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Just What is this ASUS Eee Thing Anyway?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Dec 31, 2007 09:11 AM
from the been-asking-myself-that-for-awhile-now dept.
davidmwilliams writes "ASUS have released a cheap subnotebook. It is far from state-of-the-art tech-wise, with 512Mb RAM and a Celeron processor. It has a 4Gb hard drive and no optical drive. Its screen is 7" and runs at the odd resolution of 800x480 and the operating system looks like something Fisher Price might have designed. Why would you buy it? What on earth can you do with this?" I've been wondering this myself given the huge coverage in the media of this thing.
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  • Huh (Score:5, Funny)

    by Corporate Troll (537873) on Monday December 31 2007, @09:14AM (#21865128) Homepage Journal

    the operating system looks like something Fisher Price might have designed.
    Just like the Windows XP default theme....
  • Tons of Potential (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eldavojohn (898314) * <my/.username@@@gmail.com> on Monday December 31 2007, @09:15AM (#21865138) Homepage Journal

    Just What is this ASUS Eee Thing Anyway?

    I've been wondering this myself given the huge coverage in the media of this thing.
    Well, you posted an article [slashdot.org] about the source for it violating the GPL (a fixed shortly thereafter [slashdot.org]). You might have learned something about it then. Or you could do a quick search on your site for it and you'd turn up the first review [slashdot.org] you posted and we discussed.

    Believe it or not, the "huge media coverage" that I've noticed of this thing has only been on Slashdot. Other than that, it's a big name manufacturer, in our world it's huge news.

    It has a 4Gb hard drive and no optical drive. Its screen is 7" and runs at the odd resolution of 800x480 and the operating system looks like something Fisher Price might have designed. Why would you buy it? What on earth can you do with this?
    That's not solid logic when you're speaking to a crowd that busts its ass trying to get Linux running on their microwave. I didn't see the reviewer giving any real specific applications of the laptop. Back in college, I used to work with pioneer robots in my classes. The damned things had a 15 lb. Dell notebook mounted on top of them. Ridiculous. Try hauling the robot and the laptop to a demonstration or presentation.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      It is not just Slashdot - the Register and various other IT press outfits in the UK have covered it quite extensively including the pros and cons of running Windows on the thing and even one attempt to load MacOS on it.

      Frankly, it is a geek toy. I would have bought one, if I did not have a personal notebook, a company notebook, 3 working computers doing different things around the house and enough parts to assemble 7 more in my loft (obtained for free or nearly free from dot-bomb and post-dot-bomb craters).
    • Re:Tons of Potential (Score:5, Informative)

      by shani (1674) <shane@time-travellers.org> on Monday December 31 2007, @09:52AM (#21865470) Homepage
      Believe it or not, the "huge media coverage" that I've noticed of this thing has only been on Slashdot. Other than that, it's a big name manufacturer, in our world it's huge news.

      Really? I just saw it in one of the big Dutch newspapers Saturday:

      http://www.parool.nl/media/2007/DEC/122907-eeepc.html [parool.nl]

      Looking at Google News shows it in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Independent, the New Zealand Herald, and so on. Googling for specific newspapers shows articles in the Washington Post, New York Times, the Sun, and so on. It's referenced in an article in the Wall Street Journal. This is all outside of the IT press, mind you!
    • by Per Abrahamsen (1397) on Monday December 31 2007, @09:57AM (#21865512) Homepage
      Since another article claimed we had forgotten about it, Google Trends claims [google.com] the eee have surpassed ThinkPad, and close to but not still on par with MacBook. If we look at Google News instead, the advantage over ThinkPad is even greater, and even "asus eee" has have more than three times the number of hits than ThinkPad, and half the hits of the MacBook.

      I'd consider a position between two of the most recognized brands pretty good.

      On the other hands, if we were to believe Internet statistics, Ron Paul would be elected president with the greatest margin in the history of the country.
      • Precisely, if Lenovo came out with some sort of new thing the thinkpad brand would likely skyrocket for a little while too.

        My real question is: what can I do with this that I cannot do with a $250 used thinkpad, a can of air, and a new battery? Thinkpad is cheaper, has a better everything, and I can actually type on it without shrinking my hands. I guess this eee is a lot smaller and doesn't smell like cabbage yet.

