A New Toy To Play With

[crokett]

FedEx just confirmed delivery of an Asus EEE Netbook at home. I will get it on the network tonight and play with it some. If my wife likes it we will keep it and give my in-laws her T40 to replace their dinosaur of a laptop. If she doesn't we will give them the Asus.

[dbhost]

Sweet. LOML and I really want to pick up a laptop or two to replace our desktops...

[crokett]

Well here is my initial review. This thing is tiny.

Overall dimensions are about 11x8 or so. You have to do a fair bit of scrolling on websites - the display is small. This one is a 900 series and came with a 1Ghz processor and 1GB RAM. HDD is 18GB solid state. no internal optical drive but does have sound, onboard wireless, 3 usb ports and VGA port. Keyboard is too small for me. I suppose if I practiced I'd get better with it. Other than that I am impressed.

[jackellis]

My Thinkpad T43 is four years old, which means I can replace it if I want to. A dual core machine with a little more disk space and a lot more memory would be nice. On the other hand, it might be cheap to add memory to this one and hold on for a while longer.

[jziegler]

I have teh similar Dell Mini 9, and really like it. It is small enough that I will even take it travelling (which I never did with my old full sized notebook). Did you get Windows or Linux?

Jim

[crokett]

Windows. Not really my choice. It will either be my wife's machine or my in-laws' so Linux wasn't really an option.

[dielectric]

I picked up an Acer netbook after Christmas, so far it's been a good machine for the purpose. My one suggestion is to get a wireless mouse, particularly one of the Logitechs with the "nano" receiver. The dongle is so small, it practically fits inside the USB port so you don't snag it on stuff. I just found the touchpad hard to use comfortably, even though I use one on the big laptop.

[jziegler]

Windows. Not really my choice. It will either be my wife's machine or my in-laws' so Linux wasn't really an option.

You might be surprised. My wife deals with the Linux netbook quite well, and my (very non-computer savy) in-laws have a machine running Linux now (gOS specifically) so that I don't have to worry about them not renewing their anti-virus software, or fixing their slow Windows machine (thanks to spyware and the like) anymore. For the simple things they do (web browsing and simple games like solitare) they have been happy with it.

Of course, other than built to order Dells, Linux is getting hard to find on netbooks, unfortunately.

Jim

[drillman88]

We just ordered my daughter a Dell laptop for college. It is pretty much loaded because I didn't want to upgrade after a year or two and wasnt quite sure what apps she will be using. It is loaded with Vista which I am a little concerned about, but I can always load xp pro if needed. It is supposed to have a free upgrade to windows 7 but who knows what that will be with Microsofts history.

[crokett]

It is supposed to have a free upgrade to windows 7 but who knows what that will be with Microsofts history.

Actually it officially ships in Octobor. You can preorder it now. I am running the release candidate at work and at home and I like it a lot. My only complaint is driver support. I am hoping that is fixed in the GA version. I still have one piece of software that doesn't run all that well so may just use a virtual machine in XP for that one.

[BadeMillsap]

ASUS suits me fine ...

I had an ASUS EEE 701 when they first came out ... 7" screen Linux based ... worked great ... used it on several trips abraod and shipboard ... decided I wanted a bigger screen and Windows ... bought ASUS EEE 1000HE and couldn't be happier. I use it for my primary machine ... I have an IBM T42 that I "have" to use for work ... but really prefer the ASUS for personal use ... the 7hr battery life is very nice as well ...

[TB Roye]

I have the ASUS Eee 1000HD. 160gig partitioned HD, came that way. I have Ubuntu and Windows 7 on the drive "D", big problem with them is I don't have the wireless driver for Ubuntu and don't have a wireless printer driver for "7". The key board is a little small for old hands and the right shift key is in the wrong place. I have since bought a wirel mouse (old hands again) and wire number pad. I also bought a usb CD/DVD drive which comes in handy. I have the 10" screen which is nice.

Overall I like it especially when traveling, But like I said these old finger and had have a little problem using the key board and I wish I could get the drivers need for Ubuntu and "7" I do think I will get "7" when it come out as it seem much better and faster than XP. I am thinking of getting the bigger battery for traveling but so far the 3.5hr on is fine.

I am thinking of getting one for LOML for when she travels. For surfing the web and Email it would be fine for her and small enought to fit in her purse or her book bag she has.

Tom

[jziegler]

I have the ASUS Eee 1000HD. 160gig partitioned HD, came that way. I have Ubuntu and Windows 7 on the drive "D", big problem with them is I don't have the wireless driver for Ubuntu and don't have a wireless printer driver for "7".

Did you look into the Linux wireless drivers taht you take the windows driver and it extracts some code to work with the Linux driver? It is called NDIS wrapper. It is not for all wireless cards, but it supports many common ones.

Jim

[TB Roye]

Jim

Didn't know about that. Where is good place to go looking. I have tried to download wireless linux driver from ASUS website but they don't have any. Don't know which Linux they are using on the Linux version of the Eee 1000HD.

Tom

[jziegler]

Get the windows driver (XP, I think) from ASUS, and get teh NDISwrapper package from Ubuntu (sudo aptitude install NDISwrapper should work). If you search for NDIS wrapper, you can get teh instructions to go from there. I did it a few months ago, and don't remember what I did.

Jim