Eee Pc

I just saw this a little bit ago and I thought it looked neat. Essentially, it is a laptop with a 7" screen (rumor is that they will be coming out with a 9" screen in the same form factor), a 900mhz Centrino, 512 megs of RAM, a ridiculously small HDD (2gig, 4 gig or 8 gig, but it is a solid state drive) and wi-fi all for $300-$400.

It won't replace a full sized computer (laptop or desktop) for the kinds of things those do, but for something to check emails at a coffee shop it looks pretty practical.
 
A co-worker of mine has one. It's a neat little machine, but I agree that the screen is currently a bit too small. Lose the speakers in favor of headphones and make the screen a 9" 1024x600 one, and it would be perfect at a $499 price point.

Nite_Hawk
 
I don't mind the small screen, but the small keyboard takes a while to get used to. It's a nice little thing for people who travel a lot, or just want a portable mini-laptop. It doesn't do everything what a normal laptop can, but it has it's own advantages too, such as really fast booting time.

More review: http://www.itwire.com/content/view/15923/1141/

FYI: I don't own one, but I've used it at work.
 
Rumor has it that there's a new version in the works which is to be unveiled soon (CES?). Apparently it might have a slightly larger screen and will support Wimax.
 
What would you use an Eee PC for? I'd imagine a lot of people would be buying it for the "cool" factor as opposed to practical purposes.
 
What would you use an Eee PC for? I'd imagine a lot of people would be buying it for the "cool" factor as opposed to practical purposes.

Personally, I see it as being useful for people with desktops who want some mobility for a decent price, as well as anyone who needs something small that can be carried around and kept in small places. Really, its powerful enough that you can put windows XP on there, load up word, outlook and firefox and have it do 90% of the things that people want their pc to do.
 
I don't recommend putting Win XP though. It will eat up a lot of disk space, and the boot time will be slow. The Linux OS that comes with it boots in less than 1/2 a minute.
 
Personally, I see it as being useful for people with desktops who want some mobility for a decent price, as well as anyone who needs something small that can be carried around and kept in small places. Really, its powerful enough that you can put windows XP on there, load up word, outlook and firefox and have it do 90% of the things that people want their pc to do.

I don't use my old laptop much any more as I spend most of my time at work or at home, but when I was a student this kind of thing would have been perfect. Small and light enough to fit in a backpack, powerful enough to write and compile code, decent for note taking, email, and web. it's the kind of thing I wouldn't mind carrying around with me all day on campus. Basically an adequate machine for anything but gaming or 3d work.

Nite_Hawk
 
I don't recommend putting Win XP though. It will eat up a lot of disk space, and the boot time will be slow. The Linux OS that comes with it boots in less than 1/2 a minute.

FWIW.

One of my Co-workers brought one in today with a cut down version of XP on it, he claims 700Mb's of disk space for the install and I watched it boot in under 30 seconds.
 
Seen it run Vista in a video and it seemed pretty darn fine. I wouldn't mind having one with a cut down version of XP on it. Have some of my favorite programs on it and it could be pretty damn handy when traveling.
 
Seen it run Vista in a video and it seemed pretty darn fine.

It will be quite interesting to get Vista working on at most 8GB "disk" and 1GB of RAM. It would probably work but I don't see a good reason why use most of the resources just for the OS. I'd better get something much lighter and use the leftover resources for things that actually matter :)

I'd like to have one. I currently have Jornada 720 that is about half the weight and size, twice the battery life and around 1/10'th power. I mostly use it just for reading e-books in bed, bus or anywhere else when I have time. With Eee I could do many other things too besides that.

I'm perfectly happy with Linux on it and would actually consider going to Windows a downgrade. I somehow doubt that Windows can handle working on flash drive as well as Linux. I would understand if you want to play games on it but for pretty much everything else Linux is good enough.
 
It will be quite interesting to get Vista working on at most 8GB "disk" and 1GB of RAM. It would probably work but I don't see a good reason why use most of the resources just for the OS. I'd better get something much lighter and use the leftover resources for things that actually matter :)

I think that is more of a testament to the product rather than a serious attempt to use Vista on it (I hope).

I'd like to have one. I currently have Jornada 720 that is about half the weight and size, twice the battery life and around 1/10'th power. I mostly use it just for reading e-books in bed, bus or anywhere else when I have time. With Eee I could do many other things too besides that.

I actually thought this was another one of these kinds of things at first, which was why I was surprised when I saw it playing half life 2. 32 MB ram is simply not enough for most tasks, while the eeePc is essentially just a small computer (weak, but not crippled).

I'm perfectly happy with Linux on it and would actually consider going to Windows a downgrade. I somehow doubt that Windows can handle working on flash drive as well as Linux. I would understand if you want to play games on it but for pretty much everything else Linux is good enough.

The main thing would be whether somebody needs Windows compatibility for something.
 

I'm not saying its practical because it's most certainly not. Just thought it was interesting. The Eee packs a lot more punch than I was expecting and really that's what has me interested in it. The reason why I'd put XP on it is compatibility with some programs exclusive to Windows, a trimmed down version of XP would fly on this little beast. Here is a link to a video and guide on how Vista was run on the Eee.
 
It sounds really cool.

Until you realize you can get a cheap laptop on sale for about the same price.

Then, not as cool.

If they could get it to $199, rather than $299-399, then it might be a bit more interesting.
 
That laptop you're going to buy is also much much much larger, the real draw here is size, not price...
 
That laptop you're going to buy is also much much much larger, the real draw here is size, not price...

Thank you.

I already have a 15" (and a 17") laptop.

I bought a 2G Eee Surf, got rid of Xandros (what a dog), tossed Ubuntu Gutsy on a 16 GB SD card, and I bring the damn thing everywhere.

Even the AC adaptor is nice and small, compared to the aforementioned laptops' adapters...

I do random internet things (in Opera, which is perfect for the small res screen), RDP into my home boxes, play some windows games (Rollercoaster Tycoon) in Wine; it's a *real* computer.
 
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