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What's The Perfect Balance For a Budget Laptop?
cheapbob writes "Recently HP officially unveiled a budget ultraportable laptop aimed to compete with the likes of Asus Eee PC. According to Compal, one of Dell's assemblers, Dell is also going to enter the budget ultra-portable market soon. All of these devices lack many of the features associated with larger-sized laptops, such as optical drives and large amounts of storage space, yet demand for them is very high. Initial reviews of these devices unsurprisingly expose them to be underpowered and lacklustre. What's the appeal? What do you think is the perfect balance of features and price point for a budget laptop?"
I commute two hours each way, by train bus and subway. Those of us who spend hours in transit every day can't even understand why someone would need to ask the question about what the appeal is.
I can't speak for anyone else, but the appeal to me is that the machines can do enough- and they do it for an affordable price. That's the key. It was not long ago - and still is the case - that anything this small and underpowered cost a lot.
The HP review says it does fine doing the basics - that's all most people need. For people who are on the move a lot, lugging around a full size laptop gets really old. People want to connect to the internet anywhere, but they don't want to carry a boat anchor to do it. These umpcs may be small but they are a lot bigger than many phones that would by the way, cost more. So there is the sweet spot. Price and size.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Small is neat, I suppose, but not something I really care about.
My criteria is pretty much (1) As much power as possible under (2) a reasonable price. All other things being equal, I'll probably select a smaller laptop, but I would gladly sacrifice a couple pounds for a larger HD, a DVD-Rom, expandability, or a full assortment of ports.
I know some people do care, but for me thickness has about as much bearing on my choice as the thing's color.
There's a market for light and cheap. To high income people, $400-$500 is practically disposable. You can spend that much on an iPod touch. It's not a big deal to break it or lose it because it's not expensive.
If all you want is email or web access, a cheap ultra portable like an ASUS eee is a perfect match.
Comparing these devices to full sized laptops misses the point.
Finally, if it's cheap enough to not really force a user to chose between owning a portable and owning a desktop (or better equipped portable) and instead they can have both, then you sir have a cash machine!
Buy a refurbished machine from Dell's outlet store :-)
Seriously, the most important thing I've always found when buying a laptop (or any machine) is not to skimp on memory. Unless you're buying a portable gaming rig, processor power isn't really that critical and your typical bundled graphics device is sufficient to handle any kind of desktop (okay, maybe not Aero...)
Came across these guys recently:
http://minipc.aopen.com/Global/spec.htm
Nice looking device. My main reservation about the Asus eee PCs is the screensize - my days of squinting at tiny screens are long gone.
Those smallish ones are fine, but not paying what they are asking when you can get a full size normal budget laptop for the same scratch $400-500. $100-200 tops right now would be my budget.
Anyway, that's my price point for getting a toy-ish low featured laptop, although they are featured-enough, solid state drive is fine, lowerpowered CPU is fine, just not be skimpy with the RAM, at least a gig or two.. The original OLPC hundred buck idea would be nice then.
So, you richer guys, get crackin and buy a zillion of them for what they are asking now, so the price can drop some more..heh.
Macbook air low end is what? $1799?
The low end on this HP is under $500. I'd say if it takes me an extra hour to get Suse tweaked just right on this box then my time is worth over $1300 an hour.
Even with extra ram, a hard drive and suse - I'm still going to come in a thousand or more under the comparable apple.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Oh off the top of my stoner head. Was $200? Go find an $200 UMPC now. My point stands.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
I think you're asking the wrong question. Budget, Ultra-portable, Powerful - you can have any 2 out of 3.
If the question is truly about Budget and "powerful enough", obviously the thing won't be ultraportable. You can get a reasonable machine (~5 lbs, 14" screen, low-end Core Duo or Turion based) for about $500, or even lower if you look for sales or rebates.
You can then add a cheap or free office suite (e.g. OpenOffice), Firefox, etc., and you're ready to go.
ONE hour to tweak a Linux distro as tight as MacOSX? Your time is worth much, much more than $1300 an hour. Your time could make SuSE replace Apple. Yeah, 15% market share in a year, that's how much for the Messiah who figured out how to configure the distro Just Right?
That everything works? I mean EVERYTHING. Temperature sensors and webcam and all... No, you lie. No one can do that. In under a year? No, you said under one hour. YEAH RIGHT.
