One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn’t belong.
Can you tell which thing is not like the others…
…Before I finish my song?
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It’s the 15″, surely? Everyone wants a teeny-book these days…
— gizo 
So this is an honest question here — why would anyone want to work on a 7″ screen? It seems like it’s caught in the middle of wanting to be a laptop and a portable device (like a phone or a PDA), and it ends up doing neither. You don’t have nearly enough space to want to use it regularly for anything other than occasional web browsing/e-mail/notetaking, but it’s not small enough to be as useful as a phone or a PDA that can do exactly that.
I suppose that means it’s really just not for me, but does anybody out there actually use something like this? Why?
Simone: It’s cheap, small, light, easy to carry, and easy to use. It’s a laptop, just a small one. For people that don’t care about Linux, it has Firefox and Open Office and other things that can be used comfortably; for people that do, it has all those plus everything else. I was just doing some typesetting in Emacs and LaTeX on mine.
All but one have a Core 2 Duo processor. The other has a Celeron.
Replying on an Eee PC from a Manhattan hotel room. Sure, big screens are nice, but so is no-brainer portability. With some careful tweaking it’s remarkable how productive I can be on this petite little number, much much more so than on any PDA/phone I know, and really not far off what I can do on my 15″ powerbook…
— Sean
What is ultra portable Asus with Linux competing with OS X
— AMR
Well, I can see why it’s beating out Apple here. Who buys Apple laptops from Amazon, when anyone can get the educational discount on Apple’s site?
This list in no way means the Eee PC is more popular than a MacBook. Amazon is just the most reliable place to purchase an Eee PC.
— Cliff
Only one of them has had users file a bug on me to make Thunderbird’s new account dialog smaller, so they can get to the buttons.
So - top seller is the 3-5x cheaper than the rest of the places. Hm…if I were a laptop maker, would I want to 1st or 2nd-5th on this list?
Sometimes it pay not to be the king.
@Phil: Rather than making it smaller, how about making it so that when the form overflows, the window has a scrollbar? Same applies for Firefox’s dialogues (oh, how I miss the icons-on-the-left layout)
— Jon
Rather than making it smaller, how about making it so that when the form overflows, the window has a scrollbar?
What an elegant solution. I can’t imagine why Mozilla’s UI developers don’t look to the state of the art of Linux applications from 1998 for more inspiration.
- Chris
If I had a choice between an Asus laptop and a PDA, I’d pick the one with a proper keyboard and mouse, thank you very much; PDAs are too damn fiddly for me, and I suspect I’m not alone in seeing the more high-end ones as primarily intended for rich idiots to impress other rich idiots.
Oh, and the Asus is almost exactly the kind of thing my landlady is looking for to replace her old company-issue Dell now she’s striking out on her own. Much obliged, Mark, you’ve been a great help!
— Jake
ASUS just announced the 9″ screen version yesterday. It has a very similar form factor to the 7″, though is a little larger, and is expected to retail at €400 (~$600):
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/04/asus-9-inch-eee-pc-now-with-living-pixels/
I think the big story is who is not on that list.
I happened to look at this list yesterday. I was amazed at the lack of a showing by the Windows systems, the solid showing by Apple, and the come from nowhere appearance of ASUS.
At that time, as I recall Apple held the top two, then an ASUS. The top seven were all Apple’s and ASUS linux systems.
Windows systems only came into play at number 8, and only 3 or 4 of the top 15 were windows systems.
> Who buys Apple laptops from Amazon
Funny how Apple fans like to quote Amazon rankings when it suits them.
But the real story here has nothing to to with Linux or Apple — it’s that Amazon’s ontology sucks. Really. In what universe are a $400 7-inch laptop and a $1700 15.4-inch laptop in the same “category”? That makes no sense. It’s like putting my frumpy bike and a Harley in the same category because they both have two wheels. OK, but I don’t think there are going to be a lot of people looking for a motorcycle and saying “Smack! I’ll just buy a Raleigh Retroglide!”
That said, I would consider an eeePC as a travel laptop. Ever try to use a T60 in coach? Not pretty. Sadly, I wouldn’t be allowed to keep any work-related stuff on it, so it’s a moot point. It’s still an intriguing machine, though.
— Mark
I just checked the rankings, and besides the 900 Mhz model at #1, the 800 Mhz model is now at #4.
Scanning down the list, various models of Eee show up at #10, #13, #22 and #23. Wow. That’s some serious volume.
— Anonymous
Funny, this, since all the Air backers are saying it’s ultraportable enough, despite being as big as house.
