Amos, It really depends in what context are you thinking about the EEE and it's competitors..
It's not going to replace my Thinkpad for example. It won't replace my desktop machines nor my servers at home. It's not going to be my main work machine. It's just going to be my "travel" machine. Where I can stick an SD card with the latest favorite XViD episodes and I can play them smoothly, where I can ssh to see whats wrong with one of the servers at work, where I can read mail and I can actually surf without limitations (limitations like no flash or any XPI plugins). BTW, there are some tricks you can play with the EEE so you won't have to scroll left-right reading a web page. I have talked to people who did buy it in US. They're using it as a 2nd laptop. It doesn't pretend to replace your main laptop, but it's a heck of a machine for stuff like I mentioned above, specially on travels or if you're giving a presentation. It's damn 1 Kilo! have you seen it's power supply? it's bigger a bit from my Nokia E61 power supply, but it's almost half the size and weight of my Thinkpad power supply and don't forget, I have to carry it, so I prefer to carry 1Kg then carry 5+ Kilos. I have checked the other machines with Hard drive instead of SSD (those are the VIA based mini laptops) and I don't recommend buying these machines. They are WAY slower, their touchpad is suitable for 10 months old baby but not an adult, their fan is constantly making noise, their build quality really sucks, their VOIP "phone" barely works, they cost like the EEE 8GB machine. They really suck. Take a look at http://forum.eeeuser.com/ - see how many hacks (both in hardware and software) the EEE got. It's simply amazing how people got it to overclock with some kernel module, stretch the screen with some X tricks, control the fan, added bluetooth, added storage and tons of stuff for the EEE. Thats because the PCB is very simple, the chipset is well known (Intel) and you can install any favorite Linux distribution and use it. For 300-400$ I think it's worth it. As for the mouse, with the 8G EEE, Asus supplies the purchases with a nice case and a USB mouse :) Thanks, Hetz On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 5:58 AM, Amos Shapira <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 8:13 PM, Hetz Ben Hamo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > If you want to read my review about EEE you can read it here [3]. I > > personally think that every sysadmin who respect himself should get > > one of these mini-laptops. The damn thing is 920 GRAMS including > > I saw three of these in a meeting last night and although they are very > attractive in most things (especially the ability to run Linux on them), the > owners kept mentioning the problem of the narrow screen - that it makes > viewing text and web pages a bit awkward because you have to keep scrolling > side-wise. Also when I played with one for a while its touch pad was a bit > jerky. > > Also you can't flatten the screen open (it opens up to about 135 or so > degrees) and at maximum opening they have tendency to tip over (the screen > is a bit heavier than the keyboard). > > The other machine mentioned on this thread (forgot its name) which comes > also with a small hard drive, might be a little more attractive for some > users. > > These were the 7" screens with Xendros on them (at least one had Ubuntu > installed on it, but I just looked at it, didn't play with it), maybe the > promised 10" will be better in that regard. > > So they are exciting, and coming from a mainstream vendor will hopefully > cause a big splash about the usability of Linux on the desktop, but... > "buyer beware". > > --Amos > > -- Skepticism is the lazy person's default position. my blog (hebrew): http://benhamo.org ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
