I’ve been playing with the new Asus T91 convertible netbook today. So far I’m liking it. It comes with some custom touch screen apps that are cute and all but I didn’t care for them much.

Here are some first impressions:

Dang this keyboard is small, but I’m getting used to it.
I don’t care much for the glossy finish, fingerprint city.
The touch screen is very responsive and accurate.
There’s more heat from the bottom of it than I expected since it’s a SSD drive.
Super quiet, not hardly any noise out it. Probably why I’m feeling as much heat as I am.
Dang this keyboard is small. I just deleted 2 sentences accidently.

There’s a lot of extra software, like Office trial, Microsoft works, skype and other crap. Though I guess everyone does that now.
The system is pretty responsive under both XP and Windows 7.
The swivel top is solid and turns smoothly.
Screen brightness and clarity are excellent, I haven’t tried it outside in sunlight yet.
The custom touch screen software (memos, foto fun and 3D interface) is cute and looks professional, but not something I’d use on a regular basis.
The 3D interface works well most of the time, a little laggy at times.

I’ve installed Windows 7 RC on it and everything is working so far. I have an unknown device in the device manager that I’ll have to figure out. The Asus drivers website doesn’t have Windows 7 as an option just yet for downloading drivers. The default install picked up the sound, wireless, nic etc. The video started out as standard vga and then updated to the Intel media accelerator 500 on it’s own.
The unknown device might be the bluetooth since I don’t see it anywhere, though it might be the camera too.
The unit came with a 16gb SD card which I wasn’t expecting.

I’ll update in a few days after I install some more stuff on it and experiment some more.

My main use for the device will be using it to connect into work and fix server and other network issues as well as reading eBooks, surfing the web, email and watching videos on it (curious to see how it handles videos).

Update 7/17/2009:
The unknown device ended up being ACPI. I tried the XP drivers which didn’t work and kept popping up an error. The next time I booted the machine Windows 7 popped up a message that said “There seems to be an issue with your power managment would you like to fix it?” Why yes, thanks. It then took had a link to an ACPI driver from Asus which downloaded and installed fixing this issue.
I streamed some TV shows (xvid AVI’s) across my network and watched them on the T91, they worked without a hitch. I haven’t tried Hulu or Netflix streaming just yet.
After installing the ACPI I now have an icon that let’s me change screen resolution and turn on or off the wireless and bluetooth. When I enabled the bluetooth it installed drivers. I haven’t tried any bluetooth devices on it yet.
The heat issue seems to be mostly when the power adapter is connected and it’s charging the battery. I used the machine to surf the web in the tablet position on battery power and it did get warm, but not as much as it did the night before when plugged in.

Update 7/25/09:
I’ve been using the T91 now off and on for a week and I really like this machine as an extra
super portable laptop. I still find myself going back to my main laptop (Lenovo T400, which
I love) for Photoshop editing, playing games (Command and Conquer, Far Cry 2) and a couple
of other apps that just are easier to use on a higher resolution.
I’ve installed a few smaller games (Pop cap stuff) and they ran just fine. I’m running those games from the SD Card. I tried Crayon Physics Deluxe (installed to the main ssd drive) and it choked on it even with the resolution down and in windowed mode.
Next I tried Quake 3 (running from the sd card) for kicks and it ran pretty good.
One weird issue i ran into is the Eee PC tray utility crashes from time to time. With this utility you change the screen resolution and turn on or off the wireless etc. I can’t get the button that’s on the monitor bezel to work in Windows 7 just yet. It’s supposed to be used to change the display from landscape to portrait. But you can use the Intel tool or the built in Windows mobility center.
As far as applications I’ve installed Photoshop 7 (figured it would run better and take up less space than CS4, plus I don’t need all of CS4 on here anyways), Open Office (where I’m typing this up). After installing these applications plus Windows I’ve got 5.3gb free on the C drive. On the E drive (the sd card) I have about 14gb free. I did also move the My Documents and My Music folders to the E drive.
I’d like to re-iterate one point, this keyboard is small. I’m getting better but the right shift key is trouble for me and I keep hitting the caps lock. For some reason I miss the space bar frequently.
The speed on the device is a bit slower than I expected compared to some of the netbooks I’ve used in the past but for the ways I’m using it it works well. I did turn off the themes in Windows 7 which helped a lot on the performance as well as going through and shutting down services that I don’t need. One other quirk that I’ve found is everytime I boot the machine the display brightness is lowered even though it’s plugged into the wall. It’s easily fixed by hitting fn & F4 but it’s kinda annoying.
Overall I’m really liking the machine.

Update 7/27/09:
I decided to re-install Windows 7 for the heck of it. The only drivers I installed this time was the Asus ACPI and the touchpad drivers. The only reason I install the touchpad driver is because without the driver and utility the vertical and horizontal scrolling by touching the edges of the touchpad don’t work. The install took about
I did find out one very useful thing from the Intel video utility. You can hit ctrl-alt and left, right up or down to quickly rotate the screen layout. Also the default Windows 7 webcam drivers work and I tested it with MSN messenger. I still need to try the Bluetooth.