Thursday, November 15, 2007

Answering inquiries regarding the Asus EEE PC

I read some feedback and inquiries after I posted my EEE PC review, and since Blogger is having some problems adding my comment, I might as well post another entry to answer the questions.

Reader Ed mentioned that just like me, he's been following the EEE trail ever since it was first revealed that Asus was working on an affordable ultraportable computer. He seems to have backed off because portability is not a top priority for his job. I certainly do understand the sentiment, as the EEE PC should be considered mainly for its portability, and not much else. Regarding his note though that he's going to try and impress his wife on how cool Linux is. Well, Linux certainly looks almost like Windows these days with all the graphical enhancements that has been added, so now is as good a time as any to impress the wife regarding how neat Linux is.

An anonymous reader asked if I have attempted to use a USB hard drive and checked the performance. I have used an external USB hard drive and it seems to work fine. I'm not sure though if it is a good idea to do so since if left in a not-so-well ventilated area, it tends to get pretty warm. That seems to be a drawback I initially missed with it, though its not a serious concern.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Asus EEE PC 701 Review

I waited since August to actually get my hands on this affordable ultraportable computer. Asus experienced a lot of delays in trying to officially release it to the world. People were dreaming of the day it would be available in the market just to be able to try it out.

So, here I was, standing around, and waiting for the store to provide me with my purchase. It was a very cloudy day, threatening to rain, and I am still amped. This day would be something else and I'd be able to see how it finally stacks up.

The Asus EEE PC. A very affordable laptop computer. I got mine for 17,999Php [around $249, based on other forums]. I was with a friend who tagged along with me. We took the cab going back to Cubao to meet up with another pal to do the testing and review. As luck would have it, it did rain hard and the traffic was very heavy. I decided to open up the box and use the system already.

At first, I noticed how light the laptop is. Some people on the Internet took it that it was made of cheap materials and kept on ranting on how "plasticky" the build was. I would admit that the white finish was a bit boring to look at, but there's more to it than it looks. The LCD display is small, as expected, but it is quite bright.

The bootup time was relatively quick. It took me a couple of minutes to supply the system with my information and login details, but afterwards, it booted up fine. I attempted to restart it and it loaded up in less than 30 seconds. That's got to be good.

I am currently using the system with its original OS, a preinstalled Asus-modified Xandro Linux distro. At first glance, I was trying to find where the desktop was, only to find out that it didn't have one. The main "desktop" the system has the menu where the programs are available. The programs are separated on each tab [Internet, Work, Play] and it was nice. The first thing I did was to see how much free space it still had out of the box. I opened up the disk utility and found that of the 4 gigabytes [or rather, 4,000,000,000 bytes, I just remembered the Seagate settlement case], I only had 1300+ MB free available in the system. That's fine I thought, I never really intended to store my stuff here. That's what my flash drives are for.

This system doesn't have an optical drive, which is fine. I don't really use my CD/DVD drive as much, but other people may be turned off by that. The keyboard was of course really small, and would take some time to get used to, but when I was typing, it felt firm. I'm happy though that there were expansion ports to provide me with options. There's a port for an external display, three USB ports for all sorts of devices and the standard headset and microphone port. I'm a happy camper.

I finally arrived in my destination and met up with a friend. We decided to grab a bite in Burger King, which provides customers with free Wireless internet. This provides us with a perfect opportunity to test out the wireless card of the system. Once we were provided with the network key and we have found a place to sit, we attempted to use the wireless internet connection. It was fairly easy to setup. The internet connection was nice and fast, though that may vary from hotspot to hotspot. The browsing experience was normal, though I had to scroll around some websites since it did not auto adjust or fit in the screen.

The preinstalled programs should handle most of the basic stuff I normally use my computer with: Internet browsing, chatting, documents, spreadsheets, and downloading from the net. It doesn't have any "household name" software like Microsoft Office or Yahoo! Messenger [the only exception to this might be Skype], but unless you are really choosy, the alternatives installed here should do just fine.

Before I went home, I tried to see how devices react when they are plugged in the USB ports. I tried three different USB devices and they were detected properly. I am impressed.

I'm thinking of trying to install Windows XP eventually since drivers are available in Asus' support website, but for now, I'd like to see how far I could go with this default setup. It seems to do the things I need from a portable computer nicely and that's what counts. Just don't expect it to perform like your home desktop computer.