        Love the idea of this computer, but the cheapskates have always had the refuge of obsolete c
          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            Agree on everything except the battery. My x40 gets about 6 hours on the extended battery. I paid $400 for the laptop on e-bay a year ago, and it really outspecs the $400 4GB eee. Faster cpu, bluetooth, larger screen, 10x the storage, double the ram, and is built like a tank. Best of all, as one of the smallest ultraportables, it's only a teeny bit larger/heavier than the eee.
    • by drapeau06 (1010311) on Monday December 31 2007, @09:59AM (#21865532)

      Back in college, I used to work with pioneer robots in my classes. The damned things had a 15 lb. Dell notebook mounted on top of them. Ridiculous. Try hauling the robot and the laptop to a demonstration or presentation.

      What's ridiculous is that the robot made you carry it! I guess they're already smarter than us.

    • "Believe it or not, the "huge media coverage" that I've noticed of this thing has only been on Slashdot. Other than that, it's a big name manufacturer, in our world it's huge news."

      The Register [theregister.co.uk] have been covering the Eee quite a bit, particularly a certain scantily clad busty beach babe [regmedia.co.uk], there's a theory going around that she's using an Eee but no matter how long I look at the picture I just can't see any computer - even when I'm using my own Eee!
      • by TheRaven64 (641858) on Monday December 31 2007, @11:34AM (#21866688) Homepage Journal

        The Dell is a solid machine most people could use as their main computer
        Most people could use the EeePC as their main computer. I visited my mother over Christmas and had a look at her computer. She is using less than 4GB of her disk (no music, and her digital camera is old and only takes small photos). She browses the web, edits photos, checks email and uses a word processor and spreadsheet. All of these are possible with the EeePC. She is currently using a 1GHz Athlon, which is only marginally faster than the EeePC's CPU and she doesn't really tax it; the bottleneck is hard disk speed.
      • Re:Tons of Potential (Score:4, Informative)

        by bgfay (5362) on Monday December 31 2007, @12:35PM (#21867454) Homepage
        Bias warning: I'm typing this on an Eee PC 8G.

        The thing about this machine over that Dell is that if I buy the home edition of such a machine I'm stuck with Vista which will need way more overhead than this, will require antivirus software, uses software that is not free, and will slow down starting the first time I use it. That was what happened with the last Windows PC I bought (and I mean the last one I'll buy).

        I was going to get a MacBook but it too is pretty big and portability was a big factor for me. I got this on a whim thinking that if it wouldn't work I could give it to my six year old (who is now trying to pry it out of my hands). It works. It works very well and the keyboard is pretty easy even for a guy with giant hands like mine.

        Running Linux (pre-installed) is great. It has worked better for me than my Windows laptop. And even when the screen is a bit small, I hook up a monitor. Simple. For the price, and for my tastes, it can't be beat.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 31 2007, @09:16AM (#21865156)
    Like any sub-notebook, you put it in your man-bag/briefcase, and then carry it about with you at all times, so you always have a computer on you.
    • by darjen (879890) on Monday December 31 2007, @09:40AM (#21865382)
      That's exactly my problem with it... you have to carry it in a bag/briefcase. As it says in TFA:

      Perhaps it may not suit you as your primary workhorse but there's no denying that the Eee is king of mobility.
      I honestly think that title belongs to the Nokia N810 tablet. After all, you get a screen with the same resolution with a built-in keyboard in a form factor that fits in your pocket. I don't work for Nokia... just a fan of that particular product. Sure, the N810 might have about half the processing power (clocked at 400 mhz compared to the EEE PC's 900 MHz), but if we're just talking about mobility, isn't the EEE is about as mobile as a typical subcompact notebook? Which I admit is pretty mobile... but in the end it still requires a carrying case.
      • I'd agree on the N810. I have a 770 with a foldable bluetooth keyboard, and both fit in a jacket pocket. The 770 is slightly underpowered (an extra 64MB of RAM would have made it a whole lot more useable) but runs vim and a web browser, which accounts for a good 50% of my computing needs. The N810 is faster, has more RAM, and has a keyboard which is usable, if not ideal, when I don't have enough pocket space for the external one.
        • by afedaken (263115) on Monday December 31 2007, @10:31AM (#21865934) Homepage
          I've done an N810, and a EEE. The EEE wins for me hands down. Larger screen, and keyboard instead of a thumb board. I'll take a thumb board over T9 predictive entry, but I'll take a touch type-able keyboard (even one as cramped as the EEE's) over a thumb board any day.

