So, just what can you do with this ASUS Eee Linux PC thing anyway?

By David M Williams
Monday, 31 December 2007 15:15

Opinion and Analysis

ASUS have released a cheap subnotebook. It is far from state-of-the-art tech-wise, with 512Mb RAM and a Celeron processor. It has a 4Gb hard drive and no optical drive. Its screen is 7” and runs at the odd resolution of 800x480 and the operating system looks like something Fisher Price might have designed. Why would you buy it? What on earth can you do with this?

The answer is lots. Sure, the things I said above are true. But don’t be deceived by a small glimpse at its hardware specs – there’s so much more which can be said. I’m definitely a fan, and the Eee PC’s sales figures suggest I’m not unique.

For starters, the battery life is three hours, the charger is as tiny as a mobile phone charger – not a typical bulky laptop brick – and it weighs less than a kilogram. It’s absolutely ultraportable. Perhaps it may not suit you as your primary workhorse but there’s no denying that the Eee is king of mobility. It is effortless to carry and comes with a reasonably stylish carry case although other options can be found.

The hard drive is 4Gb and you definitely won’t want to use it to store your entire iTunes collection but it’s a solid-state hard drive which is a definite plus. There are no moving parts and it is dead fast to boot up and to shut down. Power on the Eee and quite literally within seconds you’re away. The solid state hard drive consumes less power and generates less heat than a traditional IDE or SATA spinning platter based hard drive.

It’s easy to see why ASUS made the design decision here that they did; the solid-state option gives far greater portability and battery life. After having made this choice, the size of the drive was the next consideration. 4Gb was clearly chosen based on price: even on full-priced laptops it’s still uncommon to find solid-state hard drives larger than 32Gb, and even so the price is still very high. Still, an 8Gb Eee is in the works but ultimately it is moot: the hard drive space left over after the operating system installation (2.5Gb used, leaving 1.5Gb spare) is still vast enough for an enormous amount of text documents, and a large collection of photos. But, best of all, there’s a built-in SD card slot as well as three proper USB 2.0 slots – consequently, there’s no limit to the extra disk space that can be added. In fact, really, it makes sense to get the largest and fastest SD card you can and just leave it plugged in.

So, the ASUS Eee hardware gives great bang for the buck. Sure, it’s not state-of-the-art – but when it comes to laptops you have three competing demands – fast, cheap, powerful – but you only get to choose two. A powerful bleeding-edge laptop would not be the same price, and would not have captivated the world’s media.

Where the ASUS Eee really takes off, though, is with its full suite of software availability and its endless world of hardware modifications that smart people worldwide have embraced with vigour and fervour. Let’s check some out.

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