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beige_alertI've had a Asus Eee PC 1000 for a week now, and I've been very happy with it.
This is a very small and quite inexpensive notebook computer. The model 1000 I have has Linux pre-installed, 1GB of ram, 40GB of flash ram instead of a mechanical hard disk, and an Intel Atom processor. Just 1.35kg. I paid just a bit under $500 at Amazon.com. The machine is just big enough for a nearly-full-sized keyboard, which I find quite comfortable for typing. The screen is 1024x600, big enough for a normal web browser on normal web pages with no difficulties. Yet the computer is very small. Very noticeably smaller and lighter than a 15 inch Apple Macbook, to pick an example that I'm familiar with, and those are fairly compact machines. It's small and light enough that I find it really fits into the category of something you can toss into the bag and take along just in case. Plus it has no mechanical disks to worry about jarring, and the relatively modest price somewhat reduces the fear of damage or, you know, some type of loss.
Though small and light and cheap, it is a real computer. It's totally unlocked and hackable, and there's an active geek community, so a little googling will turn up help installing and configuring all sorts of things. I've spent lots of happy time Linux geeking on the thing, and for an old Linux geek like me it's great. Even though the Intel Atom is a low cost and low power chip (both electrical power and computing power), the thing is surprisingly capable of running real software. It's hardly a great photo editing platform, especially not with such a small display, but the ufraw and the Gimp run, and you could easily edit and upload a few favorite photos from the field, before getting back home to the big computer to do the real photo editing on the bulk of them. Google Earth will run well (the small screen helps avoid performance problems there), and even with 3D buildings turned on it's usable provided you avoid the worst-case 3D building areas like downtown Chicago, where it will be rather sluggish.
I've installed gpsbabel so I can download tracklogs from my GPS wristwatch. With Google Earth working, I can even view them. It can copy photos from the camera's memory cards to either the internal storage, which is big enough to be useful, or to a USB disk drive. There are three USB ports built in. There is a built-in SD-type card reader, so if your camera uses those you don't even need an external card reader.
I've been thinking about portable computers for years now. I can't really justify having two fancy, expensive computers. I've looked at PDA-type devices, for a little light web browsing over wi-fi, but they've always seemed marginally usable. Tiny, tiny screen. Tiny, tiny keyboard. But still a significant price. A real laptop computer of the nicer variety is really too expensive to be a second machine for me. Down at the cheap end, they've mostly seemed crippled. And again, I really want as little weight and bulk as possible. The eee seems to be exactly what I was looking for. Small and light and relatively cheap, but still a real computer with fully usable screen and keyboard, able to run real software, the familiar Linux inside and not an alien Windows box nor an expensive Macintosh. Since it's Linux right from the factory, all the hardware actually works. One wi-fi adapter that works, not one unusable one plus a second with a working driver plugged into some sort of slot. The webcam works. Sleep works. It all works.
The battery life is fantastic. It's long enough that I don't yet have much good data, because running the battery down is a long term commitment. So far it look like more than six hours, maybe even more if you don't turn the CPU up to maximum speed and run a compiler for part of the time. The battery is pretty big, and the power consumption is pretty low, so the result is a lot of hours of run time. It's just nice to not worry about running out of power. The AC power supply is quite small, a small box with the low-voltage cable permanently attached and a socket for the AC cable. The connector for the computer is a conventional barrel connector, not as nice as the very clever Apple magnetic connector.
I do think that the trackpad is rather harder to use than the highly-refined Apple version. The wi-fi software is pretty slow to get connections started up and the UI for it certainly isn't up to Macintosh standards, though, in fairness, I don't think the actual OSX wi-fi interface is up to Macintosh standards, either, it's probably the single most annoying bit of Macintosh software I use. The tiny internal speakers are surprisingly good for built-in laptop speakers. I've found the Linux geeking to install software entertaining, but probably most people won't. It has open office and Firefox right out of the box, so if you don't want to mess with it at all it's perfectly usable, but adding much of anything is going to be a matter of googling for advice and editing configuration files. If you don't want to ever open a shell and edit files, I guess you can always buy a Macintosh.
It has bluetooth built in, and while it will recognize my bluetooth headset, I have not been able to get it to actually work. When I get the chance I'll see if I can get my girlfriend's bluetooth mouse to work with it.
