Just ordered an Eee from Costco for my college-bound niece. I think it'll be all she needs for what they throw at her in pre-med for awhile. Anyone else have Eee experience to share? http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11247282&whse=BC&Ne=4000000&eCat=BC|84|56670|62881&N=4018582&Mo=6&pos=6&No=4&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&cat=62881&Ns=P_Price|1||P_SignDesc1〈=en-US&Sp=C&ec=BC-EC10590-Cat56670&topnav= http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=24&l2=0&l3=0&l4=0&model=1907&modelmenu=1
Either you didn't put much thought into that decision, or you're hopelessly out of touch with what is required of students in college these days.
Good points: The default OS is Linux Bad points: Just about everything else. (four gig hard drive? That's what a low-end iPod holds!)
So I take the responses to mean the geniuses here haven't even seen one, yet know much more about it than any of the expert reviewers: http://video.google.com/videoplay?d...=52&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=8 http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/asus-eee-pc-4g/4505-3121_7-32466960.html http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2209847,00.asp http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebooks/review/2007/10/30/Asus-Eee-PC-4G-701/p4 http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4062 Everything needed for a college freshman except for a bottle opener. They're sold out everywhere locally and must be ordered.
And a Firewire port. And an optical drive. And decent speakers. And a decent monitor. And a decent keyboard. And, as I mentioned earlier, a decent hard drive. I mean, this is a cute toy I could see giving to my three-year-old niece, but anyone at high-school age or above needs a real computer.
I see your point. I was thinking that since she accidentally destroyed her high school $$$ laptop that something like this using web based apps and built in wi-fi would do for the first year.
It looks interesting, amped, and it's certainly not very expensive, but something that would last for her entire College career might be a better investment.
For use at school I think it would work fine but I would not want to have to do projects on that little thing. Since I'm currently in school I can give you realistic feedback. lol It's size would make it great for note taking during class and for lugging around campus. Depending on the sound of the keystrokes you may not be allowed to use it during class as it can be very distracting. The size HD, RAM and USB options are fine IMO. This is not a computer for doing GIS or modeling though. Most people in their first 2yrs or more will be using the computer for web browsing, Word and Excel and maybe Powerpoint. I think for an extra $200 or so you can find very good laptops that would better serve her but they come at the expense of size. Keep in mind that nearly every campus has computer labs where she can do work at school and that there is not a huge need for a laptop at school. I would be more concerned with getting her a laptop that is larger and capable of more that she can use mostly at home yet is still portable when needed.
Thanks for the suggestions. I ordered her a Dell Inspiron today instead. With the coupon code from DealCatcher, I got it for only $200 over the Eee price and this time got her the Accident Insurance rider: http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/inspnnb_1420?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&~tab=bundlestab In her favorite color, of course! I'm going to use the Eee as a mobile nav for my other Toyota, an FJ Cruiser. Asus claims Eee is XP compatible, so I'll load it along with MS Streets & Trips with GPS antenna ($89 or so) for use as an expedition setup. If it works, I'll have a 7" screen portable GPS on the cheap.
Much better choice. The only downside is you'll have to get Word (or some Word-compatible word processor).
I almost bought an Eee as a second computer. Its portability can't be beat. If all you need is to write documents, check email and browse the web while mobile you don't need anything else. You can always finish your work or run other applications at your desk. For the naysayers, any other laptop in the market would be more expensive and less portable. The only reason I didn't buy is the rumor of the return of Apple to Ultraportables next month. I will be more expensive than $400 but it will run OS X, Windows and Linux. BTW, the upcoming Apple ultraportable will also be flash based so I expect the HD capacity to be 16 or 32 GB. Again, it is meant as an extension of your desktop not a desktop replacement. Although, now that I think about it they equip the ultraportables with a decent graphics card it could drive a monitor and replace your desktop. Cheers.
Looks like a nice little computer for travel. Linux is a big plus. If the Nokia N800 didn't exist I'd probably get one. The Eee would be much easier to type on, but at roughly double the weight I'm still happier with my N800, since all I need is to be able to check my email, write short replies, write and send short faxes to my mom (who likes fax but has real trouble with email), do some lightweight web browsing such as weather reports, and sort through the day's photographs. OpenOffice can read Word documents and save in Word format. It has versions for PC and for Linux. (NeoOffice is a version of OpenOffice for the Mac.) And it's free and open source.
EeePC was not designed to replace laptop nor desktop PC. It was designed to be a "laptop extension". An idea scenario is to have desktop at the dorm and EeePC in the bag. The combination of both may still cost less than a high-end laptop, while you still get the best benefits of both. Make sense?
How would it go attached to an external hard drive and monitor when at home? I doubt it would be any good for 3D design but for writing an essay or doing some work during lunch it looks like a great idea. What a top thing for people traveling light to write emails and browse the internet for the next tourist location at hot spots. I use a HP hw6515 PDA which can be used with a folding keyboard attached. It has bluetooth, GPS, 1.3mp camera and GSM phone built in. I have a wifi card to allow wireless browsing. It comes loaded with word, excel, handwriting recognition, IE and outlook for PDAs and can easily transfer data to my desktop. I have 2.5gb of memory in it but it can handle 2 miniSD cards up to 4gb each. The current model, the hw6965 has wifi built in, higher resolution and faster processor. The whole deal fits in your top pocket. This isn't an answer as much as an idea of what I think would be handy for working portably.
At $400, the Eee is only at the current common price point for basic or moderately equipped laptop PCs. These days, you can get a moderately equipped laptop PC frequently on sale for only $400 (and for only $300 on the most recent Black Friday). E.g., Best Buy now has a Compaq laptop PC on sale for $400, with the following features: * 15.4" Screen * Pentium Dual Core Processor * 1024MB Memory * 120GB Hard Drive * Read/Write Dual Layer DVD/CD Optical Drive * Windows Vista Home Premium When the Eee was rumored to be priced at $200, it promised to be a combination of lowest cost and ultra portability. However, at its release price of $400, it no longer beats commonly available low end laptop PCs on price. Nonetheless, it still offers ultra portability at a good price. I would love to have it or something similar to it, especially for when I'm traveling.
I considered the Eee for awhile. I wanted something light and extremely portable. There's always seems to be a need to have access to a computer wherever I happen to be. I found the Eee to be a bit too light on the processing power and storage space for what I wanted. If you need a basic machine to surf the net and email, and maybe something for the kids to mess with, the Eee is a nice package. Had I not spotted the Fujitsu Lifebook UMPC, I probably would've bought the Eee.