          I can text message with my phone (ATT Tilt), but the EEE makes slashdot doable, and the web in general a lot more pleasant than it was on the 810.
      • Hey, the Eee looks cool, and it's making waves, especially since Microsoft announced they'll be supplying an OS for them. They're scared.

        It's praiseworthy, since effectively people use their computers for a limited range of tasks, and that range hasn't changed much in the last ten years. So a cheap, portable laptop fills many niches.

        Of course, I left my desktop in the other hemisphere for a few weeks. I rolled outta bed, checked my email; went downstairs, fixed breakfast, read the newspapers
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          I've got a Zaurus - the C3200 model - and an Asus Eee. The Zaurus is way better than any phone or PDA that I've used, as it really was the miniature laptop that a lot of people were looking for. However, compared to the Eee it's not so hot. The keyboard is really difficult to use, and the lack of power from the USB port means you need a powered hub to use an external keyboard. The available Linux distros for the Zaurus have small developer teams and are very unstable - they generally turn my machine into a

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              just scaled down for some reason (power?).
              More likely hardware bugs. If I clock mine at 900mhz it doesn't run very well (not at all actually). At 855mhz it's rock stable though.
  • It's great (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MrDoh! (71235) on Monday December 31 2007, @09:17AM (#21865162) Homepage Journal
    Spent 40 bucks on a 2gb ram upgrade, chucked on an nLited winXp. Now I've got a little utility machine that's /REALLY/ tiny and cute, and didn't cost the earth.
    Keeping it light, in both weight and bootup times means it's a great companion to my main dev laptop (Dell M something) that takes an age till it's usuable with all the dev tools/sql servers it loads up. It barely takes up anymore room in my laptop bag, so if I need to check something quick, that comes out, boots in 30 seconds and is good to go on a wireless connection rather than dragging out my main machine.
    I love it. Screen is a /bit/ of a pain, and just a smidgeon more screen space would have been great, but it works for what it does.
    Tempted to get a white one for the kitchen area, just to have vids playing whilst at the breakfast bar, music playing whilst cooking, or whatever.
    9.5/10
  • by IANAAC (692242) on Monday December 31 2007, @09:19AM (#21865180)
    I can see the allure of a device like this.

    I personally have a PepperPad 3 that I use while travelling. It came down to weight and the apps available (such as OO.org, Thunderbird/Sunbird, etc.).

    I do a lot of travelling and lugging a 6 pound laptop w/accessories through airports sucks. With a fully functional Linux distro on my PP3, I can now use a much smaller messenger bag, and everything, including full-sized external keyboard and mouse, weighs in at less than 3 pounds. And it does everything I need it to while travelling.

  • There are at least two hardware modifications aka moddings for the ASUS Eee PC [repair4laptop.org] mentioned at Repair4Laptop. One explains how to add an internal USB Bluetooth port to the sub-notebook without affecting the built-in wireless or using the empty mini PCIe card slot. The other describes how to install an internal 3G Card.
  • by bl8n8r (649187) on Monday December 31 2007, @09:25AM (#21865228)
    It's hard to type on if you're used to regular sized keyboards, but it gets the job done. Three hours of battery life isn't that great considering the OLPC gets about 12, and better protected from the environment too. ftfa: "It's endless world of hardware modifications that smart people worldwide have embraced" Um.. what the hell is that supposed to mean?
    • Regarding the whats that supposed to mean comment... The writer of this article has some issues in regards to vernacular: another example is the way he describes how Google returns searches to you; I'm not even going to repeat it. It made me puke a little in my mouth when i read it.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      ftfa: "It's endless world of hardware modifications that smart people worldwide have embraced" Um.. what the hell is that supposed to mean?

      Translation: Cheap fun for people who are willing to work with a soldering iron. There is not much room inside, but folks are already modding the laptop to add more 'disk' in the form of hand made USB adapters to SD cards internally! The laptop is small, but the mainboard is not so miniaturized that one can't measure/modify the circuits. As a bonus - it cost so little
  • A Misconception (Score:5, Informative)

    by alanw (1822) * <alan@wylie.me.uk> on Monday December 31 2007, @09:26AM (#21865244) Homepage

    you can also remove pre-installed items you do not need. I removed the Chinese language dictionaries ...

