The keyboards on these things are very fiddly. OK for writing emails or the odd edit to a document, but not pleasant for anything more substantial I imagine.
I still wish Palm had released the Foleo. Just as light as the eee PC, but with a reasonably sized keyboard and screen, and decent battery life. Still, there are a number of reasons why it wouldn’t have sold very well, and apparently they may still release something similar in the future.
The unexpected success of the eee has not escaped the notice of the #1 PC maker.
HP “… is also planning to launch several UMPC (ultra-mobile PC) products in the first half of next year.”
[quote=“maunaloa”]The unexpected success of the eee has not escaped the notice of the #1 PC maker.
HP “… is also planning to launch several UMPC (ultra-mobile PC) products in the first half of next year.”
digitimes.com/news/a20071126PB205.html[/quote]
woo hoo, bring it on. We just need Steve Jobs to get in on the act and it’s going to be a pretty interesting 2008.
from iPhone to megaPhone.
We need a small light notebook like this but with HSDPA built in. After I got a HSDPA dongle, I hate WIFI. No matter where I go, I have reception of HSDPA, even on moving trains, etc. I just don’t like to have to plug in a dongle. I prefer it built-in. Now I am waiting for Panasonic R7 with HSDPA built-in. My Panasonic Y4 is a tank. Toughbook is an understatement. Oh yes, and give me an SSD, even a small one, but not 8GB like this eee PC. No low-end cheap notebooks like the Asus. I want high-end portability.
An HTC Shift combined with an OQO Model 2… only now you’re carrying two devices. Too bad the OQO doesn’t have HSPDA.
Just to reitterate the edit in one of my previous posts, our eee PCs are now going for $11,600.
Keep in mind that special considerations are always given to repeat customers, so if you’re still looking, let me know!
Also wanted to share that we finally have a solid wholesale line on regular and rackmount servers produced by most major names like Asus, HP and Gigabyte as well as SuperMicro based systems that we build and maintain ourselves.
We’ll be changing over to our newly formatted site by the New Year and invite you to come by and take a look at what we’ve got to offer. You’ll find everything from computers, and periferrals to PDAs and mobile phones.
Till then our current site will have to do for general info.
The eee is a cool little gadget, and I was intrigued after learning about it on this thread, but I finally got the chance to play around with one and I would never buy one. The keyboard’s just too small. If nothing else were available and one had to send/receive email or work on a very short document, it would suffice, but I found it extremely tiny and cramped and kept missing keys because it’s so small. You can’t just type away as you would with an ordinary laptop/keyboard, but must make a special, conscious effort to find and hit the right keys. Perhaps with time one might grow accustomed to it, but I doubt it.
On the other hand, I saw some very small Sony Vaios nearby in the store that looked like a great compromise – much smaller than my regular laptop but with a regular keyboard, unlike the pint-sized eee.
Try it before you buy it.
The VAIO SZ series is about USD2000 (some models more, some models less), and the eee is US400, or with OE WinXP, est’d at USD 440. As a serious email device, e.g., review and edit Office attachments and reply when out for the day, present a PowerPoint, etc., the eee gets the job done for 75% less investment… into a second computer. (In my case, third computer, since I have a VAIO SZ, but the SZ is significantly bigger and heavier than the eee, and a “day out” is often on a bicycle.)
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]The eee is a cool little gadget, and I was intrigued after learning about it on this thread, but I finally got the chance to play around with one and I would never buy one. The keyboard’s just too small. If nothing else were available and one had to send/receive email or work on a very short document, it would suffice, but I found it extremely tiny and cramped and kept missing keys because it’s so small. You can’t just type away as you would with an ordinary laptop/keyboard, but must make a special, conscious effort to find and hit the right keys. Perhaps with time one might grow accustomed to it, but I doubt it.[/quote]The QWERTY keyboard on my Treo PDA phone is obviously much smaller than that on the eee. But it’s not actually much slower to use. I’ve got quite fast at two-thumb typing. The thing with the eee is that it looks as if it should be a touch-typing keyboard, but it’s not really. It’s just too cramped. So it would end up being a hunt-and-peck job for me, so not really faster than the Treo.
