eee PC RANTS!!!
Well what can i say about the eee pc? well what i should be saying is what CAN’T i say about the eee pc. It’s small, light, and very portable, so it’s perfect right? No, far from it. You can certainly tell that it’s cheap notebook, that may or may not be a problem to you, but it is to me. There are lots of devices in this notebooks class that cost around the same, which are far better made. The best word i can use to descibe it’s workmenship is ‘tacky’.
Another problem for me is the keyboard, although it’s ‘full sized’ (meaning it has every key) it’s almost impossible to type on. I would much rather they missed out a few unnecesary keys, or at least made them combo keys, and made the keys slightly bigger.
Another big problem is it’s webcam, 0.3 mp, your joking right, no. This device was aimed at bloggers, (like myself, the reason i bought one) and yet everything that puts it into that catagory, is well cheap. I know it’s a cheap notebook, but like a previously said there are plenty of better alternatives. You can get a full sized Vista laptop for $50 more!
So lets sum it up.
1) Full sized keyboard for typing blog posts.
– Too small for ‘real’ typing.
2) Webcam for recording youtube videos.
– People won’t be able to make out your face.
3) Connect to a high speed wifi network for posting.
– No option for wireless N, or 3g.
4) Highly portable for use anywhere.
– With a two hour batterie life, i don’t think so.
So yes, this is a pretty lousy device, but somehow i still like it. I think it’s because i respect it’s goal, “A cheap, fully functional, education computer for under $400” While i respect and agree with this goal, i don’t think it’s met it. I’m eager to see Asus’s next attemp.
Filed under: Uncategorized |
The Geek Blog 
How can you say this. Thee EEE is probably one of the most versitile and best laptops on the market. Yeah sure its got a 900MHz processer. But to be honset not many people would use it for gaming but it still works. You could quite easily play Battle For Wesnoth on there as long as you have the right kernel. And it’s not two hours. I’m sorry but I can’t agree with that at all.
“1) Full sized keyboard for typing blog posts.
– Too small for ‘real’ typing.”
I have to disagree with you on this. I own a eeePC for about a year now and I have no problems with real typing.
I am Oriental and my hands fit perfectly on the eeePC’s keyboard. Perhaps your fingers are too big to fit the keyboard.
I realize that this article is very old as computers go, but I just felt the need to comment. I agree with you completely. For an early inception product, the eeePC’s are great and they are definitely a step in a very good direction. However, I have to agree with all of your issues with it, minus the battery, of course.
With my hands it is next to impossible to do any “real” typing on it as you say. Even my girlfriend with the tiniest hands and fingers I have ever seen had difficulty typing on one when I brought it home. That being said, I am sure that we both could have adapted to it well enough over time but I only had the system as a test platform from work for a few days (I’m a Systems Integration Manager for a relatively small integration company).
Personally, I don’t use wifi anytime that a wired alternative is available and I take my tablet pc with me pretty much everywhere I go that I would need a computer and it has wireless-N, so that isn’t a big deal to me, but it is definitely a point that I must agree with you on.
As for the integrated webcam, I personally think that this is a stupid trend that has minimal real world application until a decent camera is used in a system. Until that point, I have no use for these fluff cameras that they are building into every portal system available these days. It is merely a tactic to rope in the teenage girls, IMHO.
Now, as for the battery life, this is entirely dependent on what you are doing on the system. Sure, if you switch everyone on and run it full bore, maybe it does only last 120 minutes. In my, albeit limited, experience with the eeePC systems, I have seen life times lasting a duration of 3-4 hours for average use. You have to remember that your average consumer will use these systems for nothing more than limited web access. I would venture to guess that a very large majority of the systems were bought up by college students who will use them for little than a bit of myspace and facebook time while on campus while not paying attention in their courses =x
Overall, though, I think that it was a good first few steps in the right direction and hopefully they can only make progress in fulfilling their initial goals of a budget, full featured, portable system.
On a side note, do not use “service” as your username in the Windows XP editions of this series. While there is no mention of it anywhere in the documentation, this is apparently a reserved name and you will not be able to login to the account. My company alerted ASUS of this issue from the first week of their release but even in the eeeBox that we just got in a few days ago, the problem still exists. Also, on the XP edition of the 900 with the initial partition setup of the hard disk drive, you cannot install Service Pack 3. This issue may have been fixed, however, but at the time that we played around with one of them when they were very first released neither us nor ASUS tech support could get it to work and they finally called us back and said that it was not possible without wiping the drive and converting it to a single partition.