Netbooks may have taken a large chunk of the market from laptops, but Asus, the company that first introduced netbooks, has blurred the lines between the two.
With the Asus A53E, you get the benefits of a full-featured laptop, but at the price of a netbook. Powered by an Intel Pentium dual-core processor running at 2.1GHz, it has 2GB of DDR3 Ram, Intel HD Graphics 3000 chip, 320GB SATA hard disk drive, and built-in DVD Super Multi drive, all supporting a LED TFT 15.6-inch LCD with maximum resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels.
The bigger display not only means that the A53E can essentially replace your desktop, but also that it has the space to accommodate ports to connect to periphery devices, as well as input/output slots. With the A53E, you get three USB ports, a HDMI/D-Sub Out slot, and an eight-in-one card reader, as well as broadband, Wi-fi and Bluetooth connectivity.
What you don't get are the bells and whistles of the latest gear, like the latest Intel Core i7 processor, a HD display capable of 1980 x 1080 pixels, a high-performance graphics platform like the Nvidia GeForce, SSD drive, or USB 3.0.
But if you only need it for homework, online games, surfing the web and YouTube videos, the A53E should more than suffice.
And at HK$3,998, you might well have cash to spare for upgrades like extra RAM or the upcoming Windows 8 OS.