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Just What is this ASUS Eee Thing Anyway?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the been-asking-myself-that-for-awhile-now dept.

davidmwilliams writes "ASUS have released a cheap subnotebook. It is far from state-of-the-art tech-wise, with 512Mb RAM and a Celeron processor. It has a 4Gb hard drive and no optical drive. Its screen is 7" and runs at the odd resolution of 800x480 and the operating system looks like something Fisher Price might have designed. Why would you buy it? What on earth can you do with this?" I've been wondering this myself given the huge coverage in the media of this thing.

3 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. Why Eee? by jeffehobbs · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why the Eee? I reviewed one for the local alt-monthly newspaper, and even after I was done with the review, I wound up keeping it. In a nutshell: it's nifty to have an inexpensive, super light, teeny wifi laptop with a crisp, bright screen -- I've been using it primarily for a RSS/CBR reader myself. My advice is ditch the standard OS, which is lovely but would never fully satisfy most slashdot readers and install Ubuntu 7.10. It's easy enough to do and works great after a few tweaks. One caveat to keep in mind is that I can't seem to find any place that sells additional power adapters (yet) so the portability is slightly diminished by having to lug around the adapter too. but I'm sure that will be rectified soon, as Asus has done a great job so far responding to customer complaints and suggestions.

  2. Re:Tons of Potential by TheRaven64 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The Dell is a solid machine most people could use as their main computer Most people could use the EeePC as their main computer. I visited my mother over Christmas and had a look at her computer. She is using less than 4GB of her disk (no music, and her digital camera is old and only takes small photos). She browses the web, edits photos, checks email and uses a word processor and spreadsheet. All of these are possible with the EeePC. She is currently using a 1GHz Athlon, which is only marginally faster than the EeePC's CPU and she doesn't really tax it; the bottleneck is hard disk speed.
    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  3. If you can't think of what to do with it ... by Ihlosi · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Why would you buy it? What on earth can you do with this?



    If you have to ask the last question (i.e. you cannot name at least five things you would do with it), then you geek license is revoked immediately. Have a nice day.


    Heck, the thing can run Nethack. Do you need _more_ reasons to buy one ?