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Were talking budget. not ultra portable. the comparison point is therefore a macbook not an air.
good luck with your Suse system when you need to run MS Office for compatibility reasons, or Photoshop or basically any app found in the bussiness world.
If you are a student, then yeah, time have no value, to use suse.
I use Linux too. But I use it on my servers and the laptops that have to work with servers. but I don't use it on my bussiness or personal laptops.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
No we're talking ultra portable and budget. The HP 2133 is lighter than the air - and so my point stands.
I wouldn't want to work with office or photoshop on an air or the 2133 - that is not the point. I want something that size to be mobile. Suse is great for browsing, email, and if I needed to I could even handle office docs sufficiently.
I don't work in the business world - I work in the tech world and there isn't really anything I can't do, that I need to do, with a linux box.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I don't want one. What I want is one of those mini-tablet/large-PDA thingies Bill Gates showed us a couple of years ago. You know, the ones with no keyboard, a 7" touch screen with handwriting recognition, etc. Oh, sure, they're available, but I think $500 is a reasonable price, not the $1500 the makers are charging.
I think the biggest appeal of these "budget" laptops is just that -- the price fits most people's budgets.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
In my experience, if you're posting on internet forums about how everyone should be using your favourite operating system you're a platform snob, even if you claim you're not.
Back in the days, when we were young wee bairns, those bits of paper our elders bought stuff with were worth a lot more elsewhere in the world than they are now.
Cheap, small laptops in the next year or two will be very popular though. People will be cutting back. They're not going to buy something fancy, they'll get something that will do the job. As long as it does the full internet, does their email, has information manager functionality, they'll be happy.
It's not about CPU power in this form factor, unless you do something silly like running Vista on the device. The iPhone shows that you can have a slick, smooth interface, fully featured (um, cut and paste excepted) that works well for the user, on a mere 412MHz ARM11 CPU. I suspect that some tasks (music decoding) are offloaded to the ARM9 on another chip in the system that has acceleration for that. Oh, there's also an ARM7 in that other chip. Probably ARM7s in the wireless controller too. Intel - you really think you can compete when something like an iPhone has so many ARMs to slap you about with?
Oh, I digress for a bad joke. Anyway, it's about the software and its optimisation. Linux has a grand chance here to shine on the lesser hardware.
A used ibm x30 is 200 dollars with a 60gb hd 512ram and 1.2 ghz chip. 3lbs and an 1inch thick. In another year it will be 100 dollars. Why bother with a new computer if all you want to do with it is travel, net, and type?
They are basic, note-taking, doc-writing, email-sending, web-surfing, e-book-reading, port-able, wire-less, hand-held AKA lap-top devices that don't cost much. Perfect for the coffee table to look up imdb ratings in front of the TV or to check the weather radar/forecast before heading out in the morning.
Couldn't fit-in any more hyphens.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
*cough* Please. Maybe the few simple web 2.0 apps in the world, but the majority of applications are not simply and cleanly built. Have you tried running a powerpoint-like application via Web2.0? Native apps run MUCH cleaner. I need more cpu power to run a few 2.0 apps simultaneously than most native apps, thanks to the hoops they have to run through as a client-server application. Add in a few Flash anythings and now my system is crawling.
I sell Eee PC's, and size is a big selling point. A lot of women like a laptop they can slip into their purses, and a lot of the construction guys around here like clipping it to their clipboards. Some of the college kids think it looks cool, and that helps too.
$100 and it's its own Internet infrastructure.
That is perfect.
It's also not what the OLPC project offers, at least not yet. Each laptop costs closer to US$200, and there's no Internet infrastructure included (unless you mean the mesh networking, which could be implemented on just about any 802.11 device given an appropriate driver).
And, having received my Give One, Get One laptop just yesterday, I can say that while the industrial design of the laptop is sublime, I do wish it had a little more horsepower under the hood. top can easily report a load of 0.5 or more when idling, and every application takes longer than it ought to launch.
(I imagine many of you don't. But then the first machine I programmed for money used vacuum tubes for the DIODES.)
... One breaks? Chuck it and get another.
The same sorts of questions were being asked then. What could you possibly DO with a little home computer? They were SO underpowered compared with a mainframe.
The question was related to another one that had been asked before: "How many of these first IBM machines will we be able to sell?" "Well, 10 of them would do more arithmetic than all the accountants in the world..."
Surprise: When the price gets low enough there's a LOT of stuff you can do that you couldn't afford to do before.
