Asus Eee PC First Impressions

Yesterday I picked up a new laptop for Jenny—an Asus Eee PC. The laptop has been hard to find in Hong Kong, but a new shipment came in yesterday, so they were on sale in Wan Chai for $2998 HKD. At the place I bought it, the salesperson said they had sold 8 that day alone.

Jenny wanted a laptop she could carry with her and use on her daily ferry rides. Her computer needs consist of email (gmail), word processing, IM and Skype, photos and iTunes. The Eee PC is perfect for everything other than the photos and iTunes (for that we’ll continue to share my macbook pro). It’s been hard for me to keep my hands off her laptop and not hack it, but I did take it for a test run. Here’s some of my thoughts:

The laptop is perfect as an extra mobile computer. As a primary computer, most people would be better off with a desktop. But if you’re debating between a nice laptop verus a desktop, getting the desktop plus the Eee PC might be a perfect solution. For students, it’d be a great laptop to carry around campus. For families, it’d be a nice extra computer to free up contention around a shared computer. And for developers, well, it’s a fun toy.

The keyboard is small. The screen is obviously tiny (but otherwise fine), but you don’t realize how small the keyboard is until you try to type on it. It takes some getting used to. And while the touchpad works fine, I found a usb mouse to help a lot.

The OS and installed apps takes up a lot of the space. On the 4GB model, you only have a bit over 1GB free. You’ll definitely want to get a SD card and maybe an external usb drive.

So far, everything has worked as advertised. Setting up the wireless was simple, as was printing. I hooked up a large usb hard drive and tested some movies with the media player (smplayer) and the video was fine. The sound is decent too. Skype calls were clear, though the webcam still doesn’t work with it.

The included software all works fine, though sometimes it feels a bit clunky. Some application windows weren’t quite sized right when they opened and that was a pain. There’s definitely a lot more that could be done with polishing the interface, but functionally, I don’t have any complaints.

So far, Jenny loves it. I don’t think I’ll get many more chances to play. I really hope that despite the price increase, the Eee PC turns out to be a success, because I’d love to see more cheap, linux and open source powered laptops on the market.