Asus EEEPC first impressions

Hi all

Purchased one of these yesterday with the purpose of using as an incar GPS/Maps type laptop and as a take anywhere holiday PC - having the solid state HDD and ability to have HDSD card or large flash drive capability.

It appears very well built, smaller than expected, screen size takes a little to get used to at 7" and comes pre loaded with a Linux OS (Xandros) not Windows.

I have already upgraded the provided 512Mb to 1Gb already (very easy), but have not noticed any increase in performance. Was difficult to introduce to my home wireless network as some of the instructions are a bit ambiguous.

With 1 days use I can already see the limitations of the OS not being Windows (as a heavy Windows user and a Linux newby), but applications that I want are Windows only apps. The OS can be changd to Windows XP (a shrunk version the best as the HDD is only 4Gb) with a little mucking around, so that will be the next project.

Will probably pass this one on to the nieces for school and wait for the next version with 8Gb HDD and possibly already loaded with XP. This current one is probably not the best for those who just wish to use a computer out of the box and expect desktop Windows type performance say as you would get with some of the cheap laptops being sold today. Great though if you are a hacker and there is a wealth of info on the net to modify this machine.

Will keep you posted on my project as I change configurations and try and use for some other purposes


Cheers

A