The Asus EEE PC Experience
You’ve probably heard of how difficult is to find an EEE PC (or E3 PC) these days, and maybe you’re even searching for one of these revolutionary subnotebooks having read of, heard of or seen its interesting characteristics. But what makes the Asus EEE PC so great? And why am I talking about ‘revolution’?
I was ‘blessed’ with the opportunity to keep and test such a digital marvel (precisely the 4G model) for a couple of weeks, thanks to Asus, and came to the decision to write an article that would be different from any other already published on-line or in the press.
Even more bravely, I decided to write it in English before writing it in my mother tongue language (Italian), so that more people would be able to read it thanks to the international reach of the Net and the ease of contents publishing it offers.
Even more, I was so impressed and enthusiast after the first two weeks of ‘on the road’ use and testing of the EEE PC that creating a blog/site about it came as a natural consequence. And if you consider I’ve been testing and using notebooks, subnotebooks, tablet PCs and PDAs since the Olivetti Quaderno’s days, I’m sure you’re starting to guess the real potentialities of the Asus EEE PC. By the way, this whole article (and also the Italian version of it) has been written on the EEE PC the day before Asus took it away from me, leaving a great sense of emptyness and nostalgia for the departure of a digital pet and productivity companion I had quickly learnt to appreciate.
Keep reading, then, and you’ll discover the advantages (but also the disadvantages) of the most hyped portable of 2008 (at least by now).
EEE PC as the first cheap subnotebook in history
Maybe you’re already a notebook user, or even a PDA user or, like me, you don’t want to spent a large sum of money to purchase a luxury subnotebook. Or maybe you’ve always longed for a small but powerful portable computing device, but you’ve been kept away from your dream by a tag price which usually rarely drops under the three digits both in dollars and euros.
Palmtops (or PDAs, Personal Digital Assistants) can be a solution for those ready to switch from a typing keyboard to a stylus-and-touch-screen input device, but their displays, memory and user interface haven’t yet satisfied the majority of mobile users, who often aren’t willing to spend double the price of a mobile phone to get a smartphone or PDA-phone.
Computing history has seen a search for the portability since the times of the Osborne 1 or the Apple IIc, and hit the first really ’small factor’ target with the Cambridge z88 and later with the infamous Olivetti M10 and its successor Quaderno, monochrome LCD notebooks that came ahead of their time thus loosing the bet on a really successful spread of portable computing device.
During the last decade, famous brands of notebooks have tried to ride the wave, like Toshiba with its Libretto or Sony with its Vaio, while others have attempted a more risky path with the Tablet PC and with ‘convertible’ devices based on a touch screen display.
The latter breed has its most famous representative in the FlyBook, a feature-rich touch screen subnotebook by Taiwanese company Dialog. This little monster, unfortunately, together with a full range of ports, phone SIM and wireless features, high resolution screen has brought a tag price far beyond the one we were used to see in the subnotebook market.
More lately the new breed of UMPC (Ultra Mobile PCs) have tried to close the gap between traditional notebooks and the too small PDAs, but have proved to be just a remake of the Tablet PCs with strong relationship with digital multimedia players.
There comes Asus with its EEE (E3 for short) PC, a stripped-down-but-still-powerful little notebook sold for ‘just’ 399.99 dollars or 299 euros, a sort of ‘OLPC for the masses’.
As I imagined in a sort of ‘Asus headquarters marketing vs IT departments meeting‘, there must have been a long and wise evaluation of the pros and cons of including or excluding features from the outstanding little machine before its official production and launch, but the results of this ponderations have been a surprise even for a long-time mobile device user like me.
What the Asus EEE PC is missing
Let’s start in a way that’s totally opposite to the traditional methods of writing a product’s review: features NOT present in the Asus EEE PC. As you’ll soon discover, they’re not necessarily bad news for those craving for this little monster.
Let’s start with a list of missing features, then. Here’s what you WON’T find in the EEE PC:
- a ‘real’ and ‘capable’ hard disk
- firewire ports
- an internal modem
- Bluetooth connection
- a touch screen
- an internal CD/DVD reader/writer
- an expansion slot of any sort (PCMCIA or similar)
If you carefully examine and ponder the (missing) features I just listed above, it won’t be hard to discover how most of them are superfluous or just not-so-vital in a subnotebook designed to cover most of the tasks a ‘common’ user performs during his day.
For example, large capacty hard disks are usually needed by heavy downloaders or by professional users which work on intensive tasks requiring the processing of large files (such as hires images, high quality sound samples or high definition video clips). The same users will require most often features like a DVD burner or firewire ports.
