Asus Eee PC

I'm writing this entry on my new Asus Eee PC 4g Surf, which I got just over a week ago. The Eee is designed as an ultraportable laptop - and with a 7 inch screen, and weighing less than a kilogram, it's fairly good at it. The Eee comes with a 900Mhz Intel Celeron processor, 512Mb of DDR2 RAM, and a solid-state hard-drive (the size depends on the model). Except for the internal fan, which only operates occasionally, there are no moving parts, which makes it fairly durable for travelling. However, the solid state drives don't have great capacity - ranging from 2gb to 8gb. I got the 4gb model. While that is very small, I am using this computer as an auxiliary to my main computer, rather than as a replacement. As such, I don't need to have all my gigs of TV shows, music, documents and so on stored on this laptop. Any work I am doing I can keep on USB sticks, or SD cards. (The Eee has three USB ports and an SD reader.)

The Eee ships with Xandros Linux installed (although Asus have started shipping with XP preinstalled), which boots in under 30 seconds. I'm not totally unfamiliar with Linux but I am far from proficient. Luckily, Xandros is the most user-friendly distro of Linux I've ever had the pleasure of using. Also, thanks to the widespread and enthusiastic user community, there's a shedload of guides and hacks on the web that help you get started and to tweak and configure your OS to the way you like it. You don't even have to use Xandros - like I said earlier, the laptop works fine with XP, and people have also put Vista, OS X, Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distros on it. As well as a basic OS, it also comes with a full package of free programs, for office work, internet access, multimedia, and so on. The price of the Eee will depend on where you get it from, naturally, however you can expect to pay around £300. I got mine for slightly less, which I think is great value for money, especially compared with other ultraportables on the market.

I mentioned the Eee's user community on the internet. A good portion of this community is involved in actively modding the Eee - it turns out it's suited very well to hardware mods. For example, upgrading the RAM to 1 or 2gbs; upgrading the processor to 1.2Ghz; replacing the screen with a touch screen; adding internal bluetooth capacity (no need for an external dongle); adding an extra 32gbs of storage space; adding a 3G HSDPA card to allow internet access wherever there is mobile coverage; upgrading the wifi card to support 802.11n ; adding GPS (with antenna); adding a modem; adding an FM transmitter; and many others are thought possible.

Now, the evaluation. I'm still getting over how small this thing really is. The picture to the right shows the laptop closed beside a CD (Martyn Bennett's Bothy Culture). Luckily, the keyboard is of a good size and typing is fine and easy to do after half an hour or so's worth of practice. Not all of the hardware is up to scratch, however. This is actually the first time in my life I've bought an Intel processor, and it's not bad. However, I have issues with the WiFi card. It only supports 802.11b/g, not the latest wireless standard 802.11n. That's not the real problem, however. Software support for the wireless adaptor is patchy, with several ways to accomplish the same thing, not necessarily with consistent results. The signal pickup is occasionally weak - right now, I'm sitting not more than 3 metres from my wireless router, and getting only 3 bars out of 5 on the wireless icon in my task bar. Oh, it just popped up to 4. On the other hand, just this morning I managed to leave my flat, go down 2 flights of stairs, go outside, cross the road, and get on a bus, all while still being able to listen to internet radio. Some amount of buffering may have been at play, however.

As well as the WiFi being patchy, I've found the trackpad to be often fussy, sometimes refusing to move the mouse at all. It comes with a small area on the right for vertical scrolling, which I have found to be even fussier. Luckily for me, I have a small USB mouse that I use for mouse-intensive operations (such as Starcraft), and at other times I generally eschew the mouse, being a big fan of the keyboard. The battery life is around 2 hours, which is fairly short, but considering the size and weight of the battery this is hardly a surprise. I'm considering buying an extra battery or battery pack for that extra boost.

Moving onto the software, it felt to me that out-of-the-box, the Eee was fairly limited, and one is required to do a good few hacks in order to attain full functionality for power users. On the other hand, for surfing the internet, word processing, and the like, it's practically ideal. It's perhaps worth noting that for any new computer I'd probably spend several hours configuring and installing software to get it working the way I want it, so the Eee is not exceptional in this regard.

Overall, I really like this computer. It's small and portable, reasonably priced, and works fairly well without the need for many modifications. It's also very customisable should you decide that it needs some mods, like a touch screen. Speaking of which, if I ever do pluck up the courage (and the soldering iron) to do any mods on this little beauty, I'll put pictures and details up here.