Asus Eee 701P laptop  

Ultra-portable notebooks are almost always expensive, while budget notebooks are too often large and heavy. Asus’ tiny Eee notebook, however, serves as a counter example. The OEM has kept the price down by using a 7" screen, minimal memory and storage - and installing Linux rather than Windows. That means that the PC 701 model with 512 MB of RAM and a 4 GB solid-state drive is only $400 and the 256 MB/2 GB PC 700 will retail for $300 when it comes out in January. That’s an ultra-portable PC for not much more than the cost of a video-capable media player.