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Netbooks: Asus EEE, Acer Aspire, Dell Inspiron 9, MSI Wind etc

Well, spent the day getting the reduced Windows install to go down pat, and it works (largely) like a dream - and it's certainly faster than some full size lappies I know.

The keyboard though, being so small is a bit of a drawback for those that touch-type. It's just so small! And the decision to make the right hand shift key the same size as a normal one, and position it to the left of the up cursor key is a killer, I'm constantly shifting up a line instead of shifting for caps.

Small potatoes though really - it's a lovely little machine. I was out for dinner with a load of people tonight and passed it round the table (yeah, I'm such an interesting chap) and there were many admiring and excited coo's about it's size and how truly portable it is.

The tiny 4gb SSD (solid state drive, ie it's hard drive) will become an issue though - especially with my immediate XP install. - Despite stripping the XP install to 150mb, and the final install topping out at 450mb with a few basic apps added, the drive is coming up with 2.93gb used, with only 800mb free - and I haven't even installed Open Office yet.

There's some reading to be done there, as I'm certain it should only be a third of this.

[Edited to add: Disabled the Page File and the space suddenly jumped to nearly 3gig]

It also gets surprisingly hot - I feel like I'm typing on a mini-handwarmer. I wrongly assumed the absense of a HDD would have made a difference. The EEE still has a fan and it certainly needs it.

The screen is obviously small. Which in itself shouldn't be a problem - except that most browsers and websites are very inconsiderate. By this I mean toolbars in all browers: at the very least you have the app title line, the main menu bar, then the tab bar, then the standard action / address bar. All of which are fine normally, but in a screen this tiny, it's taking up an inch, which is very precious.

Visit youtube, and you'll be hard pressed to fit the video and the controls on the screen without having to scroll.

Sacrifices and niggles that can largely be explained and excused by the size. You know what you're getting into when you buy this little thing, so there shouldn't be much room for complaint. Especially at the price.

Personally, I love it, and will love it more once I've figured out how to reduce drive usage and practiced typing on it's diminuitive keyboard.
 
Go to display properies and use Classic interface, then go to customise and shrink the interface elements, use smaller system fonts etc.
 
dogmatique said:
Well, spent the day getting the reduced Windows install to go down pat, and it works (largely) like a dream - and it's certainly faster than some full size lappies I know.

The keyboard though, being so small is a bit of a drawback for those that touch-type. It's just so small! And the decision to make the right hand shift key the same size as a normal one, and position it to the left of the up cursor key is a killer, I'm constantly shifting up a line instead of shifting for caps.

Small potatoes though really - it's a lovely little machine. I was out for dinner with a load of people tonight and passed it round the table (yeah, I'm such an interesting chap) and there were many admiring and excited coo's about it's size and how truly portable it is.

The tiny 4gb SSD (solid state drive, ie it's hard drive) will become an issue though - especially with my immediate XP install. - Despite stripping the XP install to 150mb, and the final install topping out at 450mb with a few basic apps added, the drive is coming up with 2.93gb used, with only 800mb free - and I haven't even installed Open Office yet.

There's some reading to be done there, as I'm certain it should only be a third of this.

[Edited to add: Disabled the Page File and the space suddenly jumped to nearly 3gig]

It also gets surprisingly hot - I feel like I'm typing on a mini-handwarmer. I wrongly assumed the absense of a HDD would have made a difference. The EEE still has a fan and it certainly needs it.

The screen is obviously small. Which in itself shouldn't be a problem - except that most browsers and websites are very inconsiderate. By this I mean toolbars in all browers: at the very least you have the app title line, the main menu bar, then the tab bar, then the standard action / address bar. All of which are fine normally, but in a screen this tiny, it's taking up an inch, which is very precious.

Visit youtube, and you'll be hard pressed to fit the video and the controls on the screen without having to scroll.

Sacrifices and niggles that can largely be explained and excused by the size. You know what you're getting into when you buy this little thing, so there shouldn't be much room for complaint. Especially at the price.

Personally, I love it, and will love it more once I've figured out how to reduce drive usage and practiced typing on it's diminuitive keyboard.

F11 for full screen browsing?
Perhaps find a skin for your browser with smaller buttons, or try out Opera?
 
God, I want one of these, for no particular reason that I can explain, particularly given that I already have three laptops. I'm having to restrain myself from going down to TCR today and buying one.
 