    The Eee PC uses unionfs to merge together two partitions: sda1 (/mnt-system, 2.3GB, read-only) and sda2 (/mnt-user, 1.4GB, read-write)

    There is a grub boot option "Restore Factory Settings" which wipes the user part.

    Deleting installed applications doesn't free up any space - it just marks them as deleted on the user partition.

  • Is faster than anything I owned in the 1990s with a bit less permanent memory.


    Seems to me I remember the day when a 640K operating system and a 40Meg disk were king, so having 1.5 Gig left over to play with after the OS is loaded --that's like luxury space. Oh, and I can go back and get more permanent memory if I delete some stuff if won't ever use, can add and subtract multiple versions of multi-gigabyte portable (SD) memory, and if I use a USB Wifi stick, I can connect even to the web at pretty good speed?


    What this thing is is portable. Medium powered. Flexible. Ideal for a Linux person like me who would like to have a road warrior unit he can live with -- without the backache.

  • by devnullkac (223246) on Monday December 31 2007, @09:32AM (#21865300) Homepage

    I think Mr. Williams needs a better thesaurus. From page 2:

    A quick Google search ejaculates forth bold experimenters...
        • I think it does, but it means something else too, which seems to be more on the minds of slashdotters.
          Sure it means something other that the assumed! But, go into your boss and say you need more storage because of an ejaculation on the disks and see what they say...

          While you're at it try to use "niggardly" in a sentence...
  • by Stu101 (1031686) on Monday December 31 2007, @09:36AM (#21865344)
    Having actually used one, I can say, it rocks. Ok so I wouldn't like to use it as a main machine (not what it was designed for) but if you are an avid note taker, or like to have internet on the run it is all you could want. It is *exceptionally* light, even compared to the JVC mini note range that I look after every day.

    Also, its pretty much instant on. So your not hanging round for things to happen. It's ideal to check mail, a few letters whilst in the wifi coffee shop. Its an ideal meeting toy I suppose.

    Also a massive advantage of this for linux is that a) A linux company is getting paid to put an OS on hardware and secondly, the hardware and software fit well together, they were designed too.

    As for the interface, hell its good. It's simple and quick. What more could you need. If you want more advanced options, turn on the advanced options, its not hard.

    The really mad thing? It's not linux peeps buying it, its average shoppers and gadget freaks. Its providing an inroad to the masses that standard linux cannot because of the variety of hardware it must work on.

    Put another way, in the uk, you cannot buy one for love nor money at the moment, and probably not until mid April will there be sufficient stocks.

  • Why Eee? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jeffehobbs (419930) on Monday December 31 2007, @09:54AM (#21865490) Homepage
    Why the Eee? I reviewed one for the local alt-monthly newspaper [masslive.com], and even after I was done with the review, I wound up keeping it. In a nutshell: it's nifty to have an inexpensive, super light, teeny wifi laptop with a crisp, bright screen -- I've been using it primarily for a RSS/CBR reader myself. My advice is ditch the standard OS, which is lovely but would never fully satisfy most slashdot readers and install Ubuntu 7.10. It's easy enough to do [eeeuser.com] and works great after a few tweaks [eeeuser.com]. One caveat to keep in mind is that I can't seem to find any place that sells additional power adapters (yet) so the portability is slightly diminished by having to lug around the adapter too. but I'm sure that will be rectified soon, as Asus has done a great job so far responding to customer complaints and suggestions.
  • by Cytlid (95255) on Monday December 31 2007, @10:00AM (#21865538) Homepage
    I find it hilarious that the author says "the OS looks like something Fisher Price might have designed." It's sort of an (un)concious jab at Linux.

      Here's something I noticed for years:

      Do me a huge favor. Go to an XP machine. Go to control panel, look at the icon for "User Accounts".

      Look familiar?
    • by Waffle Iron (339739) on Monday December 31 2007, @10:55AM (#21866212)
      The article is inaccurate anyway. Of course everybody knows that Windows XP has always had a Fisher-Price interface. The author therefore assumes that this Linux distro must be using the same thing.

      Not true: the Eee actually uses a Playskool interface, which has no connection at all to Fisher-Price. This is just another example of the typical superficial journalism you see in media today.

