Monthly Archives: March 2008

Specifications

It comes with a Intel 650 MHz processor, with 512 Mb ram which can be upgraded, 4gb storage space, 3 USB 2.0 ports, I Ethernet, I phone jack,  head phone and microphone port,  1 mmc and SD card reader port and a port to hook it up to external monitor. It also has a web cam built in.

Price

It costs around 17200 Rs after bill with vat it come to around 17700 Rs throw in a USB mouse and you are looking at 18000 Rs for the best portable laptop you can find in India at the moment.

Operating system

Linux – It comes with Linux which is nice if you use online app’s to do most of your work. It comes with open office, thunderbird and pidgin as im client for all the im’s out there. So you get a very good operating system out of the box. You will have around 3 Gb of storage left.

Windows Xp sp2 – As most geek would do I installed windows Xp after the installation you will have around 1 Gb of free space. Installation is pretty straight forward, the eee PC comes with a booklet that explains how to install. If you installed Xp on a new PC  its as easy as that. Once installing is done put in the Asus driver cd that comes with the device and sit back as it does all the driver installations automatically. So installing Xp on it is very easy.

Review

This is one capable machine, with Linux the machine is like almost instant on. With Xp it takes around 1 minute to reboot. If you hibernate it only takes 20 seconds to switch and ready to use. The fastest I have seen on any machine I have used so far even including my latest vista laptop.

I installed office 2007 just to see how fast it can open the program. I only installed Microsoft word 2007 it takes about 200 Mb. And loads so fast that I was stunned. Even firefox which takes time on my laptop loads very quickly. May be its because of the flash disk or because only a few app’s are installed. All in all a stellar performance in opening app’s and running them in windows.

It can be connected to Internet with Modem, Ethernet, Wifi or even with a USB modem for mobile Internet.

You can hook up external drivers to install stuff or you can also use removable dries to install stuff. This way you can also add extra storage. For example you can get a 8Gb USB drive for 1700 Rs on rediff etc.

The only issue i have with it is the fact that the screen resolution is 800X400 which some times is hard to click the dialog boxes, but Asus comes with a software that will take care of that problem.

You can use the built in webcam and wifi to do chatting or even video conferencing. All in all a compact little device.

Battery Life

From what I used its pretty good. In full brightness the Eee PC lasts around 2 and half hours of battery life. You can add an hour or so if you can cut the brightness by half which you can easily do with the special keys on the laptop. Even at half brightness the laptop is very useable.

Forget about macbook air this is the laptop you want to get if you want real portability.

I would have kept it as my own if I was only using Internet and some windows programs but I need a big laptop for photo editing and other stuff. Also like to point it out that it would make a great laptop for kids and teenagers. If you don’t want to spend big buck by giving them a big laptops. you could give them this and they will love carrying it around because its so small.

There is another laptop similar to this by HCL which is 4000 Rs cheaper which looks like shit. This laptop looks so nice that you wouldn’t mind carrying it around.

Hook up a LCD monitor when you are home or at office and you will have best of both worlds.