Unfortunately, every attempt at this concept has included too many compromises to justify their often surprisingly high prices. I’ve been testing the latest effort at such a device, the Eee PC, from a Taiwan-based laptop maker called Asus. It does better than some of the earlier contenders in certain respects, such as text entry and price. But it still is likely to prove unsatisfying for many road warriors.

Asus doesn’t even call the Eee a computer, referring to it as a “mobile Internet gadget.” Instead of using Microsoft Windows as its operating system, the Eee uses a specially designed version of the open Linux operating system, and comes preloaded with a variety of open-source programs for Web browsing, performing office tasks, playing music and videos, running games and managing photos.

The Eee has a much smaller footprint than even the subnotebook category of laptop, such as the much-publicized MacBook Air unveiled by Apple this week (which I’ll review after I have thoroughly tested it), or subnotebooks from Sony and Lenovo. It weighs a mere two pounds, is just under 9 inches wide and just over 6 inches deep. It is thicker than the new Apple and some other subnotebooks, ranging from 0.79 inches at its thinnest point to 1.26 inches at its thickest. The overall effect is small, but stubby.

The Eee’s price is only a fraction of what typical subnotebooks cost — from $300 to $500, depending on configuration. The model I tested, called the Surf, is the base $300 entry. With its pastel blue lid, and tiny size, it looks like something Barbie might use. But it can perform real work, even though it comes with only 512 megabytes of memory and a scant two gigabytes of storage space.

One reason the device costs and weighs so little is that there is no hard disk. Files are stored on memory chips. It is possible to add storage by popping in a flash memory card or by connecting a USB drive to one of the three USB ports.

Unlike some computers in its category, the Eee isn’t a tablet. It takes the clamshell form of a traditional laptop and, when opened, reveals a full, if very cramped, keyboard. By including a real keyboard and charging so little, Asus has overcome two of the problems that plagued Samsung’s Q1 ultramobile computer awhile back.

Asus Eee PC

The user interface on the Eee is simple and clear. It consists of tabs labeled Internet, Work, Learn, Play, Settings and Favorites. Each tab contains large, colorful icons. For instance, the Work tab includes icons for Documents, Spreadsheets and Presentations. These tabs lead to various modules of the free OpenOffice suite, a competitor to Microsoft Office.

The Internet tab has various icons, such as Web Mail, Web and Wikipedia, that open the Firefox Web browser. You get to this tabbed screen by just pressing a Home button.

In my tests of the Eee, I was able to use all manner of Web sites, send and receive Web-based email, compose and open Microsoft Word documents from other computers, play music, and view photos.

So, with a low price, a small size, a real keyboard, and a clean user interface, what’s not to like about the Eee?

Well, for starters, its tiny 7-inch display is just too stingy for serious work. You can make up for a small screen size with high resolution, but the 800 by 480 resolution on the Eee — which can’t be changed — is so wimpy that very few lines of text can be seen at any one time. This means you’ll have to do so much scrolling, it’s likely to drive you crazy.

Also, the lack of a hard disk, and the relative paucity of truly simple Linux software, means that most nontechie users will be stuck with the included programs, which can’t be removed and which don’t include a calendar or contacts program, or even an email program. You can only use Web-based email.

And just below the Eee’s simplified user interface lurks the complicated terminology and software design characteristic of Linux. Some error messages I saw were indecipherable.

Beyond that, many of the Linux programs included were far cruder and harder to figure out than, say, Microsoft’s Photo Gallery or Apple’s iTunes. The Eee wouldn’t automatically reconnect to a known wireless network, and it wouldn’t recognize my Kodak digital camera.

Some of these problems can be solved if you install Microsoft Windows XP on the Eee. Asus includes instructions on doing so. But you have to supply your own copy of Windows.

The Eee is a valiant effort, but it still has too many compromises to pry most travelers away from their larger laptops.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online, free, at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

So, I have steered away from recommending Linux, the free computer operating system that is the darling of many techies and IT managers, and a challenger to Microsoft’s dominant Windows and Apple’s resurgent Macintosh operating system, OS X. Linux, which runs on the same hardware as Windows, has always required much more technical expertise and a yen for tinkering than average users possess.

