Just What is this ASUS Eee Thing Anyway?

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.

Why Eee?

[jeffehobbs]

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.

Ultra portable, but no battery life? What gives?

[Anonymous Coward]

FTA:

the battery life is three hours

Whats the point on a ultra portable laptop if you still stuck using a power umbilical every few hours.

Sure its fine if your only using it whilst commuting or when moving a short distance to the next power plug, but if the battery life is still that poor where is the advantage. Given the a smaller size, does it actually become that much more portable when you are restricted in the same way a standard laptop is?

Wake me when you can run it for 36hrs+, no software asked...

What do you know? They brought back the Portege!

[MindPrison]

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?

Re:What do you know? They brought back the Portege

[afedaken]

And you have a 9 y/o hardware package, with a 9 y/o CPU (and the processing power to go with it.) You can enjoy the wonders of the battery life of a 9 y/o ultra-portable's power management. Don't even get me started on 9 y/o hard drives, or yellowed 9 y/o LCD screens. I'm not sure I'd wanna run even DSL on 64mb with that kinda speed, much less Xandros or any reasonably modern distro. (XP is completely out of the question.) I refurbed a bunch of 3010s for a non-profit I volunteer with. They didn't sell terribly well, even though we gave them a 1 year warranty!

But for the sake of argument, you've been able to make a workable unit out of the 3010. How much time, and effort did you have to expend? More to the point, do you really think Joe Average is going to be able to duplicate your efforts? Or will be willing to?

As for being stuck in time, bear in mind the cost of the 3010. You paid blood money to get one of these when they were new. The EEE is reasonable money for most folks, and practically pocket cash for the more well-heeled geeks. The magic is the combination of form-factor and price. This is the first time we've been able to get something this small, this cheaply.

That said, the OP should be commended for saving another machine from the scrap pile. Did you manage to score a unit with the port-replicator and intact keyboard? Those were the most common problems I ended up seeing.

Re:Tons of Potential

[TheRaven64]

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.

olpcbetter?

[bfree]

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"!

Here is the reason for the huge coverage

[DrXym]

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.

Re:At the price, who could complain?

[flyingfsck]

Sure you can do a "middle click": Press both ends of the mouse button bar. It is very thin and flexes nicely.

Re:Slightly OT: Fisher Price

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of no better compliment than "like something Fisher Price might have designed". Simple, rugged, what more could one ask?

If you can't think of what to do with it ...

[Ihlosi]

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 ?

Re:Those Bastards at Apple never had a task bar

[Anonymous Coward]

So, as I said, like it or not the modern desktop environment started with Windows '95.

Huh? Xerox invented pretty much all of modern computing: bit mapped displays, windows, icons, mice, pointers, (= WIMP), WYSIWYG, networking, object oriented software.

Saying Windows '95 invented the modern desktop environment is like saying you invented automobiles because you were the first to hang a pair of fuzzy dice off your rear view mirror.

Re:olpcbetter?

[hughk]

Horses for courses. As you note, the OLPC is bigger and heavier but it is a lot more robust. Would you take your Eee on the beach and risk sand getting into the connectors/keyboard? OTOH, if you were wanted something to whip out in the departure lounge befor your flight, then the Eee is fine. When you add the N810 in as well, the thing becomes a lot more complicated.