Asus Eee PC here!

After almost a month of wait (Dynamism.com doesn’t like simple order procedures), I finally got hold of an Asus Eee PC 900 (obviously - for the readers of this blog - the 20 Gb Linux version). Read more for some quick impressions and pictures.

Size: It’s small, although not as small as I’d have thought originally. Nevertheless, it occupies less space than my old laptop. With a proper carrying bag (any recommendations?) it will make my life easier in the (weekly) train trips I take. The 9" screen is good enough for most applications while keeping the size factor low.

Keyboard: it’s tiny, and my unit has an US layout. It takes some practice to learn typing on a downsized keyboard like this, but in less than two days I’m already getting more comfortable with typing at a decent speed.

Screen: Good enough, and probably one of the best selling points of this machine. The 1024x600 resolution is good enough for most applications, although some, like Thunderbird, tend to go off the screen. I haven’t tested Openoffice.org yet to see if that is the case as well.

Battery life: I was lucky, and unlike the very early adopters who got a 4400 mAh battery, I managed to get a 5800 one. Very unscientific tests done by me estimate a rough 3h and 15min life without wireless. It would be probably more if the system didn’t want to shutdown at 10% power.

Standard OS (Xandros): Decent, but very outdated with regards to installed applications. I have played a bit with easy mode but then I decided to return to a more traditional KDE destkop.

Solid state disk: It rocks. Period. I count approximately thirty seconds for the boot to complete, not to mention that the lack of moving parts makes power consumption lower (and avoids trouble like I’ve been having on my past laptotp). 20 Gb is a nice amount, as well. It’s a pity the root filesystem is mounted with unionfs (which reduces the available space), though.

**Tweaking et al: **I may switch to another distribution which provides more up-to-date software (or see if I can update the one installed via third party tools).

For a few more pictures, . Here’s a clip showing the boot speed.

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