ASUS EEE PC Review - Good Things Come in Small Packages

Posted on January 10, 2008 at 7:05 am

Whilst there have been plenty of product reviews floating around the world wide web regarding the ASUS EEE PC, I have yet to see one that deals with hands on, extended use of this incredible little sub-notebook. So below I will give some of my impressions after using the PC extensively for a month now.

Firstly lets talk about portability. Over the last two decades I have used every type of portable device available ranging from a transportable IBM PC complete with CRT and fold down keyboard to a Windows Mobile smartphone. The ASUS EEE PC is the first device I have ever used that I feel does everything I need it to do whilst maintaining complete portability.

The reason for this is two fold; firstly the fact it is a real PC, not a hand held device running a non-standard OS and cut down version of my application suite. Secondly because it is pretty much bullet proof. No hard drive means finally no moving parts, I can treat this thing as I treat my cell phone… harshly.

As standard the EEE PC comes with a proprietary Linux install, without venturing into the M$ v *nix debate lets just say I needed Windows XP to maintain compatibility with my normal working life. A RAM upgrade of at least 512Mb is needed for this and the install is quite complicated if you do not happen to have a USB CD-ROM drive laying around. Installing from a pair of USB memory stick is possible but far from straightforward.

I streamlined my XP install using nLite and stripped out all the unnecessary and depreciated windows features such as the phone dialler, Windows tour and hyperterminal. More importantly I removed all driver packages as the EEE PC comes with a full set of proprietary ones on CD. Using this method I was able to cut my XP install down to 700Mb or so, this really helps when you only have 4Gb of storage to start with.

So once I had my system with a working OS and a full application suite I decided to take it for a spin. I threw it into my day pack along with some baby milk and some diapers and jumped on my motorcycle with my girlfriend and our 2 month old son. We took off for the beach and within minutes I had the machine hooked up to my phone using a GPRS EDGE connection for Internet access and I was working whilst sitting on the sand.

Now this is quite an achievement, I had tried working on the beach before with a laptop but the TFT was never bright enough in direct sunlight, the EEE PC seems to do a much better job of running a display at a high brightness than any notebook I have ever used.

Now I use the EEE PC on and off all day, it is constantly switched on and connected to my wireless LAN in my house, every time I leave the house it gets thrown into my bag along with my mobile phone, if I find myself with a few minutes to spare during the day, maybe drinking coffee in a cafe or waiting for a doctor in the hospital then I can whip it out and get some work done. For me this is what makes this little machine perfect. It is truly portable.

This is a guest post by Mac T. Wheeler who is an ex-corporate techie and at the age of 40 he decided to leave his career behind and move to a small tropical island named Koh Phangan in the Gulf of Thailand. Now he earns his living as a copywriter and blogger whilst living in the sunshine.

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One Response to “ASUS EEE PC Review - Good Things Come in Small Packages”

Asus launches new Eee PC 901 Model Says:

[...] of you may remember my hands on review of the ASUS EEE PC 701 some months ago. At the time I was completely enamoured with the little machine, I really believed [...]
June 11th, 2008 at 5:10 am