Standard analogue modems are becoming, even in mainstream laptop computers, a thing of the past roughly at the same speed that marked the extinction of floppy disk drives or parallel and serial ports. Those who buy a mobile device are mostly prone to the use of wireless networks, in home or on the road. And speaking about wireless, although being a mainstrem standard, Bluetooth is a feature less and less needed on portable devices especially because ‘coupling’ with smartphones or common mobile phones is often a painful experience when it doesn’t work at first attempt (which happens most of the time, unfortunately). The choice of adopting Linux (as you’ll read later on) has probably heavily influenced the decision to avoid the inclusion of a Bluetooth component, due to the difficulties that would arise during its configuration in such and environment, at least for most of the users.
Last but not least, the touch screen seems a vital ingredient in the recipe of a winning mobile device, but experience has taught me that if it shows a useful and practical role in a small PDA (with or without a stylus) it’s seldom equally effective on a larger screen, albeit a seven inch one. Actually, as you’ll read later on in the article, the EEE PC’s touchpad sometimes makes you cry for a touch screen input device on-screen, but it won’t take long for EEE PC owners to get used to the input system and forgive/forget for the absence of a sensitive display.
Finally, as for the absence of an expansion slot, the focus in designing this device has been, as I’ve already explained, on essentiality rather than extras, and as of today even portable computing devices find their expandibility in the use of USB peripherals and accessories rather than slot-in cards.
What the Asus EEE PC offers
But what do you buy with 399.99 US dollars/299 euros? Here comes the answer in terms of hardware features, so let’s list what you will find, instead, in the Asus EEE PC:
- a 7 inch crisp display with 800×480 resolution and LED backlight
- a 4 GB or 8 GB Solid State (flash) Drive (SSD) internal disk
- 512 MB or 1 GB of RAM
- a 900 Mhz Intel Celeron-M ULV 353 downclocked at 630 MHz
- three USB 2.0 ports
- an external VGA video port
- integrated speakers and mic, earphone/microphone inputs
- an SD card slot
- a 0.3 Megapixel VGA webcam capable of up to 30 fps
- a 4 cell Li-Ion 5200 mAh 7.4 Volts battery which offers around 3,5 hours of life/energy
- free operating system and software (at least in the first incarnation)
There’s no doubt the latter feature has strongly influenced the cheapness of Asus EEE PC, if you consider how much would be refunded to users willing to strip their Windows licence from purchased notebooks in favour of a Linux OS. Albeit non equally a cheap solution, the choice to adopt an SSD main disk in place of a traditional hard disk translates in notably faster access, total absence of noise and, mostly needed in mobile devices, a shock resistance that keeps data safe while on the move and in case of hits. Sizes of 4 GB and 8 GB, while keeping the production costs down, appear suitable for a compact and optimized operating system like the Xandros flavour adopted for the EEE PC, while the presence of an SD slot and three USB 2.0 ports gives the chance to learn the precious habit of keeping data outside the machine and hopefully in double copy on pendrives and SD cards, cheaper and cheaper these days (eventually with the adoption of encrypted volumes or folders just to give the finishing touch of sane paranoia). Also, as you’re going to read later on, the EEE PC seems the ideal way to become a Web 2.0 addicted and make intensive use of on-line applications and storage like Google Docs and similar services.
But let’s start from the display, whose seven inches may seem too small for those used to stare at a large LCD display. Actually, text documents, spreadsheets and Web pages are rendered and displayed in a very satisfying width at the resolution of 800 pixel, with a good overall readability and navigability. Sometimes Web pages stretch a little bit horizontally, for example in Gmail , but the ease of scrolling, the text rendering offered by the system and software included and the crystal clear quality of the screen make any little imperfection easily forgivable.
Processor power, even if coupled with the basic 512 MB of RAM, offer great speed especially thanks to the fast access of the SDD and the strong optimization of Linux and of this version (distribution or distro) of Xandros in particular. Don’t worry about the ‘underclocking’ of the CPU, as battery life is strongly connected with power and often a good compromise between speed and energy saving is necessary to increase efficiency in mobile devices. In fact, more than 3 hours are the standard for the Asus EEE PC, and battery life extends considerably if some function are switched off or lowered (I.E. wireless, audio, brightness, SD slot access, etc.).
Audio works flawlessly in general, and the coupling of webcam and mic/speakers included in the Asus EEE PC performs greatly when used in conjunction with Skype or to produce some small and compact video clips, for example a talking head video for YouTube or similar.
EEE PC: A Winning Subnotebook
But how does the Asus EEE PC compare to the mainstream subnotebooks we’ve seen spreading over the shelves during the last years? If you (like I did) put it side by side with a FlyBook, for example, you’ll soon discover it misses most of the features that made Dialogue’s subnotebook a winner despite of its high price, but none of the missing features seem really important in a day by day use for the majority of subnotebook users, as you’re already discovered in the comment I made to the first list above.
