A little over a year ago netbooks were the emerging trend that had everyone buzzing. Now the so-called 'internet tablet' seems to be stealing that spotlight. But while these new devices have yet to prove themselves on a commercial scale besides maybe some niche business applications, netbooks have already found their place on the market, at least for now.

In this short time span we've seen at least a couple netbook generations pass by, with the concept itself getting a spin on each new revision. Today, we'll be taking a look at one of Asus' newer products in this segment, the Eee PC 1101HA 'Seashell'. You might recall, the last time we checked a Eee PC product was in late 2008 in our top netbook round-up. What we have today is a much stylized, equally lightweight and more usable offering than anything we reviewed back then.

The Eee PC 1101HA was Asus' first netbook to go beyond the 10-inch display size, sporting an 11.6-inch panel capable of a 1366×768 resolution -- they also have the 12.1-inch Eee PC 1201HA now. These larger screen netbooks provide a user experience that comes very close to that of a standard laptop, in fact, a few years back you would've had to pay a hefty premium for an ultra-portable notebook if you wanted the kind of mobility and flexibility a current generation netbook can provide.

Inside the retail box we found the netbook, a 6-cell 63Wh Li-ion battery, power cable, AC adapter, warranty card, user manual and support DVD. Ironically, the support DVD contains a system recovery image to restore your computer to factory default, although you will need to an external optical drive in order to use it.

The Eee PC 1101HA measures 11.26" x 7.72" x (0.86 - 1.42") with total weight estimated at 2.9 pounds using the included 6-cell battery. Like most netbooks released around mid-last year, the Eee 1101HA features a 1.33GHz Atom Z520 processor, 1GB of DDR2 memory and a 160GB hard drive. Bluetooth 2.1 and WLAN 802.11b/g/n handle the wireless connectivity.

Read on as we explore the Eee PC 1101HA features inside and out.