  • by TheCycoONE (913189) on Monday December 31 2007, @10:00AM (#21865540)

    Sure, it's not state-of-the-art - but when it comes to laptops you have three competing demands - fast, cheap, powerful - but you only get to choose two
    I think the author confused laptops with some technology where fast and powerful weren't the same thing - like tractors. Personally I thought weight, battery life, speed, disk space, price, screen real estate, and durability were the competing factors in laptop design. This laptop chose weight, speed, and price over the others.
  • by kilf (135983) on Monday December 31 2007, @10:10AM (#21865656) Homepage
    I've had one of these for nearly two months now. It runs Ubuntu Gutsy just fine, with all your favourite apps. I'm typing this comment on it, in fact.

    It has everything a laptop should (except a CDROM), and plays music, browses the web, runs OpenOffice, etc. It's not helpful to think of it as a "cut-down" or "toy" machine. It's really a pretty standard PC. It generally feels very fast and responsive, perhaps because all the storage is solid state.

    It even runs Compiz-fusion flawlessly.

    I've been using it over the last couple off weeks as my main machine. My only complaint is that the screen res is low and up-arrow key and right-shift key are too close together, and they have a similar symbol on them.
  • by jkrise (535370) on Monday December 31 2007, @10:25AM (#21865854) Journal
    At a hospital I consult with; the IT penetration is surprisingly very poor among doctors. The hospital typically receives 600 patients a day; of which about 275 are diabetics - who require repeated visits over years. There are about 150 in-patients who typically stay for 4.5 days before discharge.

    IT usage is about 60% for the in-patients; but less than 12% for out-patients. The problem? Doctors are fed up with using PCs - Windows or Linux. Some of their biggest complaints:

    1. Long boot time; Linux is only slightly better here; and Vista is downright pathetic and consequently been banned. The EEE PC boots up in less than 20 seconds and the GUI is immediately functional. No need for any useless login, active desktop, active directory etc.

    2. Ultra portable - so the doctor can carry it to the wards and rooms; and dictate into it when necessary. Very cumbersome with laptops; tablets are better; but very expensive compared to the EEE (1:8).

    3. Wakes up from suspend in less than 2 seconds - unparalleled.

    4. The interface is very user friendly and makes sense without training - unlike Windows.

    Surprisingly, this is still not widely avbl in India. Ingram Micro is getting it in the 3rd week of Jan. as I hear. We are ordering about 120 units for our doctors; who are genuinely thrilled with a computer for the first time in their lives.

    ****

    A second appln. is for an e-governance system whereby citizens apply for assistance - there are about a dozen welfare schems like for handicapped, destitutes, old age pension, widow pension etc. The EEE PC is much more functional than a laptop and can be easily carried to the villages by trained self-help-group women assistants. The e-governance appln. is a web-enabled semi-offline-capable system; so even if there is no broadband; the locally installed LAMP appln. gives a very similar look-and-feel; once in a few days it gets synced with the main server.

    Being about 25% of the price and weight of a laptop makes the EEE PC very handy for both these situations.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        How do you authenticate users then? Or is security unnecessary at your hospital?

        The new HMIS appln. is completely web enabled and built on Ruby on Rails. Users login through the browser before they can access the data.... but doctors prefer to even skip that and want to get direct access to their web apps after launching the browser.

        So now, instead of cookies we're trying to get the mac address of the connected PC to determine which doctor is trying to access the appln; and then directly serve the page. O
  • by afedaken (263115) on Monday December 31 2007, @10:27AM (#21865876) Homepage
    I picked up a 4G surf model.

    Can't speak for everyone, but mine is the laptop I actually USE on a regular basis. I'm hesitant to whip out my Toshiba R15 tablet, since it's heavy, and slow to boot. The EE is up in 30 seconds, and thanks to the SSD doesn't balk at being tossed around a bit.

    I'll grab it on the way out of the house and just drag it with me like my camera. I've used it in conjunction with my cellphone to check mail on the road, research products, or do a quick wiki lookup when conversation requires. It's also pretty hand for doing photo previews in the field. The SD slot makes reading my casual camera's card easy.

    With screen rotation, I can hold it vertically and read e-books and manga scanlations like I would with a paperback.

    I've done some coding and remote work with it, but I wouldn't recommend it. Keyboard is way too small for that sort of thing.

