I had originally started this blog trying to avoid the senseless posts about your personal life that very few people care about, and yet here I am, blogging about my recent purchases. Nevertheless, I recently bought an EEE PC, one of the originators of the UMPC/netbook market to replace my Gateway laptop, which despite being relatively new, has not held up well at all. After finding out how much it would cost to repair it, I figure I’d just bite the bullet and go for the EEE.

So far, after a rough start on the software side of things, I’m pretty happy with the device. It is quite speedy; time from boot to usable is very fast, and once you’re able to get GNOME running on it (which in true Linux fashion, requires editing text files) it becomes a lot more handy than the built-in “simple” interface. The built-in software is pretty extensive, including teaching applications, and closed-source apps like Skype instead of Ekiga, with out of the box working video conferencing. From a quick test, the audio quality is quite high, and the webcam is decent for being a tiny 1.3 megapixel affair.

My only major issue is with the touchpad: there is a quite noticeable delay on movement, and getting it to register at all requires you to use your whole finger, rather than the tip. Apparently this is easily fixable on Windows, but I’m unable to find an equivalent fix for the built-in Xandros system.

Otherwise, the screen is an 8.9 inch LCD running at 1024×600. Although I haven’t done the calculations, it looks like a higher DPI than your average screen. The keyboard is tiny, and definitely takes adjusting to; I type with 3 or 4 fingers per hand but have managed to become pretty fast typing this way (in fact this post has been written on the EEE).

In the 901 series, they’ve elected to change the casing, from a nice matte plastic that’s easy to handle and carry, to a generic glossy surface that everyone seems to be doing these days. it attracts fingerprints, and personally, I think is rather ugly looking. Seems like such a pointless change, and it’s too bad they had to change it right before the model I purchased.

Overall, anyone else considering the EEE or other similar devices would do a great service to themselves by checking one out in stores before. In the case of the EEE specificially, unless you’re planning to use it as is, be prepared to spend a lot of time tweaking. Even installing XP requires some post-install tweaking in order to reduce wear and tear on the drive. I don’t expect to get much use out of this for the remainder of the summer, but carrying this around once I’m back to college in the fall should be quite nice.