So it's got a lot less processor and memory than the current top-of-the-line laptop? That puts it far ahead of the laptops - and desktops - of just a few years back. And it would run RINGS around the first Unix machine I bought for my personal use, back in the '70s. A couple megabyte or RAM? 80 Megs of hard drive? Floppies for backup? I still found PLENTY of stuff to do with it. Enough to justify the several thousands of dollars it cost - back when two hundred bux were worth about what a thousand is now.
Bring the price down to a hundred or two, for a small, light box with enough memory and processor to drive a decent display, audio, enough battery to keep it alive for a few hours, USB (or other) interface for external memory sticks / drives / cameras, and internal modem and wireless. Then you've got the bulk of what I need at a throwaway price.
I'd buy one for me, one for the wife, one for each nephew (if they don't have it already), put one in the vacation house to monitor the cameras and phone home in case of trouble, one for the townhouse to phone the vacation house when we're there ditto, one in the camping trailer, one on the boat, a spare in the trunk,
As for the vendors: Fast nickels are better than slow dimes. Get the price point down far enough and you sell SO many of 'em that you more than make it up on volume.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The perfect balance for a budget laptop definitely is a large budget.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
PDAs/Mobiles are too small to browse the web decently and don't have a decent input device - a keyboard. Normal laptops are too big to carry round with you everywhere.
These new gen small notebooks are the perfect size, plenty small enough to carry round but big enough to be able to display web pages properly and maintain a proper keyboard.
I'm not sure why anyone would say they're underpowered or lacklustre though, unless you're expecting to play Crysis on it then the spec is just find, people have been happily creating spreadsheets, presentations, word documents, doing e-mail, browsing the web ever since the 486 era. You're not going to be playing the latest and greatest games on them it's silly to think so, we don't have the tech. to put that much power in such a small size at a reasonable price point but if you want to use it to do every day stuff you do on a computer I'd argue it's better than a laptop and better than a PDA because it has the advantages of both without the disadvantages (well except proper laptops have better specs, but gaming laptops are so big and bulk they may as well be in the desktop category anyway!).
The new sub-notebooks fill a niche that was filled then emptied again over the past decade or so. I found an old 486 laptop at work not so long ago that funnily enough whilst fatter than the new gen notebooks wasn't really much deeper or wider. Similarly Apple did away with their nice small notebooks and upped the size an inch or so when they went Intel - I'm not sure what the Air was all about either, it's just as wide and deep but extremely thin, to me thinness really doesn't solve anything and just makes me worry I'll snap it or something!
I've had a nice 15.4" HP laptop before. It stayed at home on my desk because it was bulky to carry anywhere and fragile-feeling. My Eee is so small and light that I'm not afraid I will drop it nor am I afraid to drop it. Light weight and small size is nice. I carry my Eee everywhere.
I am running an nLited version of XP SP3 on mine because I just want it to work and I don't want to spend hours in terminal to make Linux do the same things the Windows software I already have. The only thing I can't get it to do that I wish it would? Run the old Tony Hawk games. The system specs are more than enough but the game doesn't like the bastard resolution.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
The Asus EEE in book has a Killer Combination of features I've last seen about 13 years ago with the Highscreen "DOS 5.0 / Works 5.0 on ROM" Pocket PC (which basically was a cheap rebranding of an earlyer expensive Sharp Pocket PC). These features are:
+ Small.
+ Durable.
+ Full PC - runs all PC stuff I need.
+ Sacrafices Optical for durability, size and price == good move - I don't want to watch DVDs on a small thing like that anyway. I *do* however, want to use OpenOffice in a pinch.
+ No extra custom gadget connectivity stuff needed. Supports all standard ports out of the box. Means: Ready for universal flexible use. Cheap.
+ No obscure custom purpose 'Pocket OS'. Linux beats Palm OS any time of the day.
+ Linux preinstalled, Debian Variant being a big bonus. I'm a programmer and an IT pro. I want to use a Computer, not a pimped out virii-ridden slowpocking typewriter that needs DirectX to render it's desktop.
Now only if I could get one. These things are hard to come by right now.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The biggest problem in portable systems that aren't designed to replace a desktop is that they couldn't replace one if they -had- to. And honestly, when I've carried a laptop around with me for any length of time and serious usage, it's gone and replaced my primary desktop for everything except gaming. For people like your typical Slashdot reader, unless we get something that's at least on par with a low-end but functional desktop, we're probably going to be too frustrated by a limited budget laptop.
