Forget everything you think you know about laptop computers. Taiwanese company Asus has just released a new laptop that breaks every rule in the book — and then some.
The new Asus Eee PC is a rebel notebook computer designed to shake up the conventional wisdom. For example, conventional wisdom says that a laptop computer must have a hard drive– the Eee PC uses only a flash memory, for quicker access speeds and greater reliability.
Conventional wisdom also says that you can’t sell a fully featured laptop for $400, but that is exactly the price points set for the Asus Eee. Overall, the Eee is a powerfully featured 2 pound notebook computer with a staggering array of standard features at this price point.
The Eee doesn’t run Windows, but instead it uses a custom version of Linux. And while some may see this as a disadvantage, in reality the tiny Linux operating system ensurers that the laptop boots up extremely fast (try 10 times faster than a standard Windows laptop), and contains advanced features like an inbuilt WiFi chip and web cam that is preconfigured for Skype, which comes preloaded with the Eee.
There are also plenty of USB and FireWire ports, and it is also possible to install Windows, though after using the standard Linux version, you might rethink the necessity of cluttering up your new $400 laptop with bulky Windows software.
The Eee comes preloaded with the Firefox web browser, and the complete Open Office Suite, which effectively replaces Microsoft office, and is in fact much easier to use and configure. The laptop also comes preconfigured to use Google Documents for online document editing and sharing, and links to Yahoo Email, AOL messenger and Google’s Gchat.
Have I mentioned that there is an inbuilt DVD player? Or that you get all the usual media software you’d expect from modern laptop? In short you get all the functionality of a bloated, overweight Windows laptop in one compact 2 pound, $400 notebook that boasts a battery time of approximately 3.5 hours.
What the Asus Eee PC seeks is nothing less than to break all the rules about what a laptop has to be and do. By thumbing their nose at conventional wisdom, Asus has produced an amazingly functional and lightweight laptop that is in many respects far superior to traditional notebook PCs.
And although some people worry that they would miss running Windows sooner or later, in practical use, most people love the simpler and faster loading Linux operating system. Asus has definitely thought outside the box on this one and produced a compact, lightweight and inexpensive laptop that is a breath of fresh air when compared with the new slow and underperforming Windows Vista machines.
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You actually can install WIndows XP on these. And from what I hear it runs it OK. The main problem with it is the amount of space it uses, but of course you can buy a large SD card to alleviate that.
Comment by prevent installing — February 8, 2008 @ 3:33 pm