It's finally here. The eagerly -awaited ASUS Eee PC 900 has touched down stateside after several agonizing weeks of reading overseas techies chronicle their experiences with the mini-notebook. The new Eee PC 900 sports impressive specs that, when compared to the Eee PC 701, make it the better machine—at least on paper. It has a bigger display (8.9 inches), sharper resolution (1024 x 600), larger storage capacity (20GB SSD), improved webcam resolution (1.3 megapixels), and a multi-touch “FingerGlide” touchpad similar to the one found in the Apple MacBook Air.

Battles fought on paper amount to squat, so we decided to pit our fresh-out-the-box Eee PC 900 against the original Eee PC 701 (both with Xandros Linux) in a knock-down, drag-out brawl to determine which mini-notebook is the Eee PC champ—and which deserves your hard-earned dollar.