Eeextremely Eeenticing: a review of the Asus Eee PC
14 Nov
Posted by cel4145
in eee pc
Ars Technica has an in depth review of the new Eee PC. Good overall look at the device and a very positive review.
One thing in particular about the review. It's certainly worthwhile to acknowledge that the keyboard could be cramped in a mobile device with dimensions 8.9" x 6.5" x 1.4". Maybe it's just me, but it always bugs me when emphasis is placed on a problem associated with the constraints of a platform. An ultra mobile PC (UMPC) of this size must necessarily have a smaller keyboard; a cramped keyboard is a problem with UMPC's in general, not this particular design.
I look forward to using one. I have plans to get one in the next couple of weeks. I'll have to write back with some thoughts then.
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eee pc: they are addictive
I bought mine 02 November when NewEgg got its second batch. the first sold faster than I could order it online. I have had other small devices but have wanted one that came with a *nix OS installed. So far I compiled XEmacs 21.5.b28, sendmail 8.14.1, alpine 0.9999, BSD mail utilities (1.37 I believe), and moved a number of bash/sh and perl files over to the system.
I managed to lock myself out once and had to reinit the OS--not as simple as the eeeuser forum folks describe. For example, my eee pc uses Alt-F9 rather than F9 to access the reinit menu, and the steps described on their fori to edit the boot process do not have any effect on my machine. For example, the busybox console does not have a mount command.
There appears not to be an easy way to change the username to anything other than user. You can create new users, even alias the main user to a new one, but the login and X setup process is managed by a compiled file which has 'user' hardwired in as the user name. This actually limits the eee pc's appeal for K-12 use because user has sudo privileges without a password. It is unlikely that many school network administrators would recommend school-supplied eee pcs for student use. Because of sudo access you can actually wipe the OS recovery partition. It would be difficult to do this by accident, but as a prank, it would be easy.
Note also that accessing the upgrade bay (to change the 512MB to 1-2GB or add a PCI-E memory module) voids the warranty.
What I like most is that I can write my own tools (unlike on my HP-iPaq hx4705) and that I have a real keyboard. It reminds me of the HP-Jornada-870 which was another device I really liked. The battery life on the Jornada was about 18 hours. The battery life on the eee pc is less than 3. However, the charger is very small and has a long cord.
I can access Blackboard without any problem. I did have to do some research to figure out how to access my school's WPA-TKIP wireless system, but I can connect with the eee pc in my building more reliably than can my colleagues with Windows XP laptops.
I decided to buy this as a replacement for my hx4705. I will be upgrading my Macs to OS X 10.5, and there is no software that will sync the 4705 with OS X under the new OS. I can sync the eee pc using Google Calendar and my own sponsored account. So far that has actually worked better than did the syncing with the hx4704 which relies on MS's ActiveSync (always a pain).
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rdr