Overall, it's an awesome toy and I'm very happy with it.
This is a very small and quite inexpensive notebook computer. The model 1000 I have has Linux pre-installed, 1GB of ram, 40GB of flash ram instead of a mechanical hard disk, and an Intel Atom processor. Just 1.35kg. I paid just a bit under $500 at Amazon.com. The machine is just big enough for a nearly-full-sized keyboard, which I find quite comfortable for typing. The screen is 1024x600, big enough for a normal web browser on normal web pages with no difficulties. Yet the computer is very small. Very noticeably smaller and lighter than a 15 inch Apple Macbook, to pick an example that I'm familiar with, and those are fairly compact machines. It's small and light enough that I find it really fits into the category of something you can toss into the bag and take along just in case. Plus it has no mechanical disks to worry about jarring, and the relatively modest price somewhat reduces the fear of damage or, you know, some type of loss.
Though small and light and cheap, it is a real computer. It's totally unlocked and hackable, and there's an active geek community, so a little googling will turn up help installing and configuring all sorts of things. I've spent lots of happy time Linux geeking on the thing, and for an old Linux geek like me it's great. Even though the Intel Atom is a low cost and low power chip (both electrical power and computing power), the thing is surprisingly capable of running real software. It's hardly a great photo editing platform, especially not with such a small display, but the ufraw and the Gimp run, and you could easily edit and upload a few favorite photos from the field, before getting back home to the big computer to do the real photo editing on the bulk of them. Google Earth will run well (the small screen helps avoid performance problems there), and even with 3D buildings turned on it's usable provided you avoid the worst-case 3D building areas like downtown Chicago, where it will be rather sluggish.
I've installed gpsbabel so I can download tracklogs from my GPS wristwatch. With Google Earth working, I can even view them. It can copy photos from the camera's memory cards to either the internal storage, which is big enough to be useful, or to a USB disk drive. There are three USB ports built in. There is a built-in SD-type card reader, so if your camera uses those you don't even need an external card reader.
I've been thinking about portable computers for years now. I can't really justify having two fancy, expensive computers. I've looked at PDA-type devices, for a little light web browsing over wi-fi, but they've always seemed marginally usable. Tiny, tiny screen. Tiny, tiny keyboard. But still a significant price. A real laptop computer of the nicer variety is really too expensive to be a second machine for me. Down at the cheap end, they've mostly seemed crippled. And again, I really want as little weight and bulk as possible. The eee seems to be exactly what I was looking for. Small and light and relatively cheap, but still a real computer with fully usable screen and keyboard, able to run real software, the familiar Linux inside and not an alien Windows box nor an expensive Macintosh. Since it's Linux right from the factory, all the hardware actually works. One wi-fi adapter that works, not one unusable one plus a second with a working driver plugged into some sort of slot. The webcam works. Sleep works. It all works.
The battery life is fantastic. It's long enough that I don't yet have much good data, because running the battery down is a long term commitment. So far it look like more than six hours, maybe even more if you don't turn the CPU up to maximum speed and run a compiler for part of the time. The battery is pretty big, and the power consumption is pretty low, so the result is a lot of hours of run time. It's just nice to not worry about running out of power. The AC power supply is quite small, a small box with the low-voltage cable permanently attached and a socket for the AC cable. The connector for the computer is a conventional barrel connector, not as nice as the very clever Apple magnetic connector.
I do think that the trackpad is rather harder to use than the highly-refined Apple version. The wi-fi software is pretty slow to get connections started up and the UI for it certainly isn't up to Macintosh standards, though, in fairness, I don't think the actual OSX wi-fi interface is up to Macintosh standards, either, it's probably the single most annoying bit of Macintosh software I use. The tiny internal speakers are surprisingly good for built-in laptop speakers. I've found the Linux geeking to install software entertaining, but probably most people won't. It has open office and Firefox right out of the box, so if you don't want to mess with it at all it's perfectly usable, but adding much of anything is going to be a matter of googling for advice and editing configuration files. If you don't want to ever open a shell and edit files, I guess you can always buy a Macintosh.
It has bluetooth built in, and while it will recognize my bluetooth headset, I have not been able to get it to actually work. When I get the chance I'll see if I can get my girlfriend's bluetooth mouse to work with it.
Overall, it's an awesome toy and I'm very happy with it.
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-08 06:53 pm (UTC)