asus?
TELL THE MAN! < |:)~
i’m in the market for a net book.
asus?
TELL THE MAN! < |:)~
Our Asus is a dandy machine. It's the 8.9". GET A 10" or you'll wisha you woulda. It's a keyboard thing. I just got back from shopping and while waiting for my wife to find clothing, I wandered off to check out the keyboards on the 10" netbooks. An Acer and a Dell. Both are FAR superior to the keyboard on mine.
I liked the look and feel of the Dell to my Asus and over the Acer as well. But the computer magazine I get favored the HP machines. I tend to agree.
If you can get your hands on one to try out, go with that. I'm cool with LInux or Windoze, either or, but you may prefer the familiarity of Windows. If you can try'em out before you buy, do so.
I’ve had my Dell Mini9 w/XP & SSD for 6 months - absolutely love it as my travel PC! Far smaller & lighter than my old Notebook and larger, more ergonomic than smartphones.
Same speech I give just about everyone...
Cheap: Asus 900 series laptop, buy it from eBay, you shouldn’t have to pay more than $150 for something with 4gb ssd and 512mb ram. As soon as you get it, use an external DVD drive (if you don’t have one, buy one, very handy, but keep it cheap - no need to spend more than $40) and install Eeebuntu Base edition. Use the applications -> add/remove and install firefox, Abiword, Totem player, pidgin, and skype if you use it. Updates and the like will take about 2 hours to install, and then you’ve got a solid portable netbook that’ll last you for a long time.
What it won’t do: This install isn’t great for youtube, but works fine for Hulu. It won’t play your games you got sitting around, but it will play flash based games. It won’t be super fast. It has a small keyboard.
Optional accessories for home would be a wireless keyboard/mouse - the Microsoft 1000 wireless desktop works wonderfully with it. An external monitor also works with it, but anything above 1024x768 does seem to stress it a bit more than desired.
Alternatives: The HP’s mininote keyboard is much bigger, and some favor it, but it is still mushy. If I’m doing any serious writing, I use an external keyboard, but for chatting, I can deal with this one. The 904 or 1000 series from Asus has the 1.6ghz Atom processor, and can give dramatically longer battery life - Not sure it’s worth the extra couple hundred - I’ve got spare batteries for mine from Hong Kong and simply swap if I’m long away from the plug.
Tips: use googledocs as your wordprocessor/spreadsheet/etc - your documents aren’t on your computer, impossible to lose. You /can/ upgrade the memory, very easily, just really not needed unless you really start exploring Linux and are doing multiple projects at once. You /can/ upgrade the SSD - I just use SDHC 8gb chips for extra storage - I’ve picked up 10 packs of them for less than a hundred dollars.
Don’ts: Just don’t do Windows XP - it’s not worth the time and trouble to maintain the install, even with a larger SSD and more memory. If you Hackintosh it, you’ll have to upgrade the memory to 2gb ($20-$40), the SSD to 16gb ($100), and replace the internal wifi (another $40 off of eBay). If you /do/ do this, you’ll have a system about the same speed/power as the old Macbooks - much peppier on the 1.6ghz atom. If you /must/ have Windows, use Windows 7 RC, a free download for now from Microsoft. Be aware - if you upgrade the ram and memory, Windows drivers /can/ corrupt video memory when you unplug it, and you may have unreliable bootups (just hold the power button until it turns off and retry)
There are literally hundreds of developers working on operating systems, support for the hardware, new ideas and packages for these netbooks. Asking a question on eeeuser.com’s forums can usually net a response from the developer of the package you’re using within hours, and sometimes, if it’s a bug, a fix emailed to you in less than a day. They are fun hobbyist machines, and if you explore Linux enough, you’ll find some fantastic tools out there.
Sure, my daughter loves her Windows desktop, but her netbook is always with her. She’s a heavy watcher of youtube, so I installed EeeFluxFlux on hers, as the non-Ubuntu variant is a lot faster for using flash video in browser.
Oh, and remember: You’re investing $150, maybe $200 with an optional wireless keyboard/mouse and sdhc card - it is disposable. And finally - DO NOT GET THE KEYBOARD WET. It’ll fry in a blink, and liquids will drip down onto the motherboard and fry the machine if it’s more than a few drips. (keyboard replacement is a couple tabs, and waiting for a replacement one off of eBay for $20.)