For example, during these two weeks I found the EEE PC keyboard very easy to get used to, and the fact I’m writing this article on its keys is already a good demonstration, while in months of use I’m still not confortable with FlyBook’s keys, even if the two machines use the same size for the whole keyboard (actually, FlyBook’s keyboard area is a bit larger than EEE PC’s one). Probably it’s a matter of design and an important role is played by the keys’ feedback. The touchpad isn’t as confortable, though, but the scrolling area on its right is of great help, but I’ve got very large hands so my personal evaluation may be not too precise.
I can testify that even that small pad is really an improvement if compared to the absence of it on the first FlyBook series, which sported a frustrating ThinkPad-style mini-joypad for the choice of putting stereo speakers on the same surface of its keyboard. This should also address the whining of those criticizing Asus for the couple of speakers put on both sides of the screen and the estate stolen by them, especially when the 7 inch display of the EEE PC is justified by an attempt of keeping the overal price of the machine lower than average subnotebooks. Also, I found the 7 inch screen of the EEE PC largely more readable than the 9 inch FlyBook’s display, probably because of a clearer image and the absence of a touch panel substrate which may subtract crispness to the display.
Connectivity on the EEE PC works flawlessly both in wired and unwired mode, as the operating system offers very efficient automatic detection and connection of WiFi and Ethernet connections. The absence of a modem or Bluetooth is justified in the global money saving perspective, and of course both can be added with small and portable devices these days if needed. The philosophy of Asus with its EEE PC has been, mainly, don’t make the user pay for something he doesn’t need and can add later.
Someone has criticized the unstability of the EEE PC as a ‘laptop’, but with a size of 225 × 165 × 35 millimeters and less than 1 kilogram (920 grams, actually) who’s going to pretend a stable situation when putting the EEE PC on an unstable surface? I’m writing with the EEE PC on my legs, right now, and despite of my large hands I’m not feeling uncomfortable at all.
One thing many of us were expecting from Asus was a fanless machine, considering the absence of hard disks and optical drives or any other moving part, so when the little fan starts whispering it may come as a bad surprise. Alas, you will soon appreciate its presence when the machine starts heating your legs (despite of underclocking, which makes you wonder what happens in standard-clocked EEE PCs).
As a multimedia player the EEE PC has showed a very good performance even playing a DivX movie from a pendrive, without any loss of frames or audio hiccups of sort. I haven’t tested it with reads from external optical disks as I’m sure the majority of users isn’t going to adopt such a clumsy solution anyway. Audio from the speakers, though, is just enough for voice chatting so don’t expect to listen to your high bitrate preferred music this way (or just buy yourself an iPod shuffle, and be happy).
Going on with the comparison against other subnotebook and the FlyBook in particular, the EEE PC wins hands down for the unbeatable price-features ratio: let’s admit it, where are you going to buy a brand new subnotebook worth this definition for such a ridiculous price? You may soon regret, for example, the luxury price you pay when purchasing a FlyBook, whose touch screen (which surely added for a large slice of its cost) has never excited me that much during tests and use, and whose 9 inch 1024×600 may be a torture for your eyes and never prove suitable for vertical neither horizontal documents/ebooks reading. About screen rotation, it’s important to know that Asus EEE PC offers this feature when Windows XP is installed, being it part of the graphics chipset software options. As you’ll see in a special article I’m writing for this specific topic, eBook reading on the Asus EEE PC can be satisfyingly achieved although I couldn’t find it confortable in vertical mode, but testing is still on its way and I may be ready for an article as soon as I’ll be able to get my hands again over an Asus EEE PC. Actually, I’m saying bye bye to this test machine tomorrow and you can understand my sadness.
Before closing this reflections about the comparison between the Asus EEE PC and other subnotebooks, let’s just give some examples about pricing amongst the ‘competition’.
A search for new subnotebooks usually produces a list of machine ranging from the 7 inches UMPC models to the 12 inches standard compact laptops, but none of these really stays under a price tag which is three times the price of an Asus EEE PC.
Yes, of course they give you at least double the CPU power, large hard disks, optical drives and Windows (ouch!) Vista, but who needs them when all you need is a compact and lightweight machine able to connect to the Internet, offer productivity tools and manage some digital media documents fast enough to make the mobility experience enjoyable?
Without mentioning again the much hyped Dialogue FlyBook (oops, I just did it!) we could, for example, give a quick look at the Fujitsu Siemens LifeBook subnotebook: the P7230 model offers an Intel Core Duo 1.2 MHz CPU, 1 GB of RAM, 80 GB hard disk, 10.6 inches display, internal modem and DVD burner, Bluetooth, firewire port and option for dual boot Vista/XP.
All these features for a whopping price of about 2000 euros, a sum you use to buy a larger and hevier machine (about 299 x 272 x 200 mms for 1,3 Kgs) most of whose features maybe you don’t need at all or you don’t need so often to justfy paying for them right now instead of adding them gradually when needed.