    About the only thing I haven't done on my EEE is gaming, which is clearly beyond the intent of the unit. That said, I'll bet it'd make a great classic game / emulator platform.

    Now that's not to say I don't have my gripes. As I mentioned, the keyboard is just a tad too small. I've had to learn to type with six finger and a thumb. The right shift STILL stymies me 4 weeks after my purchase. There's no capslock indicator, which has caused me no end of trouble when entering passwords. Can't do a middle button emulation click with the rocker style mouse button.

    But none of these are game enders. Annoyances yes, but given what ASUS is charging for this little beastie, I'm not expecting perfection. I'm expecting usable, with minor compromises, and that's exactly what I got. Really, the EEE was probably the most satisfying notebook purchase I've ever made.
  • by Chess_the_cat (653159) on Monday December 31 2007, @10:52AM (#21866176) Homepage
    What can you do with a small portable computer that runs Linux? I doubt anyone here would have any ideas. Try a site like Fark or something. I think they're into computers.
  • by MindPrison (864299) on Monday December 31 2007, @10:53AM (#21866182) Journal
    You know what guys? I have a Toshiba Portege 3010 that I bought at a flea market just for fun, it was so cute and weights in the region of 1 KG! Its a full-fledged windows PC with 266 mhz speed, 64 Mb ram, 5 GB harddrive and a USB port. This thing is 9-years-old. Did ya get that folks? NINE-YEARS-OLD. Guess what I did with it? Thanks to some russian genious Windows 98 got USB support for general-mass-storage on it so it worked like a charm with todays USB memory stick, another smart person out there in the internet world figured out how to use CF (compact-flash) WiFi devices on it...so I could just insert that one into a pcmcia-cf converter and voila...I had WiFi on it as well. Now...this thing surfs with the speed of any portable today (exept flash videos that do require some cpu power)...but it boots in 17 seconds (yes folks - 17 seconds from the second you turn it on). The point I am trying to make here..is that my TFT-screen based 10.2 Inch portable 1 kilo laptop from yesteryear...does this just as fine as this "modern" device from Asus... cmon guys...I am sure they can do better than that? Or are we really stuck in time somewhere?
  • olpcbetter? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bfree (113420) on Monday December 31 2007, @11:47AM (#21866852)

    So this story has been tagged "olpcbetter" but why? The olpc has 1GB flash while the eee has 2GB, 4GB or 8GB. The olpc has 256MB ram while the eee has either 512MB or 1GB. The olpc has a 433MHz Geode LX while the eee has a 630 - 900 MHz Celeron. The olpc is about 1.5kg while the eee is under 1kg. Finally the olpc is 242mm × 228mm × 32mm while the eee is 225mm x 164mm x 21.5mm~35 mm. So the eee is smaller, faster, lighter and has more memory (both ram and flash).

    So just how is the olpc better? You might argue that the "dual-mode" screen, or the mesh mode networking and the external antenna, makes the olpc more appealing to you, but unless you are in the olpc target market I can't imagine many would really prefer the olpc over the eee?

    The "flamebait" tag seems far more appropriate for this "story"!

  • by DrXym (126579) on Monday December 31 2007, @11:55AM (#21866924)
    The Asus Eee PC is small, very, very practical, comes decked out with lots of software and is extremely cheap, cheaper than virtually every other laptop on sale.

    That's the reason for the coverage. To buy an equivalent size laptop from Dell, Sony, Toshiba etc. would probably cost you 3-5 times as much.

    As an Eee PC owner I can say these devices are great. Some of the software is pretty irritating but I can live with the faults for the price and practicality. I used my laptop on a Ryanair cliptray yesterday. This is a feat barely possible or advisable with most laptops.

  • by Ihlosi (895663) on Monday December 31 2007, @03:53PM (#21869678)
    Why would you buy it? What on earth can you do with this?



    If you have to ask the last question (i.e. you cannot name at least five things you would do with it), then you geek license is revoked immediately. Have a nice day.


    Heck, the thing can run Nethack. Do you need _more_ reasons to buy one ?

    • by aldheorte (162967) on Monday December 31 2007, @10:21AM (#21865796)
      >The church he attends has a penchant for springing preaching duties on him at the last minute. Instead of carrying a folder full of old sermon notes, he simply carries the ASUS now

      This is not a Slashdot approved use. Please confiscate it immediately. Your service to the Party is appreciated.