The 701 was first shown in June 2007 and was launched the following October. It quickly won plaudits for its compact, highly portable size and its low cost. We loved it, but like most Eee users we found the screen to be just too small. The sub-notebook's battery life also left much to be desired.
With the 900, Asus has taken this criticism on board and attempted to build a comparably sized machine without the limits of the previous model. Let's see if it's succeeded.
The main, most obvious change is the screen. The 701's 7in display wasn't physically too small, but its 800 x 480 resolution didn't pack in enough pixels. Even in Linux, where dialog boxes can generally be resized, you'd come across windows that were too tall for the display. That was even more common under Windows XP.
http://www.linuxlinks.com/portal/news/article.php?story=20080425140534909