Ok, so I’ve used this eeepc thing for a day or so.
First impressions:
super-portable. 2 pounds with the battery, and very small.
Speed is just fine, even with a bunch of apps running at the same time.
Wifi is painless, though by default it doesn’t reconnect to previous networks, you have to tell it explicitly to connect. This behaviour can be changed, though, so it automagically connects after waking up or rebooting, etc.
easy mode is much more fun than the ‘advanced’ KDE mode. Though I haven’t figured out how to add icons to the easy mode yet. Adding stuff to the advanced mode is simple, just do the regular apt-get or dpkg stuff.
the camera is ok, but not great. The speakers are ok, but not great. The microphone is a bit muffled, especially using Skype.
the screen is small, but not unusable. I was able to read stuff no problems… I’ve trying to use it exclusively for the last day or so, and it was just fine.
the keyboard may be a problem to some, but I didn’t have much of a problem adjusting. I guess I’m not a typical user, since I use so many different keyboards, maybe I’ve learned to adapt. It is smaller than a standard keyboard.
the card reader works just as expected.
the built-in apps are fine for most people. OpenOffice rocks, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. The media stuff is just fine too, but I’m a big podcast fan and was disappointed there was no (obvious) podcast functionality in the music app.
tried it with my kid, figuring he would like small laptop. It’s just the right size for him, but I think it’s a bit fragile – he popped a couple of keys out right away (they just snapped right back, but if I wasn’t watching he would probably have swallowed them!). So not a laptop to leave around kids. To be fair, he’s done the same thing to my 12" Dell too.
Going to try it with some high school students this week, hopefully, and will report back!
Are these things ever CUTE… got a black one no camera, the camera ones were out of stock. Posting from it now, while having a smoke outside.
The damn thing even sees my mountaintop signals!
Yuk who wants a cheap Dell?
And I’m nearly stone deaf, so iPods are wasted on me…
I want s fucking TOY for Xmas! Wahhh! I know there’s gonna be nuthin but sweaters and slippers under the tree LOL!!!
Ordered some cool gizmos for the store today: USB FRIDGE… hold one can. USB nerf cannons too…
a USB fridge: how geeky is that?
The iPhone/iPod isn’t for music (though it can be), it’s for surfing HTMF from Tim Horton’s, or snapping photos and posting them to flickr automagically, etc. Just a computer in your pocket.
Woah, how much for the USB fridge? Where did you get it?
I have a USB coffee warmer, USB rechargeable flashlight, USB phone charger (that can be charged by the flashlight, which also has a hand-crank, in case you don’t have a USB port nearby).
I want a christmas present too, I was thinking a nice little mouse or something like that. Maybe a Logitech VX Nano Mouse or something. I wonder if somebody who reads HTMF will buy it for me for Christmas. Hint hint hint.
Which is great for me to use at work… I can use it under the hood or inside a car to have the shop “manual” (we don’t actually use dead-tree manuals anymore) at my side all the time. Currently, we only have 1 desktop PC in the shop, so it can be kind of a hassle to keep walking across the shop to look something up.
Ah, ok, you could put the PDFs on a USB key or something like that… the eee only has 4 gigs of space (flash RAM), so it’s kind of limited that way. But it works well with USB drives, or by connecting to the web.
Yeah, I can totally get the manuals and stuff remotely. They don’t have to be local, you browse through an HTML interface, and then you request a particular segment (like 5-10 pages) of a manual that is served to you as a PDF. So it’s not like you have to download a several hundred megabyte manual to see a single wiring diagram.
Daddy is in for a surprise 