Has any owner played around with installing any apps other than the default ones?
Here are a few ones I suggest to those of you who are new to linux.
Swiftfox. Optimized Firefox builds for the cpu. Download the celeron-m package. http://getswiftfox.com/deb.htm You may see better performance.
Stardict. http://stardict.sourceforge.net/ A nice dictionary client. It has a mouse-over instant translation function similar to Dr. Eye. You can download MANY different dictionaries from the website including English dictionaries like Oxford or Longman, Ch->Eng Eng->Ch dictionaries like CE-dict and others, thesaurus, and even the CIA world fact book! Keep in mind some of these files can be rather large. Stardict is available from the Xandros repos. However you may have to install the dictionaries manually.
Dimsum http://www.mandarintools.com/dimsum.html This is a Chinese language learning app written in Java. I am not sure if there is a deb file, but you can simply download the jar file and run it, assuming you have java installed.
For lighter-weight office apps you might want to try Koffice, for a full office suite, or Abiword for a very functional stand-alone word processor, or Gnumeric for a spreadsheet.
Amarok. Hands down the best music manager out there.
Printing PDF’s from websites with Firefox. Use a package called CUPS-PDF. You will have to edit a configuration file in order to print to a desired folder. Here is a good howto http://eeepcworld.wordpress.com/
Dimsum is useful. I have it. But it’s also annoying. Crashes randomly from time to time.
it’s got some mistakes in it too. I used the converter once, and it cost me a LOT of time to fix the tone errors.
I haven’t read the whole thread so apologies if this has been mentioned. The language can be changed from Chinese to English and vice versa as follows
Press Ctrl-Alt-T to bring up the command box
type “/opt/xandros/bin/locale_dialog”
select English, the first option and press ok/yes until it’s done
The keyboard would be small obviously, I don’t how it can’t be without being dimensionally transindental. A bigger keyboard would make the whole device bigger and heavier and defeat part of the point of it.
Some models don’t come with a webcam (the “surf” models maybe) which doesn’t work in Skype yet because there’s no drivers yet.
Yep, Asus is already shipping the 8GB model in Black in Taiwan, though orders are not available till January.
I tried to buy one at IT Month, but all sold out! It was quite a crowd… See my blog for pictures in about one hour!… It was fun, but TOO busy… I’ll go mid-week next time…
Kenneth
Hey guys, the new 8GB eee PCs are on the market!
Unfortunately, the only 3 wholesalers who carry Asus(officially), were sold out before they even had any!
I’ve got them on order for the last week of December and will be selling them at $14,500 in all available languages.
This includes delivery and free pick-up and drop-off should there be need for warranty work or replacement for the duration of the warranty.
Special packages available for customers who place orders by the end of this week.
Can we expect the 16GB model in another 2 months? 
Er…Not likely…
I think we’re looking for late spring to mid summer for that.
Just a guess though…
Er…Not likely…
I think we’re looking for late spring to mid summer for that.
Just a guess though…[/quote]
But seriously, if you’re using the eeepc as intended, 8gb should be enough. Keep it lean and keep it keen (am I talking about women now?..I dunno.)
I hope that Japan comes up with something like this. I can’t believe how small this thing is and ASUS could still only make it 2 pounds. This thing should be 1.5 or even just 1 pound, especially with the SSD and smaller battery. Panasonic, Toshiba and Sony all make 12 inch Notebook PCs with full size battery, HDD and higher spec, that weigh in at the same or less 2 pounds. Take a look at these dynamism.com/Notebooks/Subno … roup.shtml
Of course the ASUS price is much cheaper, but then ASUS only has Linux and CF card for storage, and kind of low tech at 2 pounds for a PC that small. Anyway, wish that device had built-in HSDPA and less weight, then it would be a keeper.
FNAC has samples to play with running some simple games and other applications. They might even have stock because I saw them setting up one for a customer.