If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger. — Frank Lloyd Wright
A gave me a supremely cool gadget for Christmas: The Asus Eee PC. I’ve been using this most compelling toy subnotebook productivity tool for over three months now.
Here are 10 things you need to know about the Asus Eee PC:
- The Eee PC is small. Very small. The display is just seven inches wide.
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The machine is extremely lightweight. Mine weighs just two pounds. If I lived in a cool enough climate to wear a jacket, I could put the Eee in my jacket pocket. And take it places. Like to parties. And be a total dork.
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Combine these two points with the fact that it has a solid-state, 4 gigabyte flash drive — meaning that it has no moving internal parts — and you’ve got yourself the perfect device for staying connected on the road. I’ve used my Eee throughout Thailand and on the road in Vietnam.
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The Eee has some great built-in features:
— The 4 gig drive is big enough for documents, photos, and some music. With a 1 or 2 GB thumb drive, you’ll have all the space you need.
— It has a built-in Webcam and comes pre-loaded with Skype, so it makes a great portable videophone.
— The battery lasts three hours or so, and the charger (pictured below) is slightly larger than a mobile phone charger.
— It lacks, however, an internal optical drive, but I haven’t missed that.
- The Eee PC won’t break the bank: the 4 gig version retails for about $400 in the US, though it costs a bit less here.
My Eee is black, but the device also comes in…pink.
The machine, which Internerds the world over have been lusting over for quite some time, has got an interesting history and some serious geek cred. The Eee was developed by Asustek, a Taiwanese manufacturer that decided to get into the small, inexpensive laptop game after witnessing the attention lavished upon the One Laptop Per Child project.
The Eee is powered by Linux. To keep costs low, Asus developed the Eee to run on the open-source Linux operating system, instead of Windows. (If you think PCs are the true computers of the working man, then the Eee PC must be considered equally utilitarian.)
One drawback: the touchpad is a bit finicky, so it really pays to buy a mouse.
Oddly, the wireless connection doesn’t connect to a preferred network by default, so you should change it to connect to your home wifi signal on boot. Here’s how to make that tweak.
Other sites that contain more Eee-related info include EeeUser.com and EeeSite.net.
3 replies on “Asus eee pc: 10 observations”
And one more thing.
11. It has much space for mods and hacks
http://www.eeehacks.com
and great community
http://www.eeeuser.com
Didn’t know about the 20GB version, 4amExpat. Thanks for the tip. But on my EEE, I’ve got a built-in mic. It’s not the strongest, but its enough for simple tasks such as using Skype.
Great device for the price. There is a 20gb version now.
Good
-Price.
-Flash drive.
Bad:
-No built in mic.
-Screen doesn’t go to the edge.