Here's a
review at notebookreview.com
I work in computer systems support and my co-worker/friend bought one of these eeePCs on release day. He went to pick it up during lunch and brought it back. Everyone in the department came over to oooh and aaahh over it. The female co-workers went "awww, that's soo cute" when they saw it.
My impressions of it:
It's small, very small, even the AC adapter is small. Our regular issue 15" Toshiba Tecra laptops are literally twice as big as this thing. It's pretty darn quick when it's running the stock Linux OS, BUT, and this is a big BUT, you only have about 2GB worth of free space on the 4GB solid state drive (SSD). The Linux OS takes up half the storage space, which kind of sucks.
The next thing is... the keyboard is small. I have average sized hands (I wear medium sized gloves) and I find the keyboard small. I'm a touch typist and I can't touch type on this keyboard because of the small keys. I actually have to do the 2-finger hunt & peck style typing.
It has no built in optical (CD/DVD) drive, so if you need to use a CD/DVD, you will need to buy an external USB CD/DVD drive. There's no PC Card slot, so there's no expandability there. It does have 3 USB, 1 VGA-out, 1 SD card reader slot, 1 LAN jack, 0.3megapixel webcam (which is surprisingly good). Oh yeah, there's only 1 memory slot, so if you want to upgrade the RAM, you will have to replace it with a 1GB or 2GB stick of DD2-667 SODIMM. Also, the stock Linux OS only recognized 1GB of RAM (BIOS sees the 2GB). Windows XP will recognize the 2GB with no problems. There is 1 more expansion slot that people are speculating is going to be used for expanding the SSD, not the RAM.
Now the good parts, it's small.
My friend's original intention with this notebook is to use it as a travelling notebook, in hotels, friend's house, etc. He actually has 2 other laptops at home, an older 15" and a slightly newer 17" laptop, and he hates lugging those around to travel with. They're just waaay too big and heavy. This eeePC weighs UNDER 2.5 lbs with the adapter.
I see this notebook as a very niche product. It can't do a lot of the stuff bigger notebooks can, but it's not meant to. I'd think of it more as a super powered PDA with WiFi than a "proper" notebook. Mind you, it's still pretty versatile. It can play all types of media files (mp3, divx, etc) so you can use it as a media player. It recognizes an iPod without installing anything extra (using stock Linux OS) as well as USB memory sticks and USB hard drives. It can play games too (if you're running WinXP). We managed to get Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, and Neverwinter Nights (old one) running. It's a bit laggy sometimes, even at the lowest settings, and you kind of have to pan up-and-down because games want to run at 800x600, but the screen is only 800x480. But they are playable.
My friend ended up buying 1GB ram ($20), 8GB SD card ($90), and installing Windows XP on it (he needed to VPN into work). He's pretty happy with it so far. Personally, I'm waiting for the 8GB SSD version to come out and see how much that is before deciding to buy it or not. There's also going to be a black one out soon, before xmas is what I've read for the black one. Not sure exactly when for the 8GB version.