I have a Macbook, and I love it. But if I wanted something on a budget that was going to be my utility system for lugging around and doing office-type tasks, the last thing I'd want to use is a full-blown desktop OS. There really needs to be a new kind of system designed for portable machines that's designed for ease of use, low power consumption, and high grades of flexibility without needing to wade through a typical desktop interface.
If I were designing a new OS for one of these systems, I'd want something that handled software installation and deletion similarly to OS X. You drag a file into Applications or wherever, and it runs when you click it. I would want accessory and connectivity options designed along the lines of a
PDA - illustrative graphical things you toggle on and off with virtual switches. I'd want a heavily customized and graphically streamlined version of Open Office to handle documents. A modified version of Firefox made to work within the context of a special application control bar similar to a combination of the OS X task bar and the Windows tray.
Linux is just not a good platform for something like this as it currently stands. I for one never want to worry about whether or not my glibc is the right fucking version before I install software. (It's been a while since I used a mainstream distro for longer than a few days) And I know that if I don't want to know it, my mom sure the hell wouldn't when she saw a neat new gadget to install on her email device.
Insofar as hardware goes, I think Intel has the right processor coming out with Atom. If a system like I just described was written from the ground up, a gigabyte of RAM should be plenty - but go for two so you can use one as a disk cache for even more speed improvement. Again, a custom OS and streamlined applications could be easily done within a few gigabytes of hard drive. And there's no reason an 8G internal flash source wouldn't work with an option to slot in another 8 or so with the latest flash technologies for media storage and application space.
Dual-core CPU's wouldn't necessarily be needed if you're not loading up a monster desktop OS. Just take a look at what Nokia has managed with the N8XX line, which for all its faults is still a damn nice little piece of hardware. It runs Linux, so packaging is a clusterfuck, and at least the N770 takes a while to boot - then runs slowly - but those can be overcome with RAM upgrades.
I rant too much.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
Maybe I'm special, but I find I work _better_ from home, for many reason:
1. Comfort
2. No disruptions
3. My PC's a screamin' demon
4. No more of those "longest day ever" days. I can take off mid-day, walk over to a terrace for lunch and a pint, and go back to work refreshed and satisfied
5. ???
6. Profit!?
For me, it works great, but I'm a computer nut with no kids, and the wife stays out of my hair. I'm past the stage where games like World of Warcraft could devour my life, and even beyond my job I still do the same kind of work for myself, running a few web sites and servers. Home is as much a "work environment" for me as any other place with a terminal.
Meanwhile my coworkers are family men with bossy wives and 2.4 pre-teens running up the walls, they probably see the office as a sanctuary, an escape from their busy homes. Ironically, I live a few blocks away from the office, everyone else lives way out in the boonies. To be honest, if there weren't an unspoken awkwardness with my fellow coders, I'd forward my office number and work from home almost every day. I would definitely get more stuff done.
All this to say: travel time should not be the primary factor when considering telework.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
About a year ago I needed a lappie and was low on cash. I found an Acer 3680 "Best Buy special" for $400. This is a standard 15.4" screen-size laptop BUT they put a 14.1" in to save a bit of money. It's still 1280x800 and very readable. Other specs:
* About 6lbs.
* Celeron 1.6 single-core with a 533 memory bus.
* 512megs RAM, 80gig SATA, DVD-read, CD-R/RW.
* Intel 945 video.
* PCMCIA slot.
* Atheros WiFi.
This is about the same horsepower as the recent crop of "ultra-lights", with more disk space of course.
I dropped an extra gig in it for cheap and nuked Vista Home Basic immediately for Ubuntu. I'm typing this on it now, with Ubuntu Gutsy. I have full Compiz support although the limited graphics speed seems to limit the "cube" to a two-sided plane (two desktops) with full speed. I also have VirtualBox and Windows XP running perfectly.
I even run whole-disk encryption with TrueCrypt with no noticeable speed penalty.
It's been dropped twice and survived a water-glass spill that nuked the WiFi card but that was a $20 fix. It's been carried *daily*, used hard and runs like a champ still.
This low-budget critter is enough to make anybody re-think the need for anything more potent, if you're running Linux.
I mention all this to establish what performance baseline is really needed today.
I wouldn't trade this critter for anything physically smaller, but then again I'm a big guy and am not bothered by running a sizeable "messenger bag" style laptop case.
Finally, thumbs up to Acer for offering a cheap, tough and useful as hell little critter.
