Asus EeePC
Yesterday I managed to get my hands on the new Asus EeePC. I’m saving an in depth review for another time and place, but really this little guy is just too awesome to not talk about.
It’s a 7″ ultraportable with wireless, webcam, and a flash-based hard disk that runs a modified Xandros Linux. While the UI is heavily customised, it includes a lot of KDE applications.
I’m sitting at the moment in a server room waiting for a colleague to finish up, typing this on the EeePC using a HSDPA USB modem. It’s small, light, amazingly portable, and incredibly well put together. Despite being so small the keyboard feels pretty nice, and the wireless range is really strong. It’s also amazingly cheap at $600 NZD.
Did I mention it’s very small? The looming blackness behind it in the photograph is my small handbag. It actually fits inside the handbag, albeit with a little bit of Eee poking out the top.
I’m really sold on this little guy. If I didn’t already have an ultraportable notebook I would see myself taking it *everywhere*. As it is, I’m almost disappointed these weren’t around when I bought my VAIO TX - I’d have saved myself a lot of cash, and while this is certainly nowhere near as powerful or featurepacked as my VAIO, for writing work, it probably would do.
It’s great to see really excellent consumer products based on Linux, especially using KDE applications. I wish something like this was available a couple of years ago when I was looking for a cheap. light notebook to run Linux on and found nothing.
I think Asus called it the ‘eee’ because they somehow knew that was the noise I was going to make while jumping up and down and pointing at the box in the store.
tackat said,
November 7, 2007 @ 6:02 am
I knew you’d love this one. I have a black Asus Eee PC sitting next to me. Oh if you haven’t found out already: Ctrl + Alt + t gives you an X terminal ;-) And of course there are some sites which tell you how to enable “full desktop mode” (i.e. Xandros KDE).
jhall said,
November 7, 2007 @ 7:24 am
Oh you managed to get black ! I had no idea that coloured versions were shipping yet, I’d have loved to get a green one.
No fear that I hadn’t found the terminal yet. I’m actually using the ‘easy desktop mode’ but I’ve enabled a menu in which I’ve added all of the KDE applications, and installed a few extras like psi and subversion. I used to spend a lot of time in IceWM before I switched to KDE, so I found hacking on the eeepc to get a decent interface pretty easy :)
berkus said,
November 7, 2007 @ 5:29 pm
Funny, I just posted about it today :)
http://nodalpoint.madfire.net/2007/11/7/eeepc-quicklook
berkus said,
November 7, 2007 @ 5:31 pm
Gah, this comment posting interface is crap.
jhall said,
November 8, 2007 @ 12:20 am
The comment posting interface is fine - please don’t submit multiple comments if yours does not show up. Comments are moderated until you’ve had one approved (so now your comments will show up fine) to deal with the massive amount of spam comments I get.
pezcado said,
November 14, 2007 @ 10:49 am
I just ordered my own EeePC through DSE NZ this morning. The ironic thing is that Australia doesn’t have any in stock yet while DSE NZ is running amok with all these extra EeePC stock ready to be dispatched through their online ordering system.
anyway, I can’t wait to void the warranty with my 1GB RAM, (SanDisk has came out with a PCIe storage chip today too, which would fit in nicely with the slot laying underneath the warranty void sticker) and then getting compiz to work on it. It’s possible, there’s a youtube video of someone using compiz under xubuntu, it runs pretty fast too. Quite impressive for such a petite machine.
dezman2003 said,
December 1, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
There are tutorials for installing different OS’s on the EEEpc at http://eeetutorials.blogspot.com/ also has pics of the eee disassembled.
frames said,
December 4, 2007 @ 2:20 pm
I just wanted to drop a line to say that I believe this post perfectly explains why the Eee PC is such a success. I found it so revealing that I had to make a cite on blog I’m running.
It’s in Spanish, but just translates your two paragraphs from “I’m really sold …” to “… found nothing”.
Hope you don’t mind. Gracias!