I need a special dialing wand: Asus Eee PC

(tags computer, hardware, Windows)

I had a chance to try out the Asus Eee PC in person this week. It's the "Eee PC 4G-X", which I think corresponds to the Eee PC 4G. As I said before, I am disappointed that the Japanese version comes with Windows XP Home SP2 for the OS. I did want to try Linux on this machine, but it's a minor gripe because I actually like tolerate Windows XP, huh. I think the reason for the Windows XP is that Linux distributions don't have comfortable Japanese input methods for free, and the much heralded ATOK for Linux would add 1_0000 yen to the price (20%!).

However, the most important part, the keyboard, is unusable with my hands. Maybe my fingers are too fat. :-( I've always wanted a small computer to just type with, like a Tandy Model 102, or an AlphaSmart. For a time I had the Palm with the foldable keyboard but it was tacky. Also I have a Libretto L1 which is pretty much what I want, but too bad its slow (too slow for even AJAX Gmail ugh) and obsolete (short battery life, noisy fan, low memory, no on-board wireless or ethernet!). Coming back to the Asus Eee PC, I like the keyboard layout itself. The FN key coupled with the arrow keys are the Home, End, PgUp, PgDw combination that makes so much sense. I don't really like the tilde key (Kanji key) being in the same row as the Esc and F1, but I can deal. I'm an Emacs Caps-Lock-Is-Control-Key and AutoHotKey user, so any other niggling bits I can fix up quick.

Other than that, I found that it gets hot on the bottom, which is disconcerting. XP Home, but with no games installed (sol.exe is not there!) and Windows-F1 has no contents installed! The disk reports 1.3 GB free out of 4GB. I am wondering if I can keep an SD card in the slot for my essential apps like Firefox, Emacs, Ruby, Git, Subversion, Cygwin, etc. I wish I could have tried out Parsec47 on it. I didn't bother figuring out how to install more RAM. And there was no camera application for the camera, that I could find (nothing in the Start Menu or Desktop). Strange. notepad.exe, winver.exe, dxdiag.exe, calc.exe, and mstsc.exe I checked and they are all there.

The screen itself is readable, but just barely. I wonder what the DPI is. Let's see, is it 133 DPI? (/ (sqrt (+ (* 800 800) (* 480 480 ))) 7.0) Oh yeah. Oh this is interesting, set the Windows DPI setting to 80 DPI for mo' better viewing. Probably Japanese is unviewable though.

Now I am viewing the various user threads and wikis about gaming on this machine and I figured out Unreal Tournament 99 and StarCraft are playable. Wow. Oh wait, it's 2008 already. Where's my flying car, hurk hurk.

I gotta wait for Eee PC version 2.0, but at least now I can rest easy knowing that Asus will target the Japan market.