Lately, however, I’ve received a steady stream of emails from readers urging me to take a look at a variant of Linux called Ubuntu, which, these folks claimed, is finally polished enough for a mainstream user to handle. My interest increased when Dell began to sell a few computer models preloaded with Ubuntu instead of Windows.

I’ve been testing one of those Dell Ubuntu computers, a laptop called the Inspiron 1420N. I evaluated it strictly from the point of view of an average user, someone who wouldn’t want to enter text commands, hunt the Web for drivers and enabling software, or learn a whole new user interface. I focused on Ubuntu and the software programs that come bundled with it, not on the hardware, which is a pretty typical Dell laptop.

My verdict: Even in the relatively slick Ubuntu variation, Linux is still too rough around the edges for the vast majority of computer users. While Ubuntu looks a lot like Windows or Mac OS X, it is full of little complications and hassles that will quickly frustrate most people who just want to use their computers, not maintain or tweak them.

Before every passionate Linux fan attacks that conclusion, let me note that even the folks who make and sell Ubuntu agree with it. Mark Shuttleworth, the South African-born founder of the Ubuntu project, told me this week that “it would be reasonable to say that this is not ready for the mass market.” And Dell’s Web site for its Ubuntu computers warns that these machines are for “for advanced users and tech enthusiasts.”

So, what do I mean when I say Ubuntu is too rough around the edges for average users? Here are some examples.

There is no control panel for adjusting the way the touch pad works, and I found it so sensitive that I was constantly launching programs and opening windows accidentally by touching the thing. Every time the computer awoke from sleep, the volume control software crashed and had to be reloaded.

When I tried to play common audio and video files, such as MP3 songs, I was told I had to first download special files called codecs that are built into Windows and Mac computers. I was warned that some of these codecs might be “bad” or “ugly.”

To get the computer to recognize my Kodak camera and Apple iPod, I had to reboot it several times. When it did find the iPod, it wasn’t able to synchronize with it. Playing videos was a bad experience, with lots of flickering and freezing. Oh, and there’s no built-in software for playing commercial DVDs.

The Ubuntu-equipped Inspiron 1420N starts at $744, but the configuration that Dell lent me for testing sells for $1,415. The same unit equipped with Windows Vista costs $1,524. The Ubuntu version includes OpenOffice, the free office suite that competes with Microsoft Office. Dell charges an added $149 for Microsoft Office.

Ubuntu and other versions of Linux have several advantages. Unlike Windows and OS X, they’re free. Unlike Mac OS X, they can be run on the least-expensive popular hardware configurations. Unlike Windows, but like the Mac, they are essentially free of viruses and spyware. And unlike Windows and Mac OS X, they are built and constantly improved by a world-wide network of developers, professional and amateur — the so-called open-source concept that produced the excellent Firefox Web browser.

It makes sense that all the best software brains can’t be located in just two places: Redmond, Wash., where Microsoft is based, and Cupertino, Calif., Apple’s base. And plenty of people reading this have had lots of frustrations with the two better-known operating systems, especially Windows, whose latest iteration, Vista, is disappointing in many ways.

But open source is a two-edged sword. While it draws on smart developers from many places, nobody is ultimately responsible for the quality of the product, and open-source developers often have an imperfect feel for how average people use software. A European company called Canonical is the “commercial sponsor” of Ubuntu and provides support. But it’s largely focused on corporate and techie users. Average Ubuntu users are likely to have to wade through online forums, often written in technical language, to get help.

Dell and Canonical tell me there are complex workarounds for some of the problems I encountered, and that built-in improvements are planned for others. But for now, I still advise mainstream, nontechnical users to avoid Linux.

Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online free at the new All Things Digital web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

It gets better. This new PC, called Zonbu, from a new company of the same name, automatically receives free updates of its software when new versions come out. It doesn’t require antivirus or other security programs because it runs on the Linux operating system, which has attracted very few viruses or spyware programs. And it takes up almost no room — it’s a tiny little box.

Zonbu’s overall goal is to vastly simplify the process of buying and using a computer. The idea is to make it not only more affordable, but also much less of a hassle and much more energy efficient.

I’ve been testing the Zonbu, and it does work. Its software is still in beta, or test, mode until next month. But you can buy it right now at Zonbu.com with free software updates into the future. However, there’s a catch — several catches, in fact. Some have to do with the machine’s design and pricing, and others with its performance. Taken together, they prevent me from recommending this computer, despite its intriguing price and concept.

The biggest catch is that the Zonbu computer doesn’t include a hard disk for storing files (that’s one reason it uses so little energy). Instead, all of your files are stored online on the company’s servers. That offers several advantages, such as the fact that the files are automatically backed up.

But you have to pay for that online storage. In fact, to get the $99 price for the Zonbu computer, you have to commit to a two-year contract at prices ranging from $12.95 a month for a relatively small 25 gigabytes of storage to $19.95 a month for 100 gigabytes. If you opt to pay month to month instead of two years in advance, the Zonbu will cost you $249.

To get the Zonbu for $99 with 100 gig-abytes of storage, it will cost you $517.95 up-front after the discount of three free months that the company is currently offering. And the Zonbu doesn’t come with a monitor, keyboard, mouse, Wi-Fi adapter, speakers or DVD drive.

By comparison, you can get a Dell Inspiron 531s for just $529, after rebate. It has twice the memory, a DVD drive and a much better processor than the Zonbu. And it comes with a screen, keyboard, speakers and mouse — oh, and a 160-gigabyte hard disk that requires no monthly fee.

To be fair, the Dell doesn’t come with a full-fledged office productivity suite, while the Zonbu has OpenOffice, a competitor to Microsoft Office, preloaded. To get OpenOffice on the Dell, you must download and install it.

Also, the Zonbu monthly service fee is offset by some savings. The $99 machine uses so much less energy than a typical PC that the company claims you could save noticeably on your electric bill. And you might also save the cost of subscribing to security software updates.

Zonbu

Because the Zonbu stores your files on a remote server, you can also use them remotely, at no extra cost, from another Zonbu or from any Windows PC.

To speed things up — and guard against an Internet service outage — the built-in programs are stored locally on the computer, and Zonbu includes a small 4 gigabyte memory card in the machine to cache your documents. In my tests, this allowed me to keep using the Zonbu even when I unplugged it from the Internet.

In addition to OpenOffice, the Zonbu comes with the Firefox Web browser, an Outlook clone called Evolution, an iTunes clone called Banshee, the Skype Internet phone software, and a bunch of other programs for organizing photos, playing video and more. There are also some casual games.

To Zonbu’s credit, the machine is capable of recognizing lots of printers and digital cameras, out of the box. It worked well with my Kodak camera and Hewlett-Packard printer.

But there are three other big problems with the Zonbu, problems that belie its goal of eliminating hassles. First, you aren’t allowed to install any added software. You’re stuck with what the company provides. And that means, for instance, no video-editing software, for now at least.

Second, a lot of this Linux software is rough, below the polished level of Windows or Mac programs. In my tests, various programs crashed or froze frequently. While the Banshee program is supposed to work with iPods, it failed to work properly with both of the iPods I tested.

Finally, I found that the Zonbu crawled much of the time. Folders took forever to open, email took way too long to appear, and so forth. And I was testing it on a very fast Internet connection. This may be because of the very wimpy processor Zonbu uses to save money and energy.

I strongly support Zonbu’s goals of making computing simpler, cheaper and more energy efficient. But this product has too many compromises.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. Find all my columns and videos online free at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Kodak’s main weapon in this new war is cheaper ink. Traditionally, H-P and other makers have sold the printers for relatively little, then made most or all of their money on the ink cartridges.

