I’ve been particularly busy these last 2 months, from work and personal stuff, which explains the lack of updates here. Not surprisingly, I was in desperate need of retail therapy and ended up buying 2 laptops this month - we now have 6 laptops in the house!

I bought another Dell XPS M1330 for my parents (I highly recommend this particular laptop), and the much touted Asus EEE PC (4G 701 model) to see what all the fuss was about. For those who don’t know, Asus sold a commendable 350,000 units of the EEE PC within the first quarter of its debut and there was shortage everywhere. In Japan, 10,000 units were sold in the first week alone.

Why? This is the cheapest sub-notebook ever, and retails for only S$599 in Singapore (Memory World in Funan gives an extra 1GB RAM), RM1,399 in Malaysia and US$350 in the U.S. Quite understandably, there are some trade-offs like the 900MHz Celeron CPU, smallish 7″ screen, Linux OS and 4GB storage (seriously). It also doesn’t have built-in LAN, bluetooth and CD/DVD drive.

I guess it’s ok because the EEE PC was never meant to replace a full-featured laptop or PC in the first place - it’s more like a ‘companion’ laptop. It does have its own benefits though, like the tiny size and super-light weight (0.92kg to be specific), and the use of SSD instead of hard disk - both Linux and Windows XP boots up in only 15 to 30 seconds!

If you need more storage space, you can plug-in an SD card into the built-in reader - I bought an 8GB SDHC for under S$100. There are users who’ve installed the operating system onto the SD instead of the SSD. Upgrading the memory to 2GB is recommended and besides, you can create a RAMdisk for more working space using Gavotte’s free ramdisk software.

Anyway, the first thing I did was reformatted the laptop and installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 because some of my applications only ran on Windows. Asus provides the necessary drivers and a step-by-step guide in the manual because they expect many to do the same. There are users who nLited their Windows XP to save disk space - the smallest installation I’ve seen was under 600MB.

Then I joined the active community at eeeuser.com, to get tips, support and user-created applications. The one EEE-specific software that you should install is eeectl, which allows you to overclock the EEE PC and increase the screen brightness to beyond what’s allowed.

The EEE PC has also spawned many enthusiasts who modded their units with bluetooth, GPS, etc. One forummer, Jesse Lang, modded hers with:
- more USB ports and an internal 32GB flash drive.
- built-in Bluetooth and GPS.
- touch-screen and wireless TV tuner.
- wireless RF receivers and stylish LED lights.

I’m just sticking to the stock build for now and I guess I’ll know how useful the Asus EEE PC really is when I’m in Seoul - I leave in a few hours time. I’ve made a copy of my work applications, emails and documents to bring along. Hopefully, I can find time to work in-between holidaying and playing the Nintendo games I’ve installed on the EEE. ;)