Asus Eee PC 1008P Seashell-Karim Rashid Collection

Put your glasses on, as the flashy snazziness has begun. This new designer netbook by Asus comes with a tag, rather a name tag of industrial designer Karim Rashid. It’s a netbook made for the premium user, but not necessarily in performance, (we’ll be checking that in the course of this review) but in terms of elite looks and beauty. And yes it comes with the Pinetrail platform inside. Let’s elaborate.

Design
The entire exterior, comprising lid and bottom surfaces, all come clad in a thick textured, contoured out pattern on the surface that looks like reptile skin. One brush of the palm on the surface reveals the smooth alternation of lumps and pits— it really looks classy, I have to hand it to them. We got a dark brown color; I think it’s the best one in the series. I'm not too sure how pink will look. The thickness needs to be mentioned here, it’s really slim at a little below an inch.
The internals also are subtly designed, minimalism being the key here. The bezel of the screen is gloss black, while the wrist rest and touch pad is matte. The latter is demarcated with rubbery dots over a metallic button.  The keyboard is chiclet style, and unfortunately my praise cannot extend to it as the buttons are a little smaller, and I just have fat fingers. The right shift key is too small and snuggled in with the arrows. The tactile feel is OK though, and so is the hinge of the lid. Build wise we see no issues, it’s quite sturdy.

The connections on the sides are hidden behind port flaps, but here we have only 2 USBs, and the rest of the regular jingbang of 10/100 LAN port, Stereo Audio in, Card reader slot, Mini VGA and DC power in. There is small flap on the bottom side that opens out to reveal a mini VGA adapter, but actually putting it back in might take some practice. You don’t want to be fiddling with it in front of a new snooty client.

This model also comes with Asus Express Gate, accessible by a button on top of the keyboard. It’s a light OS made by Asus for users to bypass windows and just use some small internet applications like Skype etc. It’s a nice concept.
It comes with a 3 cell Li Polymer  battery, but also provides another strip in the package.