(Pic courtesy of my favourite SIM-free Mobile/PC online retailer, Expansys)
I was perusing my local retailer of electrical goods the other day, and happened across the Asus Eee PC – now I know it’s not anything particularly new, but it IS an intruiging little chap, especially as it was sat with a bunch of other (seemingly enormous by comparison) Laptops.
For those of you that don’t know, the Eee PC is a (sub-sub-?) notebook running a GUI’d up version of Linux. It has a bunch of useful apps pre-installed on it (count in Open Office for example), and includes such features as WiFi – not mindblowing, but handy to have nonetheless.
This wouldn’t be a particularly spectacular set of information, until you see the thing “in the flesh” – it really is very small, but as far as “internet appliances” (like the Nokia N810 for example) go, it would appear to be a really great productivity device.
As I mentioned earlier, what spiked my attention was the fact it popped up in a mainstream electrical retailer, sat on it’s own amongst a gaggle of larger, and more expensive, Windows-powered Laptops. Then what REALLY got my attention was the price – under £250! In a bizarre twist of fate, the day after I first saw the device, it disappeared from the high street retailers shelves…. call Mulder and Scully I say!
A bit of googling later and I’d turned up a bunch of interesting facts, some positive, some negative:
- there is a thriving homebrew community that have hacked the O/S to do more “interesting” things (always a good sign!)
- Research Machines (anyone remember them?!) have got hold of it and are punting it for schools
- It doesn’t have Bluetooth
- The battery life isn’t “great” – just “OK”
- There are a series of versions, which have varying colours (black/white, but more coming) and Memory on-board (2Gb or 4Gb, but 8Gb coming)
- A Windows version is incoming soon
As I said before, what an intriguing little device! With all of the competition in the QWERTY smartphone market (Notables include the Nokia E90 and numerous HTC devices), this is a different solution, but nonetheless a neat one – and why indeed not put your computing power in a sub-sub-notebook, so you can carry a simpler/smaller/better-looking (ooooh controversial!) phone aroud in yer pocket.
Well if any of the IntoMobile readership have invested in this little gem of a portable PC, ping us a comment and let us know how you find it – personally, I am seriously tempted!!
[By the way, if you do want one, you can grab one here, at Expansys]