The postman arrived at about 10:30am this morning with the package I ordered on Thursday night - an ASUS EEE PC. In the grand tradition of being a total geek, I photographed the unboxing process for the benefit of those who might be thinking about getting one, and wanted to have a look.
So what are my thoughts after an hour or so? The Linux installation that comes on it isn’t as bad as I feared. Having previous Linux experience has certainly helped, but ASUS could have helped themself a lot by having an “expert” startup option. It took me a good couple of hours to get rid of the “newbie” interface, and then make all the fonts smaller (which is not as simple as it sounds - Firefox and Thunderbird take no notice of the operating system settings - even in Windows).
I am impressed with it. It is tiny, the wireless works fine, it is easy to use, and it has the applications I want on it. It’s going to be perfect for writing blog posts and emails while commuting.
The final piece of the jigsaw will be a bluetooth dongle, but I’m going to do some reading before getting one to make sure it works. My days of recompiling kernels and such like are long gone - hence the existence of a Macbook in our house. Once upon a time I would have liked nothing more than to spend a weekend tinkering with some computer or other - now I just want access to my friends so I can keep up with them all.
Doesn’t the EEE PC look tiny sat on the Macbook in that last picture though