The Author – Bart Busschots
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May
9
REALLY Short Review of an EeePC
Filed Under 42 (Life the Universe & Everything) on May 9, 2009 at 9:12 pm
This is just a quick test post from a friend’s EeePC to see what they’re really like to type on and browse with. My very first impression, I think I have found something worse to type on than a virtual keyboard – a shrunken one! Since it has no smart helper-features like the iPhone, it is actually more tedious than the iPhone. You spend more time correcting mistakes because none of them are auto-corrected. Although you do get better at it as you keep typing, the location of the shift keys in particular really strain your hands. I’ve just typed this much and I can feel the strain already, this is very very far from ergonomic! I’m starting to see Tim Cook’s point, this is not a good experience, and I wouldn’t want Apple to clone this experience. I do want Apple to do something in this space, but it has to be something more human-friendly than this! This feels like miniaturisation for the sake of miniaturisation. I’m not sure what creatures the EeePC was designed for ergonomically, but it was most certainly not adult Homo sapiens! The one good thing I’ll say is that the screen is better than I was expecting, sure the resolution is small by real laptop or desktop standards, it’s positively roomy by iPhone standards. I think this would make it a usable web browser, but the keyboard is a waste of space, you can’t useit for serious typing. Take the screen from an EeePC, rotate it to portrail, make it multi-touch, add OS X iPhone, and make thinner, then you’d be on to a winner IMO! For ultimate p0wnage, add support for a bluetooth keyboad … oh … and sell it for the price of an EeePC 🙂
I’d give the Samsung NC10 a try. Netbooks work pretty OK when they’re done right.
Bart – next time you are away for a week or two, bring a netbook with you. I love my netbook (I have an Acer) but it’s the best piece of tech kit I’ve bought in years. I use it for e-mail, write documents, review presentations, watch movies, run remote desktop, I could go on. The keyboard is fine for typing a few paragraphs. My Aspire netbook has a decent-ish keyboard. The first Eee PCs had pretty rubbish keyboards, but the latest ones are fine for my fingers.
I take mine with me most places, I just got back from Hong Kong, it was great being able to take it with me rather than my laptop, it sits on an economy-class seat table just fine (even a Ryanair one) and has 6h of battery life.
If you’re on the road all the time like me, a netbook is the best way to bring your home PC with you on the road. I’ve been running Ubuntu Netbook Remix for the last month and I’m very happy with it. It’s a brilliant device for people like me who travel a lot and want a small but fully-functional machine (weighs about 1kg)
You adjust to the keyboard very quickly, a day or two tops, at least on a 10″ model. As a long time user of small devices (Sony UMPC, Toshiba Libretto, Psion, etc.) a netbook keyboard feels positively luxurious, and my experience is the direct opposite of yours. I would never do long emails on my iPod Touch but have no issues at all on a netbook.
I have a netbook with Win 7, OS X, and Ubuntu on it, and I use it all the time. There are plenty of times when I need more power than the Touch but don’t want to lug my Macbook around, and it also has the virtue of great battery life.