By Kenny Chee

TOUCHSCREEN technology is all the rage now. Hot on the heels of Apple's iPhone and the BlackBerry Storm smartphone, Asus will be releasing its own touchscreen personal computer.

The Asus Eee Top ET1602 is clearly built with the casual user in mind with its stylish clean look and touchscreen display. It also does away with the bulky PC tower and packs it into the 15.6-inch liquid crystal display monitor that certainly cuts down on space.

Setting up the Eee Top is a breeze and can be done under five minutes. You just need to plug the keyboard and mouse to one of six Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports on the monitor, connect the power cables to a power source and you are good to go.

It starts up quickly as well and is surprisingly quiet. Running on the Windows XP operating system, the Eee Top has an easy mode that organises applications into a few simple menus with large icons for easy access using the touchscreen function.

It also boasts a built-in video camera and microphone that allows easy recording of videos. For the most part, the touchscreen feature is responsive. The stylus that pops out of the end of keyboard works well on the screen but using it or your fingers to write words manually takes some getting used to.

And at 4.3kg, including built-in speakers, the Eee Top is not too heavy to move from living room to bedroom to play
your favourite movies or songs. Still, one does wish that it has a CD/DVD-Rom drive to complete the package.

Available: End December
How much: $999 (incl. GST)

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