Asus Eee PC 701 (Fantastic Ultra Portable PC)

[AngryGnome]

I'm not sure how much the news of this new ultra portable pc has spread but I thought I'd share some info with the people here. This new system comes with a Linux distro pre-installed and weighs 1.9lbs. I think it'll be perfect for college students (like myself) or people who don't want to tote around a desktop replacement everywhere they go.

The only hands on review I could find is here.

Also, a youtube video describing the Eee PC can be seen here.

The price is USD $199. (A fantastic price in my book.)

More details and specs can be found in the review and video.

(I will of course be installing Ubuntu the moment I get one.)

-AngryGnome

[Warpnow]

Holy ****! That's amazing...

$199?!?!?!?!

LINUX?!?!?!?!

I might would sell my dell e1405 and pocket $400...

Someone from Ubuntu needs to make a version for this with all the necessary drivers and functionality pre-installed. Amazing.

[azkehmm]

Put DSL or another lightweight distro on that sucker, and you'd have a really good work PC... I'd love to have one of those suckers for taking notes and stuff like that

[Warpnow]

I wish it had better than 3 hours of battery life. I'd prolly have to buy a spare.

[AngryGnome]

The 3 hour battery life is a downside... but I'll sacrifice a little battery for the $199 price.

[Warpnow]

they could easily sell a 12-cell that stuck out a little and got 6 hours. I'd looooove that.

900 mhz processor, but who cares? What do I do on my laptop? Browse the web...aim, random ****...

No cd drive is kindof a downside. But if its compatible with windows file transfer it'd be glorious for most users. Linux transfer...never tried that, can it be done?

Most people have a desktop. They wouldn't use this as a main computer, but as an accessory, which is PERFECT. God, I love it. I'm very excited.

[PartisanEntity]

Is it selling already? (perhaps it was mentioned in the article but I just skimmed through it)

I will definitely get one and install Ubuntu on it, I have always wanted something small and basic for portable tasks, pda's were too small and full sized laptops either too large or too expensive for using as a basic tool on the go.

This is great. I hope it doesn't affect the OLPC project.

[AngryGnome]

Yeah... my main PC is a desktop. I've never really owned a laptop because I never really considered them to be all that portable. The ones that are small enough to be portable are generally the more expensive ones. I have owned PDAs... but those are just too small to get much done on... I personally need a keyboard that is at least close to full size. The Eee PC seems to be the perfect option for me. I don't need a gaming computer to carry around with me, I just need something that I can do basic tasks with (browse the internet, IM, type notes, email). For me, a normal laptop is too large, and/or too expensive, and/or comes with too many extras that I don't need; a PDA is too small, and/or too expensive, and/or lacks some of the things I need in a portable computing device. The Eee PC seems to be the perfect middle ground (at least for me).

As far as the lack of a cd/dvd drive is concerned... it's not that big of a deal to me. I use my usb thumb drive to transfer files when I have access to both the PC I'm getting a file from and the PC I'm transferring the file to. Besides, with the basic model of the Eee PC only having 4GB of flash memory... how many files are you going to transfer to it anyway? Major storage is what external HDs are for.

EDIT: PartisanEntity posted my exact comments just before I did. lol

The Eee PC is not selling yet, although it should be soon. The predicted release time is sometime between July and Christmas with most people saying it will be released sometime in August.

[jethro10]

Is that "Standard interface" in the pictures, basically KDE?

J

[Warpnow]

Its Xandros...what does Xandros use?