 1002HA off the bat: it’s reduced size and weight and the fact that it comes with Windows XP Home Edition SP3 pre-installed and not Windows Vista, which is a “heavy” operating system that would make this laptop to be slow.

It comes with very useful programs pre-installed: Microsoft Works 9, StarOffice 8, Acrobat Reader, WinDVD and Skype. So you can start using your Eee PC right away. The two only classes of programs we missed was a photo editor and an antivirus. Adding these two programs (in our case we installed Photoshop and Avast!) and the PC was ready to satisfy our needs.

The only real drawback about Eee PC 1002HA is the absence of an optical drive, so we can’t use it as a DVD player. The strange thing about this laptop is that it comes with a DVD player software (WinDVD), which is kind of useless (well, you can still use it to play DVD/MPEG2 files).

We had no problems using it. The keyboard proved to be very good and precise. We were afraid that, because of its reduced size, we would end up pressing the wrong keys, but this didn’t happen. We can feel the keys being pressed, which we think is really important, as we don’t need to waste time double checking if the key was really pressed or not.

The screen is certainly small, but for working only with office-class applications (word processor, spreadsheet, e-mail, web browsing, etc) it works very well. Videos played nicely on its reduced screen, which was a surprise. Of course we didn’t even think of playing games or using professional programs that need a bigger screen area, like Illustrator. If you need a small portable computer to run heavier applications you will probably need to pick a different product.

Since it consumes very low power, it almost didn’t heat, so we could use it for hours on our lap.

If you need a small, light and stylish computer to work on the road, Eee PC 1002HA is certainly a great option, providing an impressive cost/benefit ratio.