Stephen Fry on the Asus Eee
The Asus EEE PC perched on my knee combines GNU software with a Linux kernel powered by an Intel Celeron Mobile Processor to produce a very extraordinary little laptop. It weighs less than a kilogram, starts up from cold in about 12 seconds and shuts down in five. It has no internal hard disk and no CD drive. It offers 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage and a seven-inch display; wireless, dial-out modem and ethernet adaptors are available for networking and internet connections, three USB ports, mini-jack sockets for headphones and microphone, a VGA out, an SD card slot and a built-in webcam. All for about £200 - less than the price of a show, dinner and taxi for two in London's West End.LinkWhen you press the EEE's power button, the lightning speed and quietness of boot-up tell you that you are in the hands of a solid state flash drive: no vulnerable moving parts and buzzing platters here. Within seconds a tabbed screen will appear on your display: the tabs are labelled Internet, Work, Learn, Play, Settings and Favourites. A click on each reveals a page containing bright, clear icons that relate to 40 separate applications and half a dozen or so selected web links. The applications include Skype, Firefox, Thunderbird (the Mozilla mail client) and OpenOffice.org, an Open Source suite of applications that allows you to create and edit Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents. One of the pre-installed web links is to Google Docs, which lets you do the same MS Office compatible work online. This combination of "server side" applications and Open Source software is, rightly, scaring the heck out of Microsoft which is in danger of relying, in a few years' time, on its excellent Xbox games console for income and kudos, its domination of personal computing a rapidly diminishing memory. Well, I'm allowed to dream.
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I ordered my EEEPC yesterday, I'm really curious what it can do for me.
The EeePC is a truly remarkable machine. They're highly portable, rugged and silent.
They're also very hackable :-)
I installed a bluetooth adaptor into mine so that I could get on the web via my 3G phone.
http://jamesholden.net/2008/01/31/asus-eeepc-internal-bluetooth/
Others have performed even more audacious upgrades, including GPS, lots more flash storage, a touchscreen, 802.11n networking etc.
Mr Fry is incorrect though, it doesn't have a modem. There's a modem socket, but it's covered by a rubber bung and the modem hardware is absent.
Yeah I have been eyeballing these cool little laptops also, maybe would be a good starter ones for my kids they seem like you could do more with them than the olpc.
James: nice photos and mod, have you seen this touchscreen mod: http://shannonpatrick17.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-to-asus-eee-pc-with-touch-screen.html
the Kohjinsha ones look pretty cool too but not on price compared to the eee, check out the tiny dvd drive: http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news_details.php?id=15314
Just to nit-pick: Fry's column was published twenty days ago. Sadly, I understand that he's broken an arm (presumably his own), and his Guardian column is on hiatus for a few months.
Old news, but given how I love my Eee PC, it doesn't bother me to see it praised! The real reason I went for this over a regular size laptop was size. Walking a little over a mile to the office from my car every day means each little thing I add to my bag makes a difference, and I appreciate saving the space and weight.
That, and the price is right. I'm over a month in, and I still love this thing!
I love the EEE PC, but I think it's highly unlikely that it will ever become a runaway hit.
How completely random... I leave the UK for a year, stop paying attention, and Stephen Fry - the same Stephen Fry who's an actor with a lovely speaking voice who described doing the Harry Potter audio books as "swimming in chocolate" - becomes an open source advocate extoiling the virtues of solid state storage?
How very random.
My partner has had one of these things for about a month and loves it. She has spent most of her time trying out various other Linux distros booting from a flash drive.
For my part, I don't think I'd ever get used to the tiny screen and keyboard. It's adorable but painful to use.
I've had an eeepc for a couple months now. It really is a college student's dream. For those of you who think the keyboard and monitor would be difficult to get used to - it is... but it's amazing how fast you adapt.
Its default linux distro is fairly impressive as far as linux goes, but in all honesty, I wiped it within a couple months and installed Windows Fundamentals. Here Fry is extolling all the amazing virtues of open source- but ironically this device runs beautifully under windows. It boots faster, its media performance is vastly improved (DirectX > SDL) - and its sleep/wake and power management is generally improved as well. I wouldn't go installing vista on this machine, but you may find that Windows FLP (or XP) really frees it from the feature-lock of its default distro.
Of course, you can't obtain Windows FLP legally unless you're part of an enterprise. So now I am running Google Talk (pidgin is way slow), StarOffice, and Opera as my default browser (way faster than the default firefox) for huge gains. This system is not great because it's open source- it's just good hardware.
I've had a EEE for about 6 weeks. Installed full desktop mode, Eclipse, Python, Stellarium, KStars, GIMP, Dia, VLC and InkScape. Integrated bluetooth, upgraded memory to 2GB and have a touchscreen being shipped to me shortly. The EEE has been indispensable to me for presentations and travel.
I hate laptops due to their weight and cost bu I love my EEE.
I've had two of these things on order from Expansys since early December, unfulfilled. If only I could get my hands on one to share the joy!
I've only had mine about a month, but I love it. It's awesome for the train commute in from Mission to downtown (about 70 minutes). In the morning I can get some paperwork done before getting to the office, and on the way back I can kick back (relatively, train seats don't recline) and watch a couple of episodes of something, read an e-book or do some additional paperwork if needed. My experience with the battery is that it will last for both rides, morning and evening, and still show about a 30% charge when done. Perfect for my needs. Right now I've only used the default Xandros install, but I have upgraded the RAM to 2GB (of which Xandros' kernel only sees one) so I am probably going to throw Ubuntu on it in the next couple of weeks.