Mark Spoonauer scoops the Asus Eee PC review, leading off with the observation that you can get a comparable budget laptop for the same $399 price for the high-end Eee model. The key to it earning 4/5 stars and a place in Spoony’s heart is its low-overhead, simple UI Linux OS: “It’s ten times simpler to use than any Windows machine, starts up twice as fast (no crapware!), and is only about the fifth of the cost of other systems in its weight class.”
Six tabs organize the basic productivity and entertainment apps: Internet, Work, Learn, Play, Settings, and Favorites. His wishlist is pretty spare, asking only for cellular data card drivers by USB and a little more polish on the UI, and in closing he recommends it as a simple internet and work machine. [Laptop]
James
January 8, 2008 at 8:52 PM
I bought the Asus EEE 4G a couple of days ago at Officeworks for $488 and I LOVE IT! I first saw the Asus EEE PC review in the magazine PC User. The moment I saw it, I wanted it. It fit precisely what I wanted out of a laptop, which was cheap price (since I am only 15), very portable for schoolwork use and that it can do everything a conventional laptop can do. From a distance, you might mistake it for one of those ‘learning laptops’ for children (mainly because of it’s small 7” LCD screen) but it is still as functional as any other notebook.
The main reason I bought the Asus EEE 4G was for it’s size. I love it how you can carry it in a bag anywhere and not walk like a clown, as with normal ginormous laptops. It feels almost empty, weighing in at close to the kilo. But with small size come problems. The keyboard is small enough to scare away some buyers, particularly the ones who store their body fat in their fingers. I don’t really mind the keyboard size, except that the space bar is a bit over to the right, and since I hit it with my left thumb, most of the time I hit it, but don’t fully press it. The touchpad is pretty small and is also a bit awkward to use.
Another reason why I bought the Asus EEE PC was the battery life. The 4G version has a 5200mAh size battery, and when combined with the notebook’s size and configuration, makes for a huge 3.5 hours of battery time until it goes dead. The laptop I had before this one had the same size battery, weighed 3 kilos and had a battery time of 30 minutes, which I now laugh at.
The Asus EEE PC runs a copy of Linux Xandros that Asus has edited to make it more user-friendly and functional. When I bought my laptop, I was thinking of loading on a copy of Microsoft Windows XP Pro, but I won’t bother because I think that the Xandros OS is too functional, and besides, it would be a nightmare to work on Windows with the screen’s 800×480 resolution.
Getting down to the main specs, the Asus EEE 4G has a 900MHz Intel Celeron processer running at 630MHz, which can only be changed if you flash the BIOS, there is 512MB of DDR2 667 RAM and 4GB of flash memory, known as a Solid State Drive, which has replaced the hard drive, and also contributes to the wicked fast startups and shutdowns. I tested my laptop startup and shutdown times. From button press to when the desktop appears, my startup time was 24 seconds. The shutdown time was a lot quicker, coming in at 8.4 seconds.
The 4G comes with built-in Wi-Fi, a 0.3MP webcam, stereo speakers, an SD card slot, 3 USB 2.0 ports, ethernet, a modem port, an external VGA monitor port and a built in microphone. I was sort of surprised by the webcam, not by it’s presence but by of the fact that you can take still pictures, and also make video recordings with sound, thanks to the built in microphone. It also has voice command, which I don’t find useful, but some commuters who don’t always have their hands spare might find it very handy.
The cooling fan is in the left hand side of the laptop, and the intake vents are on the bottom of the unit. When you play a game, you can hear it running, but it is quiet enough to not be annoying. The problem with the cooling is that if you have the laptop on your lap, the vents might cover up the vents, and your lap will add additional heat for the laptop to deal with.
Last up, the thing which makes good value in this little laptop is that is has a huge array of software built into it. It has educational software, software for work and for play. But Asus had no choice because there’s obviously no CD drive for installing new software. The only way you can do it is load the program setup files onto a USB drive on a conventional computer and load it onto the laptop from the USB drive.
All up, this laptop is the best thing I have bought since my Pocket PC I bought a year ago. Asus has built the computer the world was looking for, and they have taken over the laptop markets by storm. I can’t think of anything I can buy that is better than this laptop, and I strongly recommend you get hold of one as soon as you can. If you are worried about it being too small, I don’t really mind it because I like it’s portability way too much. I hope this review has helped, and good luck on buying your new toy.
Report PermalinkAndrew
February 3, 2008 at 5:09 PM
A useful review, even after having purchased one. This comment is being done from it! My supplier, name withheld, upgraded the memory to 1gb, makes it even faster. I suspect that there is an internal slot for a laptop modem. Also the OS has been dumbed down to stop users stuffing up the box and creating support issue. Plenty of help on the net to ‘unlock’ the OS and get a full featured machine. Also XP apparently is fine if you use a cut down install – also more help available on the net re this option.
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