Buyers Remorse – Not here.

A few months ago I bought my Asus EEE PC 901 having waited patiently for the larger screen format to arrive it was then the proverbial treasure hunt to actually locate somewhere still in stock.

Like many other gadget purchases I was expecting a certain amount of buyers remorse to follow the acquisition. The subtle feeling that maybe the money might have been better invested or saved, but it never came. This exceptionally tiny ultra mobile has lived up to all the requirements I set forth.

Its small form factor makes it far more wife friendly and space concious which means I can move the device to and from its book shelf for storage when not in use without consequences.

The onboard linux coupled with several network connections and devices meant that it provides a more than adequate diagnostic and survey tool for my sysadmin roles.

The Office application suite has been thrown to the deep end of productive work and has churned out presentations, spreadsheets and documentation. This blog entry was itself created on the laptop whilst on a train.

The battery life is not magnanimous  but for the quick in and out trips to a client site its been strong enough to cope with the work load providing I use an ethernet cable in place of a Wireless connection.  The one downside which continues to bug me is the lack of support Adobe provide an linux users which in turn means the onbaord webcam doesnt “quite work” at the quality I would desire in on sites such as Phreadz or Ustream.

The small form factor keyboard is not the delay inducing size i was fearing and as you can see on the video it is a very workable environment for the mobile user or the adhoc sysadmin.

Would I buy it again ? Absolutely.

Thanks for reading.

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4 Comments on “Buyers Remorse – Not here.

  1. you should have a word with Steve Purkiss about a workaround on Linux which we found to get the camera working through Flash based cam apps 😉

  2. Kosso, I know exactly the one you mean but its a Workaround. Im tired of working with workarounds when we all know that its within Adobes power to sit back and make it work.

  3. How do you find the keyboard Nik? Is it a bit dodgy or does it stand up to a pounding?

  4. Great machine, great battery life at the following expense…

    Clincher for me is that the atom is at best 20-30% faster than a 5yr old Pentium-M 900 (check geekbench) which is a step backwards considering how resource intensive some sites and flash applications are these days.

    It’s a real pity that true ultra portables are still in the £1500 price bracket (Sony TZ) but if you can jump up to 1.6kg and a larger screen then maybe the BG45 is an option ? It’s got CPU grunt at the expense of battery life and only costs £370.

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