Re: [NTLK] Mini notebooks

I feel a need to comment here. I own an Asus Eee PC 701 8 gig.

I'm going to address these points individually.

> I am not impressed from it. In fact I am pretty disappointed.
> Seriously underpowered. I tried the default Xandros system and a
> couple of others (Ubuntu variations)

I'm using the default Xandros distribution, but I've switched it to
Advanced (normal desktop) mode.

> Comments:
> 1) The build quality is poor

I disagree. There aren't a whole lot of moving parts, but the hinge
feels very durable and the keyboard, while 'plasticy', is sturdy.

> 2) The usability is poor. While the keyboard is not that bad, if you
> do a bit of practice, the touchpad and the mouse buttons are terrible.

My main problem with the touchpad on the Eee 701 is that it's too
small. Other than that, it doesn't seem much different to me than
other laptop touchpads. (Which I personally dislike. I vastly prefer
trackpoints.) I agree the buttons take too much effort to push, and
the inability to press them BOTH at the same time to chord a click is
a problem. This is probably why mine came with a little mouse. The
newer models of Eee have a much larger touchpad with multitouch.

> 3)The main problem is that it tries to run a full blown OS. Tooooo
> slooooow....

It's a Celeron 600. (Well, it's a Celeron 900 underclocked to 600 for
heat reasons.) It's not a speed demon. But it's not like I wind up
waiting for it to do things. It takes a little while to open Firefox
or OpenOffice, but once they're running the speed's fine. This is
mostly an effect of the solid state storage - cheap flash drives just
aren't as fast as cheap hard drives.

> 4)Stability is mediocre at best. No matter what OS it runs. Maybe
> because of hardware limitations.

My Eee PC hasn't crashed on me yet. I've not run Windows on it, though.

> 5)But the worst of all is the battery life. Less than two hours! So it
> is actually impossible to take it with you for the whole day.

I get closer to 2.5 hours out of me Eee usually (without wifi, but I
use a USB EVDO modem). I agree it ought to get better battery life.
In particular the battery runs down alarmingly quickly in 'standby',
so much that it makes that mode mostly useless. I just shut mine down
instead of using standby.

> All the above are problems apply if I consider it a mini notebook. If
> I consider it a "have it with you all day" machine, the lack of HWR
> and the form factor are additional disadvantages.

I personally wanted a notebook I COULD carry with me all day. The
battery issue I deal with by carrying the power adapter and plug it
in when I can - the adapter, at least, is pretty small.

The biggest disappointment with my Eee 701 is the screen. It's bright
and sharp and readable, but qt 800 x 480, a lot of dialog boxes go
off the bottom of the screen.

I would strongly suggest getting the Eee 900/901 or similar, with a
1024 x 600 or better screen. (The 900 also had somewhat better
battery life than the 701, and a lot more storage. My Eee 701 8G was
$500; the Eee 900 Linux version is $550, with a bigger/better screen,
and 20G of storage.)

However, I've still kept my Libretto 50CT (a 1997 laptop about the
size of a VHS tape) because the Eee doesn't have a serial port, so I
can't use it to restore my Newton backups if the 2000U gets seriously
hosed. :)

Aaron

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Received on Sat Jul 5 11:42:19 2008