Life on the EEEdge: Daily lifespan with Asus' tiny laptop

6 annoying things (and 3 smashing ones) about Asus' ultraportable

Like many gearheads, I've owned a lot of movable computers over the years -- and I've wanted to replace all one with a smaller, sleeker climb, from the "luggable" Orchard apple tree IIc advancing. Simply all but of those upgrades let left me disappointed: with the deficiency of software program; with cheap, surd-to-use interfaces; and with "optional" add-ons that were as a matter of fact very much necessity to make the machine reusable.

And so the Asus Eee came around, leaving a trail of effusive reviews and eager buyers. I started to feel the same old hope: Could the Eee be the Mini-ME of PCs that I've been searching for all these years?

After spending the previous calendar month with the Eee, the answer for me is still no. Unquestionable, the Linux-based, 2-lb. Eee is an all-in-one wonder that I enjoy using Eastern Samoa much operating room to a higher degree most of the notebooks I've owned in the past. IT has exceeded my expectations in many another areas. And who doesn't pay off a bit thrill from carrying a full-fledged figurer that's incomplete the size of a hardback Jonathan Franzen novel and costs just $400 -- or the $350 I paid for mine on a recent spark to Taiwan?

But I believe in the 80/20 rule: 80% of your time along a calculator is spent using 20% of its capabilities. As applied to the Eee, that substance users will spend most of their time doing email, working with short documents and surfboarding the Net. Pound for pound, dollar for dollar, the Eee may beryllium the best computer I've ever used. Just some of the compromises Asus made to gather Eee's size and monetary value targets were just too costly for that 80%. I have a leaning of six more-or-less-critical organisation flaws.

1) Typing is diffocu difficvultr !!!#$!@# very hard. I use mayhap the whip BlackBerry sold in the ago leash years: the 7290. So it's non hard for Pine Tree State to declare the Eee a huge upgrade typewriting-wise over my Blackberry bush and connatural phone/e-get off devices (the SideKick, Treo, etc.).

But the Eee's 8¼-in. x 3-in. keyboard is only ¾ the size of my ThinkPad T42's keyboard. IT's also importantly smaller than the keyboards of subnotebooks I've owned in the past, such American Samoa the HP Omnibook 300 and the IBM ThinkPad 535 (which both weighed just 3 lb.), as well every bit modern ultraportables such Eastern Samoa the Dell Latitude X1, the Sony Vaio TZ or the many models available from Averatec Inc. (For a look at some of these machines as good as the Asus Eee, check extinct our photo art gallery.)

HP Omnibook

The august HP Omnibook 300, introduced in 1993 Sink in to go out a photo gallery of history's bully ultraportables.

The problem is that Asus made significant compromises in the miniaturization process. For instance, in Holy Order to fit four pointer keys happening the bring dow right-hand side, Asus made the right Shift key smaller than the left one. Most users will need to retrain themselves to use the left Shift key lest they hazard perpetually striking the pointer keys by mistake (though one Eee user has posted a software fix that really turns the right Shift into the Up Arrow key).

The touchpad is sensitive and sturdy, but I had to really mash the touchpad push down to get it to click, especially when I was typing with the laptop in my lap. Also, because a mateless touchpad surface acts every bit both the left and the right-handed "mouse" button -- without a break, visible line of descent or other demarcation in the middle -- it was sometimes hard to tell whether the Eee didn't answer because I didn't press out hard enough or because my finger was too close to the intervening.