So, Kodak decided to reverse that business model. Its three new printers start at $149.99, not sub-$100 bargain prices. But its black ink cartridges cost just $9.99, and the color ones — which combine five color inks — just $14.99. And these are standard-capacity cartridges, not small or starter versions. Comparable H-P cartridges vary in price, but can easily cost double that, or more.

Kodak hopes consumers will be willing to spend more upfront for the printer to save later on the ink.

In a counter-move, H-P announced Tuesday that it will also be introducing new lower-price cartridges. But these new low-end cartridges will work only on future printers (and a few very recent models). And they will hold less ink than today’s standard. Plus, they will still cost more than Kodak’s cartridges: $14.99 for black and $17.99 for the combined color versions. H-P will also start selling larger-capacity “value” cartridges for the new printers that will cost about twice as much as the low-end ink, but print up to triple the number of pages.

How good are Kodak’s new printers? After all, cheaper ink isn’t really a bargain if the printer is lousy. To find out, I’ve been testing Kodak’s midrange model, the EasyShare 5300, which costs $199.99. It’s an “all-in-one” machine that combines a printer with a flatbed copier and scanner.

I compared this new Kodak with a roughly comparable all-in-one H-P model, the Photosmart C6180. This particular H-P model costs $100 more than the Kodak, because it includes some additional features. But H-P says that this printer has the same printing, scanning and copying quality and speeds, in the typical scenarios I tested, as H-P’s C5180, the direct competitor of the Kodak 5300, which costs the same.

My conclusion was that the Kodak EasyShare 5300 is a pretty good printer, with a good enough combination of quality, speed and functionality to satisfy people attracted by the lower ink costs. In my tests, it was better than the H-P at some things and worse at others.

One caveat: I didn’t try to verify Kodak’s claim that, overall, its printouts cost a lot less than H-P’s. Such claims depend on very specific sorts of test files produced and tested in labs. H-P disputes Kodak’s testing methodology and claims that Kodak’s printout costs are “about the same or only slightly lower than H-P’s.”

Also, the particular H-P models with which the Kodak printers most closely compare use a different ink system than most other H-P home inkjet printers. Instead of using one combined color cartridge that can cost over $30, they use five smaller separate ones that cost $9.99 each.

I decided to avoid settling this technical dispute and to just judge the printers using home photos and text pages from Microsoft Office that I considered typical. I used both printers at normal quality levels and didn’t enable any special quality or speed settings. I tested them with a Windows XP computer, though both printers also work with Macs and with the new Windows Vista.

In general, the H-P was a little faster, but not dramatically so. And the H-P has built-in networking, while the Kodak doesn’t. The H-P also has a better user interface, in my opinion. Kodak’s can be clumsy.

But the Kodak has a cool scanning feature the H-P lacks. You can place three or four photos on its glass plate at once and the printer will separate them automatically into individual images and scan them as separate files — as long as they aren’t aligned too crookedly. To do this on the H-P, you must manually draw lines around each photo with the H-P software.

When I compared plain-paper printouts, in black and white, and color, the printers were about equal in quality. The H-P was a tad faster, but the Kodak was plenty quick.

On photos, I had a mixed result. The 4×6 snapshots of family scenes came out better, to my eye, on the Kodak. They seemed sharper and brighter than the same files printed on the H-P. But I had just the opposite result when scanning several 20-year-old photos into the two machines. The resulting files produced by the H-P seemed sharper and brighter. The Kodak scans, while warmer, seemed fuzzier.

The worst feature of the Kodak is the way it switches between its plain-paper feed tray and its special separate tray for 4×6 snapshot-size photo paper. On the Kodak, you must manually push in and pull out the photo tray to switch between types of paper. The H-P handles this switch without any pushing or pulling.

Overall, however, the Kodak is a good enough first effort to get the company into the game.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com. See video versions of my reviews at wsj.com/mossbergvideo.

