RM Asus Minibook

I was very impressed with the RM Asus Minibook at the BETT Show last weekend. Also known as the Asus eee PC, this is a very small form-factor notebook PC with education in mind. In fact, it’s in direct competition with the OLPC Children’s Machine XO.

The Minibook is available in either Linux (from £169 ex VAT) or Windows (£more) flavours. I had a play with the Linux version and it was easy-to-use, responsive and intuitive. There’s icons to Google Apps in the shortcuts menu, for instance and the keyboard, whilst (obviously) smaller than usual, is just about big enough to touch type.

I think this could be an answer for Western education. The OLPC laptop is built with Africa in mind. That’s great; we shouldn’t try to hijack that project. Have a closer look at the RM Asus Minibook – it’s certainly worth it.

Oh, and anyone reading this from RM/Asus, feel free to send a review sample 🙂