Equipment Review: Asus Eee
Jan. 3rd, 2008 07:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dsrtaoBriefly: The Asus Eee is a very small, reasonably cheap, well-made laptop computer. As a result, it isn't very fast, although it is adequate for many tasks. This is a first-generation product, so I won't buy it, but you might be tempted.
Less briefly: a coworker bought an Eee with 512MB RAM, 4GB internal storage (solid-state) and a built-in camera. I put in 2GB RAM ($50) and configured it to work with our VPN. And tested it out, of course.
It's an excellent size: just a little larger than my maximum handspan wide; the depth is about the same as the distance from the heel of my palm to the tip of my middle finger, and the thickness is... thin. It weighs not very much. Look, if you want numbers, they're all over the Net. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC for details. The keyboard is cramped enough that I don't want to use it to write a paper, but good enough that I could accept it on a week-long trip doing email and web-surfing. In fact, the Eee really ought to have been called the 'Good Enough'. The touchpad is not as sensitive as I would like (but that's a common complaint of mine.) The screen ought to fill the cover and be 1024x640 or so, not 800x480. The CPU could be faster. The wireless should do G as well as B, but it only saw my B network.
The next generation should be better than good-enough.
Less briefly: a coworker bought an Eee with 512MB RAM, 4GB internal storage (solid-state) and a built-in camera. I put in 2GB RAM ($50) and configured it to work with our VPN. And tested it out, of course.
It's an excellent size: just a little larger than my maximum handspan wide; the depth is about the same as the distance from the heel of my palm to the tip of my middle finger, and the thickness is... thin. It weighs not very much. Look, if you want numbers, they're all over the Net. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC for details. The keyboard is cramped enough that I don't want to use it to write a paper, but good enough that I could accept it on a week-long trip doing email and web-surfing. In fact, the Eee really ought to have been called the 'Good Enough'. The touchpad is not as sensitive as I would like (but that's a common complaint of mine.) The screen ought to fill the cover and be 1024x640 or so, not 800x480. The CPU could be faster. The wireless should do G as well as B, but it only saw my B network.
The next generation should be better than good-enough.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-04 01:18 am (UTC)It also nice to be able to tell the anti-Linux folks that Asus has shipped over 350,000 notebooks with Linux installed in the last three months. Who knows, maybe Google will finally port SketchUp to Linux?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-04 01:35 am (UTC)(and I'm just joking about the OpenBSD people, many of them are quite nice and not rabid at all)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-04 01:45 am (UTC)One catch
Date: 2008-01-04 02:06 pm (UTC)Re: One catch
Date: 2008-01-04 03:31 pm (UTC)