01 14 09 09:14 |Only one comment ASUS EEE PC Review : first impressions

So with Christina's weekly commute to teach in Baltimore in mind I set about to replace her aging PowerBook G4 with something lighter, smaller, and faster. My timing was perfect as throughout 2008 Intel has released and perfected their  line of 'Atom' chips and associated chipsets. These processors run faster and more efficiently than anything else and are available for next to nothing. After scouring the internet for reviews and user opinions on these "Netbooks" (as these Atom equipped small laptops have come to be called) I settled on the Lenovo S10, available from Lenovo nicely equipped for around $400. 10" LCD, 1GB RAM, WiFi, 160GB Hard Drive, XP Home.Bam. Done. Lovin' it in Red, but wait. Lo and behold!  Best Buy, a store we never shop in due to the general malaise that sets in over the one here in South Philly, has an ASUS (pronounced Ae - Sooos) EEE (pronounced eeeeeeee, like your falling off something very high) PC Netbook for $199! Oh my. ASUS EEE PC 8.9" LCD, 1GB RAM, 4GB SSD, WiFi, and Xandros Linux for an OS. Gulp. But for $199! I jumped on my bike ran down to Best Buy last night and picked one up. Turns out the box is so small that 2 would have fit in my bag. Got it home and had at it. The hardware is really nice. Rigid chassis, bright screen, nice fit and finish overall. Touchpad feels good, clicks a little rough, but feels very solid. The supplied charger is very small and light. I can hear one tiny little fan whirring away inside. I was able to connect to our home network and the internet in a minute. Upon doing so I was alerted to several updates that were available from ASUS that I should let the EEE install. So I did. Rebooted and was greeted with a flickering screen and no desktop. Hosed the whole thing up. So I wrinkled my nose a bit and broke out the small users manual. Turns out there is a recovery partition on the 4GB drive. So I forced a restart and held F9 which gives me the option to format the drive and re-install the OS. Took about 45 seconds and I was back up and running, this time ignoring the alerts to update the software. So back to square one, I handed it over to Chrissy and let her have a go before I really jacked the thing up by fiddling with it too much. She's used Linux casually on a desktop and on our Nokia N800 tablets so seeing another distribution of it didn't throw her for a loop at all. 5 minutes later she had transferred a PowerPoint presentation, Word document, music and videos to the EEE via SD card to and from both the Mac and PC. She was able to open and edit them using the included StarOffice and MPlayer applications. So far so good. She opened up YouTube and was able to watch videos, which played back perfectly (BTW we have been addicted to this song and video, which we are convinced will end up in the Ronald Chevalier movie.  Here it is :  The speakers on this little netbook sound VERY GOOD, a lot louder and fuller than the PowerBook G4. The screen looks great and the included Xandros 'launcher' application is very easy to navigate. I've read of some users replacing the OS with other Linux flavors, but I think this will do just fine. I ordered an 8GB SD card to augment the 4GB of internal storage, most of which is used by the OS and recovery partition. I'm planning on putting the 4 cell battery through its paces tonight.Overall this is a great little device for basic computing, it's not a desktop/laptop replacement, but rather a devce that lies between. A great tool for her to move and edit data between locations. Looking forward to getting one for me!