That's a very bold statement to make and I'm not sure what evidence you're basing it on

My issue with the Eee is that all the marketing material is pitching it at the ordinary user. The sales projections are extremely ambitious, meaning that Asus see this as a general user device for the man on the street. That's the evidence behind what I say right there.

What I think will happen is this: the ordinary user will see the Eee as a $400/£200 laptop, and think they're getting a bargain. It even looks like a full-scale laptop in the pictures because there's nothing to show scale. The spec will say "7-in 800x480 screen" but that's meaningless to most people.

But what they're getting is a specialised computer, not a general purpose computer. Yes, it can do general purpose stuff, but it requires compromises that the ordinary user might not be willing to make.

I don't think the Eeeuser.com forum reflects the average buyer of this computer. I think it reflects a geeky subset of the user base. Do you really think ordinary people who buy the Eee (students, kids, mom, pop, grandma) are going to look up a special forum and join a community, where they talk about internal specifications and how to hack Linux? I don't think so.

So don't take the views of eeeuser.com forum members as typical of Eee users If you know what I mean.

We're agreed that everything is pretty good on the Eee apart from the keyboard and the screen. The keyboard is just about usable but some keys are in the wrong place. I cannot type a question mark without stopping typing and repositioning my hand. And if I hit Enter when I should have hit the apostrophe one more time I will murder somebody...

But if they put in a 1024x800 screen in there, then it would be excellent.

Or you can just select Full Screen from the menu This does help a lot but the point is kinda that Asus doesn't enable this by default, or install the plugins you mention (they're open source, so why not?).

The Nokia tablets include a full screen button and zoom buttons. The Nokia tablets are just better thought out. The Eee feels rushed by comparison, although I know that a lot of work went into the Linux distro it uses.

You've been so diplomatic until this point I'm offended you think I'm deceiving anybody. Look at the time and dates of the relevant postings. I didn't think the buzzing fan was a fault when I wrote my review. I thought that was just the way it was. I then posted on the Eeeuser.com forums to find out if it was a fault when I realised it probably wasn't right. Check the first message if you don't believe me.

I've arranged for a replacement to be sent to me and have been waiting to post here that I'd made a mistake and that the fan was broken. But the company concerned have been sitting on the package for the last few days (RM in the UK) so it hasn't arrived. I can't post until I have evidence. That would be dishonest.

To sum up, it looks like my Eee is faulty and has a buzzy fan. From what I've read, most Eees have an audible fan, but not one that's noisy. Most of the time they're genuinely silent. I'll confirm this when my replacement Eee arrives tomorrow (hopefully).

I believe that people will buy the Eee under false pretences, which will turn them off small Internet devices. When the prophesied fifth Nokia tablet arrives, as perfect as it is, people will think: "Well, I'm not too sure how usable portable Internet devices are. After all, that Eee I bought was really hard to use. A 800x480 screen just doesn't work."

Of course, they're ignorant of the fact that the Nokia tablets have an extremely high res screen, negating this issue, and also that they're optimised in functionality for a small screen (zoom controls, click and drag panning etc).

I almost agree here I think it will be interesting, although I can't say it will necessarily be good. But hopefully other companies will try to compete, and there will be a decent marketplace of cheap and small computers. That can only be a good thing.