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Our Blogs The BeerFiles Asus Eee PC 900 is a ripper not a rip-off: review
Our Blogs The BeerFiles Asus Eee PC 900 is a ripper not a rip-off: review | Asus Eee PC 900 is a ripper not a rip-off: review |
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| by Stan Beer | |
| Wednesday, 14 May 2008 | |
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Page 1 of 3 I would be using the Eee PC on the road instead of say my Dell Latitude or a MacBook, not in my office. Then the comparison becomes more valid and the ratios reduce. At 21 cm (8.25 inches) the Eee PC 900 keyboard is a bit more than 70% the width of my Dell notebook's and the 8.9 inch monitor is about 65% the diagonal length of my notebook's. Can I work comfortably with the Eee PC 900 proportions? Maybe not comfortably, but certainly acceptably. Add to that, the convenience factor of the sub-notebook and the scales become more evenly balanced. At just under 1 kg with a tiny form factor, the Eee PC 900 makes a far more convenient traveling companion than a comparatively heavy and cumbersome full-sized notebook. Having had a play with the smaller screened version Eee PC, I probably wouldn't be writing this review. However, at 8.9 inches and a resolution of 1024x600, Asus has now produced a sub-notebook with a monitor that skirts the lower limits of usability in my opinion and that's just fine. I'm writing this in OpenOffice.org 2.0 with the page zoom factor set at 150%. That gives me a page which comfortably fits within the width of the monitor and a large easy to read font size (even without my glasses). Then of course you can easily resize the page ala iPhone multi-touch style by "pinching" or "stretching" the Eee PC 900 mouse pad - the first time anyone outside of Apple has offered this feature. When I unpacked my review machine, I was unsure whether I would be getting the Linux with 20GB of storage or the Windows XP model with 12GB. I am happy to say that I got the Linux version because I honestly believe the Eee PC concept was designed to meet a specific need that only Linux, Open Source and Cloud Computing can provide. I wanted to see if it met that need. CONTINUED |
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