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If you are a chronic neophiliac like I am, then chances are that you have come across the Asus eee. This is the rulebook-defiling, paradigm-spanking laptop that was launched last November. For those of you who have been living in a Nuclear Submarine for the past six months, the eee PC is a low-cost sub(sub)notebook. It weighs just 900g, has a perfectly usable keyboard, a seven inch screen, a webcam and microphone and can take 1Gb of ram (although at present comes with 512Mb). The real kicker though, is the price. At just £220, it is no wonder that this has been selling like poppers at a George Michael concert.

As always, there are the fan-boys and the doubters. Many naysayers have argued that for another 70 quid or so they could get a proper laptop with a DVD player. This really is missing the point, as my hastily cobbled together graph shows.

Just look at all that real estate between the Asus and everything else. If value is a function of price and portability, you cannot get anywhere close to the Asus eee. If you chuck performance in to the mix as well, the Asus still comes out well. It performs all of the standard laptop tasks, such as email, VoIP, word-processing, music and video perfectly well. You won’t be able to play Quake 4 on it, but that is what desktops are for. For the price of a specced-up gaming laptop, you could completely upgrade your desktop to the same standard, get an eee PC and still afford to be married to Heather Mills for half an hour.

The great news for those who like their fun small, Taiwanese and, um, plastic is that there is a new model on the way. The eee 900 will be the same size as the old model, be slightly more expensive (latest rumours are £250), but will have an 8.9 inch screen, 1024×600 resolution, 1GB RAM and up to 12GB of storage. There are rumours flying around of WiMax support as well as GPS and Bluetooth options. So all in all we have a pretty mouth-watering prospect, but if you still insist on getting a massively specced gaming laptop so you can play World of Warcraft on the train, I hereby revoke your rights to have sex, ever. Oh, hang on…