Asus has managed to shrink the features AND the price of a subnotebook in a way it suits most of the users waiting for ages to have the chance of owning a machine small and light but powerful enough to satisfy their daily computing needs.
The two faces of Asus EEE PC
As you probably already have read, seen or heard of, Asus EEE PC uses (at least before the latest model) a version, or ‘distribution’ of Linux called Xandros and based on the KDE and IceWM graphics interfaces/environment. Asus engineers, anyway, decided to apply a special ‘kiosk mode’ over the normal Linux Desktop to create an incredibly easy experience for the user, where even those who never used a computer before will be afraid of trying or able to make some damage. The large and colourful icons of EEE PC’s interface are grouped in four main groups (Internet, Work, Learn, Play) enclosed in tabs and followed by two additional tabs containing the Settings and Favorites, the latter being available for you to organize frequently used icons/applications for your convenience. Even accessing files on the main SSD volume or external memories shows just a temporary window that once the operation is done disappears leaving you again with the icons interface. Someone defined this ‘kiosk mode’ as similar to some PDAs interfaces, but it’s maybe more close to a ’safe’ alternative ‘easy mode’ once included in the Apple Macintosh System.
It didn’t take long, anyway, before someone discovered (and explained) how to bypass the restricted interface and unlock the extended Xandros interface, which is typical KDE and thus similar to other Linux distributions’ graphical Desktops and, in many ways, to other traditional interfaces like those in Windows or Mac OS X. This means opportunities, for power users, to tweak and experiment with Xandros or other Operating Systems and delve into the depths of the EEE PC the way they use to do with other computers or even with more fun and enthusiasm.
This double-sided approach is another winning point for Asus EEE PC, making it suitable for newbies and geeks alike, being both able to use the EEE PC the way they most like and in a way that makes them feel comfortable.
EEE PC = Mobility 2.0
Another interesting facet of Asus EEE PC is the way it finally manages to bring the ‘network computer’ concept to a usable device, adapting perfectly to those concept brought by Web 2.0 and SAS (Software As Service), where applications and documents are often remotely stored and accessed while the machine is just an interface between users and the Web applications and storage services. You can use the EEE PC as a standalone and self-sufficient platform or vastly enhance it as an interface to Web services like Google Docs, ZOHO and similar. Some of the icons in the Internet tab/section are in fact links to service like these.
The habit of using Web 2.0 and on-line apps and storage daily can also be a great advance in having your data and informations always available even if you connect from another machine, usually an office or home desktop PC.
Summary: what the EEE PC can and cannot do
So, before you decide about purchasing the little big mean machine, let’s just try to list most of the tasks you will or won’t be able to manage with it ‘out of the box’. It’s up to you, being an EEE PC would-be or actual user or even an EEE PC hater, leave comments to add items to one list or the other. So, let’s start.
The EEE PC isn’t the ideal machine to:
- help you manage professional or intensive video editing or produce fast 3D rendering of complex shapes and scenes (get a MacBook Pro instead)
- perform as a confortable last generation game machine (get a PS3 or and XBOX 360 instead)
- play DVD movies or burn CDs or DVDs (get a PC or a PVR instead)
- ensure easy and utomatic USB connection to printers, scanners and many other devices (unless Windows is installed)
The EEE PC is the perfect machine to:
- connect easily to the Internet trought Ethernet or WiFi networks and be a practical browsing and chatting machine
- read and write flash memory media like pendrives or SD cards
- keep you safe from viruses, trojan horses and other nasty menaces of the Net
- be a beautiful portable retro-emulator machine with some Linux tweaking
- perform as a nice digital frame when not in use through a screen saver slideshow
- play DivX movies from pendrives and SD cards
- access USB external hard disks or CD/DVD drives
- keep you away from software and system disasters unless you act as a Super User through the Terminal command line interface (without really knowing what you’re doing)
- help you in your productivity tasks with free office suites and other useful applications
- act as an eBook reader
- make an excellent experimental platform for hackers, or a useful maintenance and support tool for techies, or just a low-consumption and efficient mini-server for mass downloaders
- transform itself in a portable ‘work environment’ from one non-mobile emplacement (made of USB keyboard and mouse, external USB hard disk and monitor) and one or more others
- boot from SD cards or pendrives to use different operating systems at the same time
- make a perfect presentation machine for training or conference sessions
- help you learn Linux and appreciate open source and free software
- make the perfect platform for journalists and authors in general (writing either for the press or the Web)
- help you forget the OLPC and save a lot of money anyway
EEE PC or not EEE PC? YOU decide!
Now it’s up to you to decide, but I’m sure you won’t regret and you’ll come back here to read news, tips and articles about your first cheap subnotebook, as soon as you manage to find one to buy (which isn’t such an easy task, because of its incredibile success).