Re: Is the Asus Eee the speccy's logical successor?

SnakeOilSteve wrote:

The positives are:
Bang/Buck ratio is hugely in favour of Bang
Small, cute
Extremely hackable
On-board Atheros chipset suitable for WEP injection :D

On yes, it's a great tool for wardriving. Small and discreet :D

I have an Eee and I love it. Some people think of it as a cheap laptop. However, to me, it's first and foremost, a very tiny laptop which is perfect for those of us that don't like to lug around lots of equipment when travelling. The fact that it's cheap is just a nice bonus. If you're soley looking for a laptop that is cheap and have no desire to travel with it then there are lots of other full size laptops at a low price range that would probably suit your needs better.

I've got the 4GB version and I run Windows XP on it. I've upgraded it to 1GB of RAM and disabled the swap file to save storage space. I also have an 8GB SD card which I use to install non-essential applications on and I also have an 8GB USB Flash drive which I use to store data on.

It's not hugely powerful, but to me that's a bonus becaus it means the battery life is better than it would be with a faster processor and it doesn't run too hot. It does everything I want it to do. I've installed Firefox and Thunderbird, Microsoft Office and Visual Studio 2008. All of which run fine. I watch DivX/xVid movies and TV programmes on it with no problems at all. I simply don't need a more powerful processor.

I mainly use it on the train. I can read my offline email and compose responses ready for when I return to the Internet. I can catch up on work or watch a movie on it. It's even possible to play games. Not ultra modern ones, but it can handle the likes of GTA3, Maxy Payne and Halo.

I sometimes take it out with me when taking photos with my Digital Camera. I can check the images, even do a bit of post processing and if I'm near a wi-fi hotspot, I can upload them to a photo-sharing web site like Flickr there and then!

The small keyboard is a bit awkard to use. This is a necessary side effect of having a compact sized computer and you soon get used to it. You can of course plug in a standard USB keyboard if you wish.
The screen is small as is the keyboard, but these are a necessary side effect of having such a small computer.

If you want to use it on a desktop, you can plug in a full size monitor, keybord and mouse and it'll work just like any other computer of that specification, the bonus beaing that you can pick it up and carry it around with you if need be.

The only things I'd criticise it for are:

You can't upgrade the solid state disk. You can use USB flash drives and you can use SD cards but it'd be nice to be able to upgrade the internal disk easily.

The screen resolution is a bit low. 800x480 doesn't give you much space. For web browsing, you can use a web browser like Firefox 3 that allows you to scale down a web site to fit your screen resolution (eliminating the need for horizontal scrolling). However, some applications can feel a bit cramped.
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