Posts Tagged ‘UMPC’

The Asus Eee PC I ordered from Newegg arrived yesterday morning.  I bought this for my soon-to-be seven year old son.  I have to admit that it is hard for me to let it go.  Suddenly I feel stupid for having spent almost three times as much for my Kohjinsha.  Granted the Kohjinsha does much more; it has a swivel touch screen, more drive space, built in Bluetooth, etc., but I am quite envious.  The first difference other than price that I noticed is the feel of the keyboard.  The keys of the Eee PC are solid; the kohjinsha’s feel like Chiclets.  It frequently doesn’t respond to my typing.  Not so with the Eee PC.  It is a joy to type on and so far my hands haven’t interfered with the touch pad.  On some laptops (e.g. my Kohjinsha) this has been a frustrating problem.  I accidentally touch the pad and my cursor skips to another line.  The included programs cover just about everything I would want to do on a PC.  There are some things like the RSS viewer setup that I haven’t got to work yet. I think that is because I am not familiar with Mozilla Thunderbird. 

I do have some disappointments.  First, the Eee PC gets quite warm. I was hoping that it would be much cooler, more like the Samsung Q1.  The webcam is great, but right now it doesn’t really serve a purpose.  I was hoping to use it in Yahoo! messaging, but this is not supported in Pidgin, and although planned, it’s quite likely (from what I read on the Pidgin support page) it may never be added.  Asus promises that the webcam will work with the next Skype upgrade, but what about the rest of us that don’t use the application?  Hopefully, Asus will add webcam support to Pidgin or create a program that does.  I read on the Asus support site that if Windows XP is installed the webcam will work with messaging programs.  I’m considering changing the OS, but I need to know a bit more about how Windows behaves on the Eee PC. So basically I am not brave enough yet.

 So is it worth $400?  If you need something to complement your laptop or something that’s really portable but you can’t afford a UMPC, then yes it is.  I think that Asus should have never announced a $200 price point.  If they hadn’t I think more people would be receptive to the price.  Tomorrow I let you know how my son feels about the Eee PC.