Asus EeePC review

Not a review as such, more of a report about day to day use, really.. I’ve had my EeePC since Christmas day, so not so much of a well worn user test as a first impressions kind of thing.

And first impressions are very very good indeed! OK, so the screen is a bit small, but it is bright and clear and very usable. The keyboard is the toughest thing to use, IMO as the keys are soooo small, and one or two seem a little out of place – the right hand shift key, backspace and one or two others. However, these are small issues, and really not worth dwelling on.

I have a 2Gb SD card pretty much permanently in the slot so as to have that little bit more storage, but with the price of USB sticks falling so fast it won’t be long until I slot in a 16Gb one internally, I think. Thiswil, of course, require some internal surgery, but others have already done similar by mounting a USB port in some space inside the machine. This *will* invalidate the warranty, but could be a useful addition and make the EeePC even more usable for day-to-day stuff.

Just tonight I installed ‘Fire FTP’ as an add on to Firefox and it is lovely – I can now get in to the servers I need to get in to without having a new app taking up space.

Battery life when asleep isn’t tremendous, so don’t leave it a day or two and then think it will work without power… it won’t, but all in all the power is pretty good. Remember to charge it up!

You absolutely really *must* enable the advanced mode to get a standard desktop type experience. For those not sure, you need to delve a little into the terminal, use ‘apt-get’ to download two things and hey ho, you’re away. The advanced layout is very familiar to anyone who has used a windows machine but is somehow… nicer. The EeePC will revert to standard (easy) mode if you re-start, so I need to find a way to prevent that happening.

I know that there are plenty of mods around, and even though he has had it but a few days, my colleague Nick has added a touch screen which looks and behaves perfectly. I may have to do that to this one… although not yet. I can’t help thinking a touch screen would be easier to use, mind you.

This entire entry has been typed on the EeePC and there may be some errors in what I am typing. Sorry… I am sitting in a small hotel room in Bayswater, London, getting ready for the BETT show tomorrow. It’s late, but not late enough to prevent me turning the Asus on one more time! There you go… I’m hooked on this lovely little device… 🙂