Asus Eee gets vivisected

THOSE WHO ENJOY torturing their computer equipment will surely enjoy a pair of articles today dedicated to the black art of stripping down perfectly good bits of computer kit.

Both the folks at bit-tech and at VR-Zone have splayed open the Asus Eee PC 900 in a bid to fathom its inner workings. For those who like their technology porn up close and brutal, this will do the trick.

The boys make a few discoveries - there's only a single memory slot available, so upgrading inevitably means chucking out what it ships with. The SSD module that provides the additional 16GB of RAM in the 900 looks suspiciously like Intel's Turbo Memory module, being basically just a mini-PCI-Express card with eight 2GB flash chips on. The internals of the Eee are basically the same as on the previous model, with the only apparent change being the fact the speakers now sit on the bottom of the case, moved from the side of the screen by the increase in LCD size.

Those wondering why the Eee's keyboard gets so darned hot in use will have their answer - the entire base of the keyboard is constructed out of metal and acts as a heatsink for the chips on the motherboard, with barely a bit of thermal tape to keep things nicely greased.

Richard at bit-tech mentions that he did manage to put his back together without any spare screws being discovered, so we suppose that is a good thing.