I wasn’t planning to write about my experience with the Eee this soon but I’m so excited about this thing I just couldn’t wait.
Yesterday morning I headed out the door with just the Eee in my bag, leaving the MacBook Pro on my desk at home. While it probably isn’t as good for my self-imposed weight loss program, it did feel nice to have a lighter bag. I chucked the AC adaptor in my bag so I could charge the unit up at university should I need to.
On the train I hooked up my USB HSDPA modem so I could check my regular news sites and respond to some emails. I chatted with Judie for a bit on MSN, and worked on an essay in Microsoft Word, both which gave me a good opportunity to test out the keyboard. Despite its size I found it great to type on, rarely hitting the wrong key or having to even look down. The keys do tap a bit when pressed, but I’m not about the knock marks off it for that.
Surfing over HSDPA was a joy, with pages loading up quickly and the machine never bogging down with over 10 tabs open in Firefox. Web surfing is probably the main area where the lower screen resolution is a problem. These days websites tend to dislike anything with a resolution below 1024×768, so the horizontal scroll bar was in permanent residence. For some sites I would switch to 1000×600 (using the AsTray hack) for ease of navigation.
Compared to my dad’s gigantic 12″ Dell
While at uni, a couple of my classmates and I were chatting about the movie we would be watching in class the next day, but none of us knew what it was about. Eee to the rescue! Balanced on my hand, I was soon surfing IMDB and had the movie details up within seconds.
On the train ride home I worked on my short film script for screenwriting class in an application called Celtx. Bare in mind I didn’t have the app on my Eee yet, so a quick visit to the website and it was downloaded and installed.
Since I was using my USB modem as opposed to my ExpressCard, the modem was dangling around off the side of the machine. I had the idea of using some velcro to stick it to the back of the display to hold it in place when using it. So last night I gave it a shot and here is the result.
This is so handy, I can chuck the Eee in my bag without having to disconnect the modem first, it’s as close to being internal as it’s going to get!
Today I again only brought the Eee with me. I got into the city a bit early so I could sit at the coffee shop and work on my script. Within minutes of opening the Eee up next to my latte (which it was barely taller than) somebody asked me about it. Bear in mind I have brought the Fujitsu U1010 and HTC Shift to this same coffee shop and neither got looks.
The Eee is a much better machine to use on the over-sized armrests at uni (I certainly wouldn’t call them tables), it fits with enough room left for a can of Diet Coke 😉
Battery life is roughly 2.5-3hrs, which doesn’t surprise me since I have been giving it a hammering (max brightness, HSDPA connected 100% of the time, several standbys and resumes). With the charger in my bag, I easily get it charged up while in class. I just wish my BatteryGeek worked with it 🙁
So as you can probably tell I am pretty pleased with my purchase. At the time I wasn’t so sure, but for now I am stoked! Let’s just hope it’s not one of those holiday romances…
EDIT: I forgot to add the Eee also makes for a great video player. Using VLC this was able to handle any DivX video file I through at it, whether it be high or low bitrate/resolution. Even handled playback over WiFi well!
Posted from the Eee over HSDPA on the train 😀