Monday, May 05, 2008

Eee PC

I was lucky enough to be given an Eec PC last Christmas. It has taken me a while to get used to it, since its form factor is such that it isn't practical as a daily work tool. However it is so compact and lightweight that it is perfect for when I travel and I don't want to take a full size laptop with me. For example I take it to the tutorials for the MBA programme I am attending and use it to make notes which I can then quickly upload to my Powermac when I get home. Similarly I am typing this entry on said Eee PC from a hotel room in California where I am currently on holiday.

The Eee PC runs Xandros Linux, which is easy to use (that said I still prefer Ubuntu on my home server), though the shipped distro needs a bit of tweaking to get it to make the most of the hardware (I had to recompile the kernel with some additional settings). One drawback is that there are quite a few apps and config applets that aren't small form factor aware - this means that only part of the window is displayed and there are no scroll bars, so there is a certain amount of guessing about what some of the fields may say!

Apparently it is also possible to install Windows XP on the Eee PC, but the question is: why would you want to? :-)

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