My Review of the Asus Eee PC.

Since my first post about my acquisition of one of these sexy Asus Eee PCs, there have been a number of posts and comments- more like questions, really- asking me what I think about it. So here's my effort to give it a personal review, hoping that this will be of help in your decision-making process- whether to get one of these babies for you, or not.

First Impressions:

The Asus Eee PC is small and light. Cute, you might even say. I prefer to call it sexy. Folded up, it's probably half the size of any regular laptop.

That's my Sony Ericsson K608i and a can of diet 7-Up right next to it, on my office desk at 105.1 Crossover.

It's got almost everything essentially built into it, including a cam. No CD/DVD drive, and very little hard disk space. But it does have 3 USB ports, so feel free to attach any variety of removable media into it.

What I Currently Have On It:

My Asus Eee PC has Windows XP installed on it, with Office- since I need to send and receive files from clients (who mostly use Office). Otherwise, I would have just gone for a Linux Operating System with Open Office- it works just like MS Office, only it's free.

For protection, it has AVG anti-virus, Zonelabs for a firewall, and Spybot for added protection.

I have Firefox to browse the internet. Utorrents for added fun, and VLC Media player to play just about anything from movies to music files.

My work files are stowed away nicely in a variety of flash disks- which I can plug in to any of my desktops whether I'm at work or at home.

Cons:

One of the biggest cons for me is, since it IS a small laptop, it does have a small keyboard. Which doesn't bode well for my fat fingers. It's not really so bad, it just takes a little getting used to.

The storage space could be a bother. With XP installed, I have about less than 2GB to store files in. Thankfully, I do have a whole bunch of flash disks and even larger capacity hard disks, so it really isn't much of a big deal.

It also has no CD/DVD drive/burner. Again, no big deal since you can easily transfer whatever files you need to burn onto another PC with a CD/DVD writer.

Pros:

It weighs less than 1kg- which means, it's just as heavy as a pair of jeans folded up. Non-bulky, incredibly compact and very light- it means that's one less bag you have to lug around.

Don't worry about messing up the hard disk as it gets jostled around in your bag. The solid-state hard disk means it works just like a flash disk- so unless you run this thing over with a small truck or use it to self-destruct on one of those Mission:Impossible intros, you're rather assured that your stuff remains fairly intact.

It fires up pretty quickly, and automatically searches for wi-fi signals in the area. Great for going online outside if you have to.

The battery on a full charge gives you a little over two hours- which in my case, is more than enough to blog in the cab on my way to work, which is actually what I'm doing right now.

Renzie's Final Word.

If you work a lot on the go, or if you're very much into blogging, the Asus Eee PC is definitely for you.

Just don't expect to run any heavy programs on it. That's what your PC or your Mac is for. In fact, the Eee PC works best in conjunction with your other PCs at home. Think of the Eee PC as handy little PC you take with you on meetings and other out-of-office/out-of-home business functions.

If you want the pastel colors though, they'll be available in January 2008- at least that's what I heard. Mine's in black, but the store I got this from also carries models in white- which was also selling like hotcakes.

Students would also appreciate this baby- assuming of course, that they could get mom and dad to get them one.