By Todd Ogasawara on November 11, 2009 4:35 AM

What the UMPC Should Have Been: Asus Eee PC T91MT Multi-Touch Convertable Netbook

My Asus Eee PC T91MT netbook arrived yesterday afternoon. I didn’t get much of a chance to play with it yet. But, here are some initial facts and impressions.

You can see in the photo above that the T91MT is smaller than the Asus Eee PC 1000H on which it is sitting on. The 1000H has a 10-inch screen while the T91MT has a 9-inch screen. The T91MT shipped with Windows 7 Home Premium Edition which supports the netbook’s touchscreen. I haven’t had a chance to test its multi-touch support yet, however.

You can see the T91MT in its conventional netbook configuration above. The keyboard is narrow but usable. I’ll reserve judgement until after I’ve typed on it for a few days. However, my first generation Acer Aspire One is also a 9-inch (actually 8.9) display model. So, I expect to be comfortable with the Asus. You may note that the button below the touchpad on the keyboard is a single button. However, press the left and right side of this button provides two-button support.

The photo above shows the T91MT in its slate mode with the screen twisted over the keyboard. The touch screen can be used with either finger tip touches or the provided stylus. Either method (finger or stylus) seems to work quite well with the screen.

The 30GB SSD (Solid State Drive) had 14.8GB free space after I booted up and let Windows 7 complete its lengthy configuration. Free space dropped to 12.8GB after running Windows Update. The T91MT ships with a 60-day Office 2007 installation. So, I uninstalled the Office 2007 Language Packs to free up a couple of gigabytes resulting in 15.6GB free space. I left the trialware on since I intend to install Office 2010 Beta on it (I’ve been running Office 2010 Beta on my Eee PC 1000H for a few months now) and want to have an idea of how much space will be left after installing it.

The Atom Z520 powered T91MT seems sluggish to me. Since Atom N270 netbooks seems to run fast enough for my needs, I’m a bit surprised by this impression. This sluggishness may be due to the SSD. But, I need to test it more before making a final judgement call. I will note, however, that the T91MT took 34 seconds to go from a cold start to the Windows 7 login screen. This process usually takes between 42 and 45 seconds on N270 based netbooks with hard drives. So, the T91MT boot-to-login process is a bit faster but not blindingly fast (say 15 to 20 seconds).

I’ll have a lot more to say about the T91MT in the coming days and weeks. I will say this now though: At a $550 list price, this touch screen netbook delivers what the UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC) promised but never delivers – an affordable touch-screen lightweight portable computer.