At last, personal computing is becoming portable ….
and I don’t mean the hand-held palm mobile variety. I’ve been waiting to here about the release of the ASUS Eee PC $US399 with a compact and highly-readable seven-inch display. Running on a customized Linux operating system, it is said to respond far more speedily than its Windows counterparts, but it’ll run Windows XP quite happily, if you like.
The EeePC offers two types of intuitive interface, to let you choose how you want to use it. Using either the “Easy” or full desktop mode, you can use the built-in WLAN connectivity to communicate on the run, share photos from your trip before you get home, or do almost anything else online. Flash storage keeps the weight low – without a hard drive, this micro-monster weighs in at 0.89 kilograms ! In a few weeks Asus will release the $US499 version that has more ram and an 8g drive
With the 40 included applications, onboard webcam, high-speed internet capability, and exquisite sound, the EeePC finally heralds a shift in the way we can use small computing to work big!!
I can’t wait till the day comes when I no longer have to lug a normal laptop computer around! This seems like a perfect tool for students and others ‘on the go’ – the tool to use when you are not at your desk! This is a good addition to the small range introduced by the One Laptop per Child program.
Test drive the EeePC program interface online. Be impressed with the raft of tools and Web 2.0 type platform!
judyoconnell.com 
Greetings Judy,
I type this with only a mild degree of difficulty (apostrophes and question marks are a killer, along with that tiny slither of a shift key) on my new eee PC 901 (Linux version, of course…).
This is a really nice little toy. I ended up choosing it over the Acer Aspire one purely because of the SSD – I’m going to take this baby travelling all over Asia with me so I need to be able to chuck it in the top of my baggage and not have to worry about shocks to the disk.
Anyway – so far so good… this is my little treat to me for all this HSC marking I’m slogging through at the moment. I hope you’re well and eagerly await the details of the Christmas bloggers’ feast…
M
isn’t a new version due in July … concerns over tech support and Warranty … Dell will put a decent laptop on your desk for $800, and give you 3 years next day on site. One kid at school has one … but wonder if I buy them on mass how they will fair. Anyone seen a big deployment in schools? I want one, but scared.
I gotta get one. Thats all I have 2 say!
It can’t run Second Life… can it?
I really, really want one of these. Sure, its specs are low, but that’s not a big deal. A few years ago I had a desktop PC with a 550Mhz processor and a lot less RAM. It ran Windows XP fine (the EeePC’s Xandros is faster than XP), it also ran office apps and an early version of Firefox (this was when it was still called Firebird, and had even more memory leaks than it does now) without any troubles at all. I’m a law student and I will _definitely_ be getting one of these. It will be lighter, and less bulky, than carting statute collections back and forth to tutorials.
hey Jude
I’ve been following this little beast.
Do you recall the Newton. it was a side line of Mac. We were using them back in 1998-1999. But apple stopped supporting and there was nothing else close in the market at that point. And so our school has slid back from whole school computing ever since. Now it is a strange sight to see a kid with a lap top in class.
I am hoping that this machine may quicken interest again in students each having a computer. One lives in hope.
I’ve added your review to
http://russels-ict-wiki.wikispaces.com/Notebooks