Asus Eee PC Gives You What You Need

[ October 17th, 2007 @ 12:00 pm ] ... [ C. S. Magor ]

Asus Eee PC Gives You What You Need

There is something to be said for low-end computing, especially low-end portable computing. When it comes to my desktops, I want all the bells and whistles, but for a laptop, I need the minimum of functionality. I need to be able to type, access the Internet, send email and that is about it really. I have existed laptop free for almost six years. The Eee PC offers nothing more than you need for a ridiculously cheap price.

It runs on Linux, packs in a few useful apps but is a truly minimalist approach. Were I to find a place for it in my technological toolkit, it would purely be a communications and emergency publications device. It is something that I could throw into a bag to pump out a few blog posts on the road. Sporting an 8GB Solid State Drive, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, a 0.3MP webcam and presumably a Celeron M CPU is the Eee PC 8G, the flagship model. The midrange Eee PC 4G cuts the RAM and HDD sizes in half and does away with the webcam. Both models offer a claimed 3.5 hours of battery life and 802.11 b/g wireless connectivity. Wired connectivity is 10/100 not Gigabit LAN, but with such a tiny hard disk, how much LAN speed to you realistically need? The 7-inch screen will probably cause eyestrain if you use it too long, but your back will be fine with lugging it around, it weighs less than 1 kg.

Who will the Eee PC appeal to? It is going to appeal to people that cannot afford a fully-fledged PC, and possibly also to people who can but do not want to drop their mortgage payments to cough up for a decent laptop. Eee PC runs Linux but the 8G and 4G models are perfectly capable of handling Windows XP, should the need to install it strike you. For me, if I were to purchase it, I would go for the 4G and keep it purely Linux. That should give you the best performance for your buck. If you need more space than that then you can always plug in a USB drive. It has potential; time will tell if it has a niche.

Price: $299-399

Source: Asus via CNet

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