But there are limitations imposed by small, slim camera bodies that even digital wizardry hasn’t been able to overcome. These mainly involve the lenses. Lenses with better-than-average telescopic and wide-angle capabilities tend to be too bulky to fit on a pocket-sized camera body.

Now, Eastman Kodak has come up with a concept that promises to make more versatile lenses available on the slimmest digital cameras. The company has introduced a pocket-sized camera with two lenses, each designed for different kinds of shots.

The company’s new EasyShare V570 camera couples a fairly standard lens — the 3x optical zoom that is typical on slim digital cameras — with a second, specialized lens for taking ultrawide-angle shots. Together, these all-glass lenses have a 5x optical zooming capability, unusual in a small camera. A single lens with the combined range of the V570’s two lenses (the equivalent of 23 millimeters to 117 millimeters) would be too large for the camera’s body. But by splitting the work between two physically smaller lenses, Kodak has made it fit.

The camera doesn’t zoom in any better on distant objects than most others in its class. But it does do a much better job of capturing all of a group of people — or a building or a landscape — in a single shot, without requiring you to move ridiculously far back.

Better yet, the user doesn’t need to manually switch between the lenses, or even to be conscious of them. The camera’s processor merges them into one virtual lens, and the zooming button on the back automatically switches lenses as you move from the widest to the most telescopic setting. An indicator on the screen tells you if you have switched lenses and are using the ultrawide-angle one.

Kodak’s EasyShare V570 camera

Kodak has placed both lenses entirely within the camera’s body. Even when the main lens zooms, it never protrudes from the camera. Both are protected by a single built-in lens cover that opens instantly, with a satisfying snap.

The $399 V570, which has a resolution of 5 megapixels, isn’t a one-shot deal. Kodak plans more small cameras with multiple lenses that employ digital technology to make the lenses work smoothly together. While the V570’s twin lenses add capabilities at the wide end of the zooming range, future models might use multiple lenses to bolster a camera’s telephoto capability. Or one lens might be devoted to still pictures, while a second might be optimized for video.

I’ve been testing the V570, and I like it, despite a couple of drawbacks. In my tests, I compared it with the Kodak EasyShare V550, my favorite pocket-sized digital camera. Like the V550, which costs $349, the new V570 has a handsome black design. But the V570, which is just 4 inches wide by 2 inches high by 0.8 inch thick and weighs 4.5 ounces, is actually thinner and lighter than the single-lens V550.

In my tests, I took numerous shots of people, buildings and street scenes with the two cameras. In every case, using the ultrawide-angle lens, the new V570 allowed me to pack in much more of a given scene from the same distance. I just pressed the zoom button all the way to “W.”

For instance, a picture of a room on the single-lens camera captured only some of the furniture and walls. With the V570, nearly everything got into the shot. Standing on my driveway taking a picture of my house with the V550, the attached family room was cut off. But from the same spot, the V570 picture included both structures. Where the V550 might get three people in a shot, the V570 could get five or six.

Telephoto shots came out the same on both cameras. Picture quality, both on a computer screen and in printouts, was the same as on the V550, which is very good.

The zooming experience between the V570’s two lenses isn’t perfectly smooth. There’s a gap between the two lenses that’s experienced as a brief, but abrupt, jump in the image on the camera’s screen. But I didn’t find this to be a problem.

The 2.5-inch LCD screen on the back of the camera was sharp and vivid indoors, though it washed out some in direct sunlight.

But the V570 is missing a couple of valuable features the V550 includes. First, it has no optical viewfinder, which allows steadier shooting and is better for framing shots in situations in which sunlight washes out the screen. Unfortunately, camera makers are well on their way to omitting optical viewfinders from most consumer cameras, claiming that the space they occupy is better used for bigger screens and that younger shooters never use them anyway.

Secondly, the V570 has no port for directly connecting to a computer with the included USB cable. To connect the camera to a computer, you are forced to use the included dock, which is a real pain.

Still, if you want a camera with strong wide-angle capabilities, while preserving small size and normal telescopic zooming, the V570 might be just the ticket.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com.

You could use the software that came with the camera for some of this, but, in general, software created by hardware companies isn’t very good. Since most people use Windows computers, they will likely just dump the pictures into the My Pictures folder that Windows provides. But this folder was never meant for true photo organizing.

If you use an Apple Macintosh, you’re in much better shape, because Apple provides a very good built-in photo-organizing program called iPhoto. But iPhoto isn’t integrated with any of the popular online photo sites that let you store and share pictures. And, of course, it’s unavailable to the vast majority of people, who use Windows.

However, there’s a very nice photo-organizing program out there that’s free, works on both Windows and Mac and is closely integrated with one of the best online photo sites. It brings most of the best features of iPhoto to Windows users, and for Mac users, it offers tight integration with a Web-based photo site.

This free software is called EasyShare, and it comes from Eastman Kodak, though you don’t have to own a Kodak camera or printer to use it. It works with any brand of camera and printer to easily organize, email, print and touch up your pictures. And it’s closely linked to Kodak’s EasyShare Gallery online photo site, formerly called Ofoto, which is one of the best Web photo services and is free to use.

I’ve been testing EasyShare, on both a Windows and a Macintosh computer, and I like it. It’s the exception to the rule that hardware companies can’t create good software. EasyShare comes with all Kodak cameras and printers. Owners of other brands can download it by going to kodak.com and clicking on “Downloads & Drivers.”

Photo-organizing programs are different from traditional photo-editing software like Adobe’s Photoshop. Where traditional photo software is mainly about tweaking and perfecting your pictures, organizing programs are mainly about finding, arranging and sharing pictures, with a little light editing thrown in.

There are other popular Windows programs that aim to help you organize your pictures. Among the best known are Picasa, ACDSee and Corel Photo Album. Adobe had a good organizer called Photoshop Album, but it has since folded it into its editing-centric Photoshop Elements.

But most of these programs fall short of the combination of simplicity and power that Apple’s iPhoto pioneered. They often require users to know too much about the Windows folder and file system. By contrast, EasyShare, like iPhoto, frees you from the file system, relying instead on its own system for organizing your pictures.

As in iPhoto, a key feature of EasyShare is the virtual album, which doesn’t correspond to any folder on the hard disk. Any picture can appear in an infinite number of virtual albums without having to be copied or taking up extra harddisk space. For instance, a picture of Sally opening a Christmas gift in Providence, R.I., in 2005, could appear in albums called “Christmas,” “Sally,” “Providence trip,” “2005″ and so on.

EasyShare lets you burn CDs of your photos, easily email them to friends and print them in creative ways. It also has some very nice touch-up features, including a one-click fix function that previews changes by splitting the picture temporarily into “before” and “after” halves.

Kodak’s EasyShare on Windows

The Windows and Mac versions of EasyShare look very different, but they share the same basic commands and about 95% of the features. The Windows version has a few editing features the Mac version lacks, including editing of uncompressed RAW photo files. The Mac version also has some things the Windows version lacks, such as automated backups and the ability to create “smart albums,” which automatically gather up photos based on criteria you set in advance.

Once your photos are in virtual albums inside EasyShare, these albums can be uploaded to the online EasyShare Gallery. You can also designate pictures in any album as “favorites,” and they can be automatically synchronized with a favorites collection online.

Obviously, this integration with the online site is a business strategy for Kodak: Once your pictures are stored on its online site, Kodak hopes you’ll order prints and gifts made from them. But you don’t have to join the site to use EasyShare, even though the program will nag you to do so. And if you do join, the Gallery is free and very useful. It provides a safe backup for your photos and a way to share them without emailing copies all around. Instead, you send emails from the software that offer links to the photos on the Gallery.

If you’re getting a new digital camera or are just buried in pictures from an old one, Kodak EasyShare software is worth a try.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com.

That’s the question Kodak seeks to answer this week as it ships an unusual digital camera that’s able to wirelessly email the photos it takes, and upload them to a Web site, all by itself — without the need for a computer or a cellphone.

