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Suddenly, it's twice as thick! Who'd have guessed? Yes, this machine looks like a Macbook Air competitor, but only because they used a user-removable battery, which means a big hunk'o'plastic sticking out of the underside.

it's not a macbook air competitor, it's a $200 netbook with an atom processor. it just happens to have a slim profile that may cause some people to compare it to the macbook air.

asus' macbook air competitor is their ux21: http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/30/asus-outs-ux21-ultrathin-...

I'm with you on that black battery thing. We all know that Apple is a bit dishonest when they show their Macbook Air from the front and it looks as thin as cardboard (optical illusion), but when you look at a Macbook Air from the side it's actually kinda slim in reality.

Now, that X101 with the red-black coloring looks slim if you trust the optical illusion, but if you look closely it's nowhere close to the Macbook Air.

which means a big hunk'o'plastic sticking out of the underside.

I have an old Acer Aspire One with a similar battery configuration. Turns out it's actually very useful at positioning the keyboard at a much more comfortable typing angle. I end up propping up the back end of my MBP with my phone half the time so I can type comfortably.

I have an ASUS (my second in the EEE line) with exactly the same keyboard. You get used to it, or at least I did. I actually think the chicklet-style keyboards on recent EEEs are among the best laptop keyboards I've used. A much bigger problem for me is accidently hitting the touchpad while typing. Depending on your OS there is usually a way to disable the touchpad while typing.

On the thickness thing, do they advertise this as being as thin as the Macbook Air? I took that picture more along the lines of "here is the X101 compared to a laptop you're probably familiar with". The optical illusion created by the black plastic is a little sneaky though.

Is there a site with reliable specs for this box? Googling around I've seen different numbers (e.g, a 16GB SSD vs. a 64GB SSD). What's the battery life? That's what appeals to me most about the EEEs.

what os are you using? this was a problem for me before i set up hot keys to toggle touchpad on and off.

keyboard layout

I'm in the market for a netbook right now and have the same concerns.

Currently I'm torn between the Asus X101 and the Lenovo S100 (both announced to launch this month). The Lenovo comes with an 98%-size keyboard that looks really promising on the photos: http://ces.cnet.com/2300-32488_1-10006040-2.html

The Lenovo keyboard layout looks kosher for touch-typists. If I was in the market for a netbook I'd jump in that direction.

(The right-shift-FAIL seems to be a bad habit of Asus and a few other Chinese/Taiwanese vendors; I suspect Lenovo still have some input from IBM.)

One thing that bothers me about IBM/Lenovo is that the Fn key is where control should be.

I have an Eee PC with the same style of keyboard as the X101 and I can't really think of anything negative about it. It's the best laptop keyboard I've ever used and I've reached speeds up to 130 wpm on it.

A friend of mine recently got a lenovo thinkpad and it had a BIOS flag to allow swapping of the Fn and control key, sadly the physical keys are different size so you can't swap them to match the new function but at least it's an option

Sad day for typists when the Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Insert/Delete block getting blown up all over is considered kosher.

Sadly that has happened years ago and I don't have much hope for them to make a comeback. I'm in fact worried about the day when apple stops selling their full-size desktop keyboards in favor to the crippled laptop-version.

When you look at the whitespace (well, red-space) on the right side of the Lenovo then there is plenty room to fit a full-size Home/End/Pgup/Pgdn block.

But it would look a little odd. And I suppose Soccer-mom doesn't buy laptops that look odd for sake of fitting keys that she doesn't use. Soccer-moms apparently prefer glitter over usable keyboards...

I also just noticed that laptop doesn't have a dedicated F12 key, it's Fn-F11. Tempora, mores, etc.

Have you considered the Thinkpad x120e? The keyboard, performance, and battery life are all excellent. It's a bit more expensive than what you're looking at, though.