Asus Eee PC
It’s little, it’s cheap, it’s powered by Linux….and it’s on order! I took the plunge and decided to snag me one of these little buggers… The Asus Eee PC (8G in Galaxy Black). After hearing about them for months and itching to get a new laptop, I just pulled the trigger on ordering one from Dynamism. So I guess the big question is, why get one of these things? And secondarily, being a Windows system engineer, why get something that doesn’t run Windows?
Reason #1: Portability! That’s the single most important reason I think anyone is getting these for. They’re highly portable. I’m just tired of lugging around huge laptops. Sure, I convinced work to get me the 600-series Dell Latitude, but it’s still annoying to carry that thing around sometimes (probably wouldn’t be such a pain if they had given me a normal battery and not the extended one that creates a “wrist rest”, essentially making it as big as an 800-series). Besides, I don’t own that PC. The Eee isn’t a high-performance PC, most people aren’t buying this thing to play the latest games. They’re buying it because they want something easy to carry around, that gets the basics done, and is friendly to the pocketbook.
Reason #2: Price. If you compare this ultra-mobile PC with others in the same arena, this thing is priced really well. It doesn’t claim to be the top-of-the-line in any stats at all, but really for basic everyday use, most people don’t need all that power anyways. I always get a kick out of people shopping at Best Buy for the latest quad-core PC, who only intend on using it for email, web browsing, and the occasional spreadsheet.
Why not run Windows on it? Well, you could. In fact, Asus intends on releasing them with Windows at some point (XP only, you’d have to be completely nuts to think that you could actually get Vista to run well on this device). And they do include a CD-ROM disc that has drivers for running Windows in case you want to wipe it and install XP on your own. For what I intend on using it for, Windows won’t provide me any benefit though. Basic web browsing, email, chat, Skype, office documents…it can do all that stuff with the factory install of Xandros. Who knows, maybe down the road at some point I might throw a copy of XP on it, or dual-boot with a SD card that has XP on it.
I can’t wait for my Eee to come in. Granted my work laptop is WAY more powerful than the Eee, I don’t own the Latitude. It’s a work PC. The Eee will be my personal use portable PC that I can bring with me wherever, instead of lugging around my larger work laptop. Hopefully it’ll run cooler than the Latitude. It doesn’t have a mechanical hard drive in it, and isn’t dual-core, so it should be a lot cooler. I hate that about normal laptops these days. They run too hot.
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