— bonaldi
Bonaldi, portablity has to be evaluated in context. For most common contexts, weight is most significant. For air travel (ironically) size and battery life become much more important, unless you’re flying first class.
9″ EEE is a great news to me, since the 7″ screen was the only thing that turned me off from buying one.
— Peter
>> In what universe are a $400 7-inch laptop and a $1700 15.4-inch laptop in the same “category”? That makes no sense.
I think the reason is, that they are both laptops. So the analogy about bike and Harley is not quite fitting in my view.
— Peter
I’ve been using an eeepc for a couple of weeks now, daily. It replaced my old ThinkPad T23, which if I remember was a 1Ghz P3 with 768MB RAM. Here are a few of my impressions:
1. The screen is small. I’m running firefox in full-screen mode most of the time, and I’ve reduced the font size from 10 to 8, at which point its acceptable. Playing scrabulous requires scrolling a bit, which blows. I learned keyboard shortcuts for maximizing windows (Alt+F10) and going to full-screen in firefox (F11) almost immediately. Full-screen firefox is just tall enough for youtube. Checking webmail is fine (Gmail is great, but I’m using the old-style yahoo mail, as they suggest 1024×768 for the new-style).
2. The boot time is amazing. I rarely used to turn off the thinkpad because it always took a minute or two to boot, running either windows or linux. The eee takes 15 seconds, every single time. count to 15, start working. it doesn’t seem like a big deal but after experiencing it I can say that this alone was worth the $400, seriously. i can’t really describe how noticable and convenient it is. I think the eee has sleep mode, but who needs it? shutting down is faster than sleep mode ever was on the thinkpad.
3. Its pretty snappy, especially given its relatively low horsepower. My thinkpad had better specs, but the load average running a really stock ubuntu was typically 3-5 times higher. Even when I hook it up to a large monitor (it can drive my 20″ at 1280×1024, sweet) its feels reasonably peppy. When recording video using the webcam or queueing up a video on youtube it can get a little sluggish, but normal surfing, typing, etc. is great.
4. Its extremely easy to carry around. The power adapter doesn’t have a ‘brick’ so its lightweight and compact. 2 lbs is sweet. The fast boot and shutdown times mean it takes me a lot less time to get settled in at (and escape from) the local coffee shop.
5. The small keyboard hasn’t really been a problem for me, but I have made a few typos. The numbers don’t line up (they are shifted one key to the left from a normal keyboard) which I thought would be a problem given that I use a lot of numbers and punctuation in my passwords, but I haven’t been having any difficulty with it.
This is a second machine for me, to do surfing and day-to-day work. I have a desktop I use for doing heavy lifting and when I want to sync up an ipod, but I haven’t even booted it since I got the eeepc. I’m recording some video, writing some basic code, word processing, and surfing the web on the eee pc now and I won’t be going back to a normal sized laptop (unless I get one to replace the desktop when it dies).
— rob
Every week or two, I have a conversation with my girlfriend that goes something like this:
“That eee PC is really cool. I should get one.”
“But you wouldn’t ever use it. What would you use it for?”
“You’re totally missing the point here.”
One of the 2 different OS vendors contribute but more to Free Software than the other. Guess which one?
— Hub
The difference between the eeepc and current laptops reminds me of the difference between a desktop and laptop in the 90s - you make a few compromises on storage and horsepower in exchange for portability and convenience. Now that mainstream laptops have become larger and have a lot of storage, people are often using them as their primary machine. I don’t think the eeepc is good for everything, but like those laptops in the 90s, I’m willing to sacrifice something for the convenience they provide.
diveintomark.org looks great on the eeepc, by the way, but I’m sure you suspected that.
— rob
@Chris Cunningham:
If I’m reading your comment correctly, then yes, it’s not really an ideal solution. But it’s one that could be implemented immediately, and doesn’t involve UI changes which will no doubt invoke lengthly arguments about the right way to do it. The status quo is preserved, but the thing becomes usable.
— Jon
Well my immediate thought was “one of these is affordable and good value for money, the rest are macs” ;) Hey, I can only afford cheap shots. I’m saving up for a laptop.
In all seriousness though, the people I’ve heard complain about the EEE PC were people who wanted a big, grunty, primary machine. The EEE is really all about being ultraportable, robust and cheap. You can *sort of* compare it with the Macbook Air, or a Vaio ultraportable.
Really though, it’s more like “buy this instead of an ipod touch”…
— give me the eee
So people either love cheap or great. No in-between.
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