ASUS Eee - Should I Buy?

[Fergatron]

Hi All,

I did a search in this forum for "eee" and it pulled up a couple of topics, but they didn't look like any serious reviews. I'm really interested in getting a Netbook and I love the $300 price for this device. Can someone, who has actually touched this Netbook, tell me if it's worth it. I'm a web developer and CEO of Digital Alias - so I'll be doing the regular executive things that Open Office is used for, some financial things that GNUCash will do and some development that Bluefish will handle. Will this device be good for me? Thanks so much.

[dann]

My wife and I use our eeePC's all the time, and they are the e710 series which have less screen real-estate compared to the e900 models. The default Xandros install comes with OpenOffice but you will have to enable extra repositories to get gnuCash and Bluefish. Honestly, you may be better off replacing the Xandros with Ubuntu or Mandriva. Both were painless installs but that is another story.

As an addition to a workstation and/or regular laptop these are great devices. The keyboard can get a bit cramped when in long typing sessions. I've used Jedit to code but have not used OpenOffice to write much of anything, although I have posted a lot to my blog and such. Your mileage will vary. Suffice to say, if I start getting into anything heavy I will probably gravitate to my laptop or workstation. Don't mistake what I am saying though, OpenOffice runs great on the eeePC.

As a portable device that's quick to boot, easy to run and very customizable; I think the eeePC is great. As a complete replacement for your regular workstation or laptop; that might be a different matter.

[spotslayer]

Dann, What does replacing the OS do to the boot times?

D

[dann]

The boot time may increase by a few seconds but it is negligible to me. Also consider the acer aspire, sounds awesome.

[ken_fallon]

I have had the opportunity to compare the eeePC 701 with the Acer Aspire One side by side for a day or two. From a hardware perspective the Acer beats the eeePC. Ignoring the screen size, the keyboard is wider and I don't get finger cramp as I did with the eeePC. It also comes with an extra SD slot that will automatically increase the side of the 'harddisk' leaving the 3in1 reader slot free to be used as a 'floppy disk' type operations. One big issue with the Acer is the hardware design flaw that means you need to disassemble the laptop to upgrade the memory.

The Xandros software on the eeePC is quite old and you would want to replace the os for any functionality. The os on the Acer is based on Fedora and is quite new. I tried Ubuntu on the Acer and the boot times went from 15 seconds to one and half minutes. However both operated more or less at the same speed once booted. One thing I noticed what that the Acer gave the feeling of 'singel-tasking' but I suspect that is during intensive disk activity. The ssd on the Linux Acer is known to be slower than the XP version.

Then there is the up and coming netbook from Dell

[jturning]

For $379 you can get a slightly larger IBM Thinkpad.

IBM ThinkPad T41 2373 - Pentium M 1.6 GHz - 14.1" TFT active matrix XGA / RAM - 512MB / Hard Drive - 40GB /ATI MOBILITY RADEON 7500 / DVD-ROM /Windows XP Pro /Refurbished

http://preview.tinyurl.com/6c763c



for $260, ASUS Eee PC 2G Surf - Galaxy Black Eee PC Intel processor 7" Wide VGA 512MB 2GB Integrated Graphics- Preloaded with Linux Operating System - EEEPC2GS-BK003

http://preview.tinyurl.com/35g4xj



Other laptop deals at buy.com:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/6jah7j

Bugz