ASUS eee laptop

Glenn Reynolds is blogging about the ASUS eee laptop.image asus laptop eee instapundit

With a bunch of one and two day business trips coming up, I decided to pick an ASUS last week. Touch typists doubtless would be driven crazy by the relatively cramped keyboard. To be sure, I wouldn’t want to try writing a law review article, let alone a book, on it. As an old hunt and peck guy, however, it works just fine for me to deal with things like email and, of course, blogging.

I love the solidity of the machine. Since there’s no disk drive or whatever, the machine feels a lot less fragile than my Vaio.

The form factor is great. It’s hardly bigger than the trade paperback I brought on the trip. (A copy of Terry Pratchett’s Moving Pictures I picked up in New Zealand last fall. Typically brilliant satire. Highly recommended.

image asus laptop eee

At 2 pounds, it’s easy to tote.

At about $350, it’s incredibly cheap compared to, say, my old Vaio laptop.

I decided not to install Windows. The Linux software suite is very capable and loads a lot faster than Windows. The Open Office word processor handled some short edits of the speech I’m giving tomorrow.

The whole thing is incredibly user friendly. Open the box. Power it up. Everything’s loaded and ready to rock and roll.

This is an ideal machine for road warriors who don’t need a computer for much more than email, laptop, and light productivity apps, but for whom typing anything more than a text message on their phone is a hassle. Indeed, since it was more than able to handle a post like this one with images and ads, it’s got a surprising amount of punch.

Posted on Monday, March 03 2008 | Permalink

Professor, you state that “The Linux software suite is very capable and loads a lot faster than Windows.”

Are we talking boot times here? Since the Asus boots from solid-state memory (i.e. something faster than disk-based memory) I would not consider this a valid comparison.

For further comparison {grin} I’ll note that the original Compaq (trans)Portable included a 9” CRT screen, while the classic Osborne featured a 5” CRT screen..

The Compaq Portable I purchased for c. $2800 included Compaq MS-DOS 2.11 (first version which featured 360K per floppy as opposed to 320K per floppy), a printer port, and a parallel port. Applications extra. I did manage to eventually find a lovely word processor called Wordvision, which in no way measures up to the OpenOffice package.

The Asus sounds like an excellent machine; the modern equivalent of the old Epson HX-20.

Posted by Casey Tompkins  on  03/04  at  03:18 AM

Does it come equipped with Bluetooth?

Posted by Paul  on  03/04  at  06:04 AM

Some people didn’t consider it that good, but I loved Moving Pictures.  It’s been probably 15 years since I read it, and I’m still amused by banged grains and running out of pink.

The Asus sounds cool, too.  It’s exactly the kind of thing I was wishing for a couple years ago, and at the time it wouldn’t have been hard to afford.

Posted by Jay Solo  on  03/04  at  10:21 AM

It’s interesting to note that Amazon gives the “best price” at $299.99, which is not supported when you click on the link (they’re happy to sell it to you for $349).

Of course, it may be because I looked at it, and their robots remember.

Posted by Bill Peschel  on  03/04  at  01:14 PM

That’s because the “best price” is for USED.

Posted by  on  03/04  at  05:48 PM

Paul,
It does not come with bluetooth.

Also, at 9” screen version is just around the corner. http://www.neoseeker.com/news/story/7714/

Posted by Daniel  on  03/05  at  10:03 AM
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