Thumbs down to Micro$loth for fostering a crapware OS on them...
Put the center of mass nearest the center of the laptop!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
In a word (or 2) I'd say the perfect balance is battery life. Though this completely ignores the "ultra portable" part, but if you go for battery life it also gets you a not overpowered CPU too. I find high power CPU to be a double whammy wrt battery life. A) the CPU consumes more power and B) the fan runs more often and hence consumes more power. So... if you go for battery life ALONE you'll also get a mid-range CPU with a reasonable fan activation cycle.
Yes, Vista will have a hard time on these devices. I'd say, Microsoft picked a wrong strategy for that system. As gigahertz race is over and mobility takes over, size, power and price are becoming more important than performance (except for desktops). For many people it's enough.
The most scalable system (Linux) will be mostly used on those computers.
I know Slashdot just recently went to AJAX for the comments, but check your processor usage sometime on a really heavy Web 2.0 app. I know killing the Flash ads helps, but web surfing on a PIII class CPU ain't what it used to be.
to RFC 1149.
I thought they came darned close with the EEE. I'd buy one in a heartbeat if it had an actual hard drive. My only complaint was the lack of storage.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
The SHDC slot (up to 16gb of extra storage) really makes up for the small SSD. I have nLited XP running on my eee SSD and have all my programs and documents on the SD card. The only problem is stupid programs that insist on being installed to root. Those programs get run on my tower, assuming I don't decide that their reluctance makes them unworthy of being used on any system.
That's the whole point right there. 6lb is a LOT more than 2lbs. 6lbs, you might just leave your messenger bag in the car sometimes because you just don't wanna sling it
2lbs, you'd barely notice it.
For me I see ultra-portable, low power consumption, low cost and almost disposable as being ideal candidates for a mobile dumb terminal.
Seriously, for a home user unless you're gaming or video editing how many computers do you need? For most the answer is one with enough grunt to run a virtual machine for each user. From there is just a question of connecting people to it.
My wife does photo editing with some pretty big images, while at the same time I'm a developer with a VM running MySQL, MS-SQL, IIS and Apache. We each connect to our dedicated VM using RDP on a laptop networked with wifi and if I'm going to sit in one place for more than 30 minutes I plug in a 22" external monitor, USB mouse/keyboard and the laptop just sits next to me. I must admit my wife grumbles a little about the refresh rates, but mostly its quicker than using a medium to high end laptop that would cost quite a bit more.
I don't know about other countries but the price of HSDPA in Australia is actually becoming affordable, with telcos like Three ahref=http://www.three.com.au/rel=url2html-4832http://www.three.com.au/> offering 2GB of data for $29/month. Plug that into a eeePC and SSH tunnel or VPN to your home server (Linux for me) and hey preso, you've now got the performance of your desktop with all the redundancy and backups that you should have at home.
While I'm on my high horse I should also mention the green benefits of extending the life of old laptops using this setup...
The problem here is that you are asking about 'budget laptops' without first determining the USER's needs. Why should all inexpensive laptops have the same goal? Do all inexpensive cars have the same target audience? OF COURSE NOT! I have two laptops for different uses; one is a relatively inexpensive Acer desktop replacement with DVDRW drive, large HD, and 2gb RAM. A very nice, if heavy machine with a lot of power. The second is an Asus eeepc 4gb that is small enough and light enough to take with me whenever I leave the house. In the four months that I've had it, I have wondered many times what I would do without it. It has served me well on a two week personal trip and enabled me to do the little bit of work that came up in the middle, keep in touch with my family and friends, all without being a drain on my luggage allowance or arm! I DON'T EXPECT IT to replace it's big brother; they serve different purposes. The question you should be asking is 'What do I need a laptop to do?'. And that assumes you have first asked yourself if you need a lappy or another type of computer. BTW, determining user requirements BEFORE system design is a major part of what I do for a living.
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
"As gigahertz race is over and mobility takes over, size, power and price are becoming more important than performance"
Don't forget the silence and no-maintenance aspect that going completely passively cooled and solid-state affords you. And even in a desktop system all the other issues apart from computing speed become important once you experience the difference.
Such other concerns are the whole raison d'etre of silentpcreview.com. There have been some clever cases designed for silence, but they lack the elegence of a small enclosed box that never needs to have filters cleaned or the worry that a fan will seize at an inopportune time.
