Spontaneous Monotony

You might remember my positive assessment of the Asus EeePC. Well thanks to eBuyer and CityLink my Eee has now arrived. The default OS looks great - my only mistake so far has been clicking ‘documents’ expecting my home folder to appear and instead getting OOo Writer. Learning a new interface is fun though (if you’re a geek like me) and it was my own dumb fault (given that the icon was a pen and paper :P).

The Eee is, so far, everything I’ve expected - it connected to the WPA wireless router upstairs (getting, I might add, a better signal than my Buffalo USB stick-equipped desktop which is on the same floor as the router. Writing this blog entry on it, in fact.

Apparently the Asus EeePC launches in the UK on the 13th of November (Tuesday). For those of you who are getting one - and I suspect there are a fair few, given that it is still my most popular post - here is a link to a UK site taking preorders. NB: As with all links, I’m not responsible for anything that happens to you/your computer/your bank details/your cat when you go to someone else’s site. Don’t feel cheesed off at the £200-ish price - we are not being charged double the $200 that was quoted in the original publicity material. The version that the UK is getting is the midrange model - with 4Gb of storage, a webcam, and a larger battery compared to the 2Gb version selling for $200 in the US.

Bear in mind that for that money you’re getting an ultraportable laptop (7″ screen) capable of running full-capability software for taking lecture notes, browsing the web, etc. on the go, and lasting for 3.5 hours of real world usage. The relatively small amount of storage (4Gb) isn’t really a big deal - you’ll have about half of that left (I remember reading 2.3Gb somewhere) after the Xandros-based operating system has taken its share. Since it has multiple USB ports, you could always add another 4Gb of storage via a flash drive - those sizes are going for less than £20 nowadays.

Now that we have the full details of the Eee PC allow me to repeat my balanced, objective and utterly academic evaluation of its capabilities: me want

EDIT: Me have, or at least I will on Monday when the Citylink guy shows up. Got one of what seems to be (from the fact that they’ve now removed the product listing) eBuyer’s only stock of them for the forseeable future.

Typical, the one day that I spend very little time browsing the web and this happens. Ultra-portable laptop for $200 (no word on UK retail price). It will be sold around the world (not just to kids with no food or electricity in Africa) and will come with a 2Gb flash memory-based hard drive (no word whether that’s pre- or post-Operating System) - there’ll be 4gb and 6gb ones as well apparently. The specs will not be stellar, but it looks perfect for students taking lectures notes, or typing a letter while on the train, or whatever. Besides, the hard drive size isn’t a big deal, it has USB ports - and a 4Gb USB flash drive now costs about £20. Me want!

EDIT: I was ecstatic about this little thing. Then I found out it even has built-in 802.11g wifi!

EDIT 2: Here the Asus press release and a slow-loading Flash demo site.

EDIT 3: Engadget claims that Asus have given August as the release date. If that’s a global date, it’s in time for the new academic year. Rock on Asus!

EDIT 4: The operating system is Xandros, not Mandriva as originally reported by some sources.