Xanadu said:
F11 for full screen browsing?
Perhaps find a skin for your browser with smaller buttons, or try out Opera?
Yeah, you can squeeze the opera interface right down. You can have the tabs in a column up the side, which saves you vertical space.
 
FridgeMagnet said:
God, I want one of these, for no particular reason that I can explain, particularly given that I already have three laptops. I'm having to restrain myself from going down to TCR today and buying one.

I doubt there'll be stock left on TCR anyway!
 
Xanadu said:
F11 for full screen browsing?
Perhaps find a skin for your browser with smaller buttons, or try out Opera?

That is with Opera. Just would be nice not to have to use F11. Still very usable though.
 
FridgeMagnet said:
God, I want one of these, for no particular reason that I can explain, particularly given that I already have three laptops. I'm having to restrain myself from going down to TCR today and buying one.

I know what you mean, they're just so cool.
 
I'm really pleased they are selling well. Hopefully that means that the form factor will stick around and we will get a range of models.
 
It's going to be huge - supply has been a real problem - they just can't manufacture them quickly enough. We're going to see a whole swathe of these devices this year, and I reckon hardly any of them will come with Windows installed, which is nice.
 
dogmatique said:
It's going to be huge - supply has been a real problem - they just can't manufacture them quickly enough. We're going to see a whole swathe of these devices this year, and I reckon hardly any of them will come with Windows installed, which is nice.

So what's the battery life like...?
 
dogmatique said:
It's going to be huge - supply has been a real problem - they just can't manufacture them quickly enough. We're going to see a whole swathe of these devices this year, and I reckon hardly any of them will come with Windows installed, which is nice.

Yep and hopefully this will have a good knock on effect on the price of full laptops too...
 
9" Coming soon with xp.

aseeepc.jpg


http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/07/live-from-the-intel-sprint-asus-xohm-wimax-press-event/
 
Has anyone tried getting mobile internet on one running linux, either through their phone or a seperate usb modem? If so whats driver support like?

Would be nice if for the mark 2 they just put a slot to put a sim card in.
 
FridgeMagnet said:
I read that it supports the Huaewei (sp) 3G modem that I've got, certainly.
I can confirm that it definitely does, and it's easier to set it up than on OS X. All the settings are built into the network connections manager.
 
I don't know if it was because someone had been messing with the settings, but I had a play on an Eee in PC World today and was more than a bit underwhelmed.

It seemed really slow with a bit of a clunky interface.
 
Global_Stoner said:
Would be nice if for the mark 2 they just put a slot to put a sim card in.

Perhaps also a smaller screen, smaller form factor that fits in your pocket and just a few basic keys to enable you to dial numbers and send text messages?
 
Lenovo IdeaPad U110 that should come out in a few months could convince me over the eeepc because of its 11inch screen and bigger size keyboard.
 
editor said:
I don't know if it was because someone had been messing with the settings, but I had a play on an Eee in PC World today and was more than a bit underwhelmed.

It seemed really slow with a bit of a clunky interface.
Really? Admittedly I've chopped out the "basic mode" interface (very easy to do) and twiddled with a few settings, but for most of the stuff I want to do, it's damn fast, and mine is the most basic 2 gig model. Firefox runs quite nippily once it's loaded, which doesn't take that long. OpenOffice launches faster than on some full-size laptops that I've seen.

It's certainly not Palm-speed for launching things and turning on, but it's fast enough that you can get it out on the tube. I timed it from pressing the power on button to having a full wifi connection and having Firefox load your home page and it's about a minute. In fact, I made a video:

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=4582613650534875060
 
FridgeMagnet said:
It's certainly not Palm-speed for launching things and turning on, but it's fast enough that you can get it out on the tube. I timed it from pressing the power on button to having a full wifi connection and having Firefox load your home page and it's about a minute. In fact, I made a video:

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=4582613650534875060
Gotta love your spoddiness!

I tried opening a few apps and it seemed much slower than I anticipated - maybe I was expecting too much.

Still makes me think that the instant-on Foleo could have been a contender, you know - even a minute can seem like a long time if you want to quickly check something or make a note (especially if you're used to a fast smartphone).

But there's no denying the value of the Eee.
 
Does it have decent suspend and wake? A minute from cold is not too shabby, but what's it like if you're just closing and opening the lid?
 
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