The $599 Kodak EasyShare-one camera comes with a Wi-Fi wireless networking card that pops up from a slot on the top of the camera to connect with any Wi-Fi network in range. Once connected, the camera can email pictures to friends and family and upload them to Kodak’s EasyShare Gallery photo Web site.

I’ve been testing the EasyShare-one for several days, and I like a lot of things about it. The pictures are very good, the user interface is one of the best I’ve seen on any digital camera, and the three-inch color screen is the largest on any digital camera I’ve tested. When the wireless capability works, it works well. I was able to email pictures, and upload them to the Kodak Web site, directly from the camera.

But the wireless features didn’t always function properly in my tests and in some cases required complicated technical work-arounds. Also, the camera has a few other downsides, including lousy battery life, especially when using the wireless features.

The EasyShare-one isn’t the only camera with Wi-Fi capability. Nikon is shipping a Wi-Fi camera as well, but, amazingly, it can’t connect to the Internet. Some other digital cameras have built-in wireless capabilities via Bluetooth. But Bluetooth is a short-range technology that doesn’t connect directly to the Internet, and so it’s mainly useful for beaming pictures to a PC or printer — something the new Kodak can also do.

This new wireless Kodak model is part of an integrated strategy the company is pursuing to tie together its cameras and printers and the EasyShare Gallery Web site, formerly known as Ofoto. Once uploaded, the pictures can be stored and shared with others. You can also order prints of them or gift items emblazoned with them.

Not only can you upload pictures from the EasyShare-one to the online gallery site, but you can wirelessly download small-sized copies of photos already stored on the site into the camera — so you can review them or show them to others right on the camera’s beautiful screen. Up to 1,500 of these downloaded pictures can fit in the camera’s internal memory if nothing else is stored there.

The EasyShare-one is a handsome, brushed-metal camera whose screen swings out from the body and swivels, much like the screens on camcorders. It has a maximum resolution of four megapixels, which is plenty for consumer photos. The lens features a 3X optical zoom. There’s no optical viewfinder, which is too bad.

This camera can accept a memory card but doesn’t include one. It does come with a relatively generous 256 megabytes of internal memory. Its startup and shooting speeds are relatively slow but acceptable for all but the fastest action shots.

A camera with Wi-Fi isn’t as convenient for emailing or uploading photos as a camera phone. That’s because you have to be near a Wi-Fi network or public “hot spot” for Wi-Fi to work. By contrast, the cellphone networks used by camera phones are much more widespread. On the other hand, no camera phone has the capabilities or picture quality of a real digital camera like the EasyShare-one.

When you pop up the Wi-Fi card on the Kodak camera, it seeks and connects to any Wi-Fi network in range. Then, it downloads the Web address for the Kodak Web site. After that, you can use the screen and stylus to select pictures you’ve taken and email them or upload them to the site. Emails don’t actually contain the pictures. They provide links to view the pictures on the Kodak site.

This worked very smoothly in most cases. But at my home, the process failed two out of three times, even though the EasyShare-one connected smoothly to my very fast home Wi-Fi network. The reason was that the camera was often unable to download the Web address for the Kodak site. At first, the company said it was because of problems on its servers. But the problem repeated itself.

The camera can also wirelessly transfer and synchronize photos with a Windows or Mac computer if you have installed Kodak software. But in my tests it had trouble getting through my firewall, and Kodak advised me to make a bunch of techie tweaks to the computer. Not only are these tweaks beyond what most users could do, or should have to do, but they didn’t work. Luckily, the camera can also connect to a PC via a cable.

Another big problem was battery life. It’s only good enough for a measly hour when you’re using the Wi-Fi card, four hours while browsing photos, and 200 shots while taking photos. Kodak does supply an extra battery with the camera, but it makes you spend $30 more for an electrical adapter, which would be handy.

Overall, the EasyShare-one is a good first step toward merging the wireless convenience of a camera phone with the quality and features of a real digital camera. But it needs work.

• Email me at mossberg@wsj.com