I have a new toy: an Asus EEE PC. Because I signed up for a contract of two years with XS4all, they gave me one for free. The EEE minilaptop comes in two variants (Linux and Windows), and they give away the one with Windows XP (Home, Dutch language). It has a slightly smaller “disk” to compensate for the price of Windows. Of the 15GB total, you are left with about 12GB free diskspace. Enough for what this device is intended to do: internet access, chatting/webcamming online, showing your pictures to your friends and family.
The machine comes with Microsoft Works and with Staroffice8. But…the keyboard is so small, that you will only use Works and Staroffice to read and modify an occassional document you have been sent, not to write your latest bestseller. I’m a touch-typer, but I can not type on this keyboard without making lots of mistakes. The keys are not in the right place. So even chatting is slower now, since I constantly have to look at the keyboard.
The batterylife is not too great. I haven’t done any real testing, but after about two hours the powergauge is nearing the lower end of the scale. Not sure if this is because the battery is new and should be fully emptied and charged first. Anyone?
The screen is surprisingly good and has a native resolution of 1024×600. So basically an 800×600 screen stretched to widescreen. But if you want to watch a movie you need an external dvd player or harddisk, since the laptop does not have a built-in dvd player. Watching a movie over the wireless connection is very doable: I just started Aeonflux (a DVDrip stored on my NAS disk) with VLC (seperate install) and it runs flawless.
Not much more to say about it. It’s a very light machine and very quiet, since it has no real harddisk (but solidstate). I think it’s kinda cute to have in the livingroom, for the occassional internet-access or other basic things, for the real work it’s not a replacement of a real laptop/desktop. Great as a holiday companion, that’s for sure.