With the release of the Intel Atom and the Via Isaiah I suspect that it will be only a matter of time before we get the desktop system with essentially no downside. Which is why I'm waiting for it, because at that point the upgrade cycle will likely be over for me. Maybe there will be a killer app coming along, but we are 4 cores into the parallelization path of more CPU horsepower and I haven't seen it yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIA_Isaiah
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
I bought the $400 Eee PC (Linux), upgraded the RAM to 1GB, and have a 4GB SDHC card, I have used it about three months I am well pleased and the reasons I am pleased may guide others in choosing if they want a small laptop. Here are my observations:
.mp3 player.
.ogg files on my stereo. The expansive screen (for an mp3/ogg player) is really nice. Of course, as it stands, it will play my collection off my wirelss LAN and file server but I am looking to reduce my power footprint and hate to keep the server running when a flash memory will do.
1. It is dependable - it boots quickly, runs the full duration of its battery life (2.5-3 Hrs), warns politely when battery is dying with time to recover, and charges up in a couple of hours, even from an inverter plugged in the lighter socket in my car. Quick charging is a real blessing. It draws 25 watts while running AND charging, less if just running!!! Amazing.
2. It is durable, small, and light- No drive means it is not fragile and I don't have to worry whether I will crash the drive. It is amazing how convenient it is to have on hand when needed. Going to a hotspot just means grabbing the little gadget and going in. Less than 1 Kg is hard to beat.
3. Screen is sharp and legible - Though I would like it somewhat bigger and with more resolution, the screen is amazingly sharp and pleasant to read from. Only drawback is that it shows fractional web pages but that is usually a minor problem. The size and form factor of the device make for a very nice "Belly Telly" for watching movies while reclining.
4. USB ports are very useful - I had to edit a resume while out of town, had no printer, went to Wally World and bought a $35 HP deskjet, plugged it in, and printed my resume. No muss, no fuss, no bother. It already had drivers for the printers so it just worked. NICE... 2.5" USB hard drives hold lots of movies for extended trips away from civiilization. USB DVD drive allows viewing DVDs.
5. Wireless has good sensitivity and is amazingly seamless. I go to a hotspot, turn it on, click a couple of times, and am online. No worries whether a windows trojan will be downloaded, and the wireless just works.
6. The screen makes a good bookreader for non DRM (the only kind of Ebooks I consider anyway) books. It is very legible, no fatigue from reading from it, and it has an OK bookreader provided.
7. Great way to download audiobooks from librivox.org or podiobooks.com and then listen to them or transfer them to an SD card for use in an
8. Audio system is credible and it plays most audio formats seamlessly. When SDHC cards grow in capacity, I have considered getting and dedicating one of these gadgets to playing my collection of
9. USB thumb drives are now available in 8+ GB capacity. I use one for temporary movie storage and put a movie or two on the thumb drive to watch and then delete. I just saw 16 GB USB drives so it looks like capacity will be little trouble with this device.
10. The keyboard is too small for long term heavy use but for editing a document and for navigating the Internet it is just fine. Of course, with USB one can plug in a bigger keyboard if needed, and even plug in a VGA display to have a full size machine.
11. Finally, Cost - $400 is a price point nobody else seems to take seriously. In the car market, people see a small car, built with precision and artistry, and decide to compete with a larger more expensive car. Ultimately you get to SUVs when it all plays out. The competitors for the Eee PC seem to be bigger, heavier, more expensive, and maybe marginally more functional but somehow people forgot the original idea.
"Budget" means different things to different people.
:)
I was ecstatic to find a Dell Vostro deal a couple weeks ago where you could get an Intel Core 2 Duo T7250 2.0Ghz CPU, 2GB RAM, 160GB 7200RPM disk, 15.4" glossy 1680x1050 display, NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT 256MB, 8x DVD dual-layer burner, Intel 802.11n wireless and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR for around $1000 (USD).
That's a pretty decent machine, for a thousand dollars. It's not an XPS, or an uber-gaming rig, and it's way more than what you need to just browse the web and check your email. But for what I like to do (run virtual machine instances, test out apps, play some recent PC games) it's perfect.
If all you need is web and email access with document and spreadsheet software, the Asus EEE PC and (rapidly arriving) competitors is great. It's small, light, and good enough.
If you want to run memory- or disk- or video-intensive apps, obviously the EEE PC doesn't work for that.
All of us here on Slashdot need to remember that not everyone uses their PC in the same way.
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK