bought my own birthday present

[kiawrench]

yup,, bought my own,, or as wife put it ,, can i get another 100.00 so i can cover bills?

she went online and found a asus eee pc 900 for 200.00, seller even kicked in a extra flash memory card,fancy carry case and a hi-cap battery( 8 hrs -vs stock 4 hrs ). seems guy had it thought it was wifi and bluetooth, but it isnt built with bluetooth (need usb dongle for that )

  even though my birthday is later in month , she made me open it up anyway _ package had basic lappie, the flash card, addl carry case , high cap battery,all the restore software, a sealed copy of win-xp pro , and a host of other software that will most likely get un-installed (open office is one )

this thing works great , loaded all my vision stuff,work software, finance and payroll stuff (only my info ,no ssn or addy )all of my travel expense stuff and 6.5 gigs of mp3 files ,to sort of give me something to listen to as i work on the visions

best part is , it is under three pounds ,complete including the backpack, my rain suit ,and lunch ------- way better than my old laptop and huge bag (over 9 lbs loaded )   big difference on morning rides to work>


  dave tn,, or others, any thoughts on the eeepc  series?    i did get a new lic from microsoft ,, just in case . otherwise, it seems to be great for my needs . lucky my hands are small, keyboard works well for me ,, bigger hands may find it hard to use .

i ran battery duration test program i got online,  lappie ran for 8hrs, 11 min 37 seconds on the high cap battery with battery alarm turned off--- much better than the oem battery time of 4hrs 8 minutes and 7 seconds . so that was good thing . will get all work day use if i dont get crazy with open apps just idling .

[Rick G]

Kia , I have the other problem , I have to use the eraser end of a pencil or I hit three keys at once.

[h2olawyer]

Early HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!
Great snag, kia!  At that price, you really can't go wrong - even if its functions may be somewhat limited.  Look at how expensive dedicated large capacity Ipods are!  Is that one with the Atom processor?

H₂O

[YellowJacket!]

I really like the EePC.  not to fond of the linux version of it with only a 4 gig ssd but the larger one with the higher capacity drive and windows xp is a really good portable...especially at the price you got it for.  I really think you will enjoy it.

I have been blogging about netbooks and UMPC's over at gottabemobile and really like the concept as a low cost portable or a supplement to a larger home PC.

David

[Brian Moffet]

really like the concept as a low cost portable or a supplement to a larger home PC.

I agree, Dell and a couple of others have some really good small systems.  If I was doing anything beyond going to work (where I have more compute power than I can use) and being at home where I have enough in my single desktop, I would probably purchase one.  I'm not sure whether the Linux version or the Windows version would be better for me.  The very small size is great.

Brian

[kiawrench]

one i have is running the celeron , rated at over 900 but you have option to drop it back to mid 600 range, save a bit of power .

  since i really dont do any power computing ,just a lot of on /off technical stuff on bikes and cars , it works out pretty good. plenty fast enough in regular wi fi mode, but when using the air card it gets a bit like a teenager, works only if it feels like it . think i am going to put in a dedicated in house cable based lan , lock it up tight as a barrel head and only allow others to ASK me to set them up to share the point . ( some folks at work have problem with sharing, rather surf porno than do productive work ). I wouldn't mind facebook or myspace being used over it, as those can both be productive source of customers , but i hav eto draw line at porno surfing,, it just eats bandwidth and no one gets anything in return.

my hp wi fi card loses signal at about 70 ft from the house,( i use range whip and cable based lan at home ) the eeepc  will log on and run with gusto across the street- dave you saw the place , 100- 125 ft to house across street, so isnt bad for a subcompact >  works well on very low signal .

i do not think it would be much for any real power application, huge spreadsheets, cad stuff, but when used with design in mind, it runs pretty fast as my desktop unless i open graphics intense site,,, like some of the my space pages with streaming video -- gets just a bit choppy . glad i only go there on single purpose events .  e-mail on board sux, so i did delete outlook express,microsoft works ,the oem office program "star" and all of it's features. uploaded new office suite ,,, much much better .

i followed online tweak from lilliputers web site, reduce screen brightness to 45 percent, shut down anything not really needed and got alomst 10 hrs out of it today at work . guess that big battery is worth the cost