A few months ago ASUS released a range of ultraportable laptops that got a fair bit of attention for a lot of reasons
1: They were 7"
2: They used flash based storage – much faster than a hard drive, but much more expensive
3: They came with Linux preinstalled
4: They cost $400.
Most ultraportable laptops cost between $2000 and $4000 so this is obviously appealing.
That said a $400 laptop is obviously going to be cut back a bit in functionality, and when they started releasing cheaper variants it really becomes a question of asking if the EEE PC is a value purchase or simply a tossing away of our money
Okay here's the difference between the models
$300 gets you the EEE PC, 512 mb of ram, a celeron procssor, with TWO GB of Flash storage (which is silent, more power efficient, fast as hell… but it's only 2 gb). You can get white, blue, green, or pink
$350 gets you the same thing with 4GB storage and a nice little sleeve to carry it in plus the option of getting it in black, and a marginally faster procesor
$400 gets you the same setup as the $350 one with a bigger battery and a webcam, as well as not being available in blue, pink, or green
All models have VGA out, wifi, three USB ports, and an SD card reader
Being a cheap bastard I bought the two gb model (in pink if you must know), then bought an 8 GB SD card for $40 because I'm cost effective that way.
So on to the review now that you know what I'm talking about
For $300 you already know somethings getting shafted. So lets look at the negatives and my own response to them
1: Disk space. With the custom linux distribution on there you're left with half a gig to store shit. This is someone lacking if you want to play media. However the SDHC slot makes up for this to an extent, and booting windows xp (yes you can put winxp on it) in 15 seconds is also very nice
2: No optical drive: It's a 7" computer, where would you PUT that? A CD is almost as large as the entire machine.
3: Not everyone likes linux: The EEE comes with a linux distro set up with everything you need – firefox, office, pidgin (lets you use MSN, AIM, etc), and all the configuration tools. But if you want to run your favourite games in your remaining storage linux wont be for you. If you have an external cd drive however, win XP will install just fine, as I've done with this
4: Low specs: It comes with a small hard drive, a slow processor, and not much ram. But who cares? It uses a very efficient linux distro that doesn't eat at this, and it ever lags up. If you load win xp you'll need to hack it up a bit but the EEE comes with a manual telling you how to do this. The ONLY time ive noticed a performance hit is in firefox when people have those last.fm album quilts. Which is weird as I play Quake 3 fine on this.
5: The most obvious problem it seems is the tiny keyboard. But I'll be honest. I'm a triple digit wpm typer, and while I'm not blazing through this review, it's workable and not bad. Yes, I'm typing this wall of text [currently almost 600 words] on an EEE and am having no problems. My only complaint is a very badly placed left shift key.
6: The screen is fucking tiny. Well of course it is! Its an ultraportable. Don't expect a 7" screen to have 1280x1024 resolution.
So there's it in terms of flaws. All of them have some form of answer. Now whats great about it?
1: It's 7 inches. You can take it anywhere. You can probably fit it in a cargo pants pocket, a purse, or anything.
2: For a low spec machine, it's REALLY quick
3: Ever notice how annoying those note table things in college are for laptops? The EEE fits on them perfectly
4: Expandability – most ultraportables (I'm looking at YOU Macbook Air) have one USB slot. This has three, and vga out. So hook it up to all your desktop equipment and you lose the portability but you can use it at a desk.
5: Silent. With no moving parts save for a really really small CPU fan, you don't really hear the EEE PC unless you're playing music through it – which reminds me, the eee has nicer speakers than many laptops
6: price point. If you need to take notes, or check your email on the go, it's a hell of a lot more useful than an iPhone for only a couple of hundred dollars less.
Okay so you've got a fairly arbitrary and seemingly biased list of pros and cons. But what... is it good for?
Well, notetaking and portability are huge selling points. But if you don't have a bigger computer to go home to you can give the EEE a miss. That said, it is a quick system you can take anywhere, and there's plenty value in that.
So now I'm just going to go through some of my observations and usage patterns that I may not have tread over before. Having such a small screen means that some websites may need a horizontal scroll bar in firefox. This isn't as annoying as it sounds, but it is still something to be considered. Also the F11 key in firefox is incredibly valuable. The battery lasts a long time (3 h under full load, max brightness, with wifi on – much more if you turn it down or are just surfing). Also the low res screen is amazing for nes emulation. It looks more crisp on my EEE than it does on my 42" tv through my Wii.
Another intrinsic value the computer has is a bit less obvious. It's an attention whore, and you don't need to pay the couple grand a macbook air would cost for that. People will crowd in. "What is that? It's pretty / small / cool!" and then they just get more interested when you tell them that you spent less than $500 on it. It's an incredibly nerdy piece of social technology. I use it to pick up babes. Well, the ones that don't think I'm gay for having a pink laptop next to my pink cell phone.
Also, as for using it for media, a good workaround is using Hamachi. Network it to your desktop through that, and share your movie or music folder, then watch / listen to streaming media on the EEE. The lower resolution doesn't struggle at all, though higher quality video and music above 192 kbps may lag up a bit due to network bandwidth.
Ultimatly the flaws in the eee cave to what this machine is good for – a system for casual use on the go, and with the price point there's no reason to go more expensive.
