Asus Eee PC in Blush Pink

Knowing my addiction to pink technology, you might imagine that I couldn’t resist the pink Eee, and you’d be right. My pink 4G Asus Eee PC arrived two days ago — happy Valentine’s day to me! I love this little critter already, and my better-half was so impressed that he’s thinking of getting one too (probably not pink though).

The ASUS Eee PC (pronounced “E P C”) is a tiny little ultraportable notebook computer in the $299 to $399 price range. The display is 7″ diagonal, the entire thing measures about 9″ x 6.5″ x 1.5″ — as you can see in the photos, it’s about half the size of my 13″ Vaio — and it weighs just two pounds. This is going to be a real pleasure to travel with, and does everything my big, heavy work-issued Dell laptop does.

The Eee was developed jointly by Intel and ASUSTeK based on Intel’s Classmate PC project, but for the consumer market. What makes it different from other ultraportables is that it uses a solid-state SSD flash drive (available in 2G, 4G, and 8G) instead of a mechanical hard drive, so it is much less susceptible to shock damage, it boots faster, and consumes less power/battery. There is an SD card slot so the memory is expandable to the limit of current SD technology. I ordered an 8G card with mine, for a total of 12G storage space, although the OS uses a bit of that. The processor is a 900MHz Intel Celeron M ULV 353, underclocked to 630MHz. RAM on the model I got is just 512 MB, but it’s easily upgradeable to 2G — for a cost of about $75, this is something I will probably do soon. Other hardware includes an integrated VGA webcam and hi-def speakers, 3 USB ports (more than my Vaio), and connectors for VGA, ethernet, headphone, and mic. It is also 802.11 wireless-equipped.

As for the operating system, the Eee PC arrives loaded with a customized Xandros Linux install, which has an “Easy Mode” tabbed interface. I have upgraded mine to include the KDE Advanced Desktop Mode, which looks more like a Windows interface with two switchable desktops, but I haven’t decided which I like better. I do know that I’ve wanted to play with Linux for years now, so this is a great opportunity for that. The Eee PC also contains the drivers needed to load Windows XP, but I’m not sure why I would do that. Alternate Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, Gnome, and Fedora, can be loaded via the console if desired.

More than 40 applications are included, most of which are open-source and licensed under GPLv2. Pre-loaded software includes Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office, a PDF reader, Messenger, Skype, a dictionary, a notes app, anti-virus, media management for photos, music and video, a media player, a sound recorder, and several games. There are dedicated icons on the Easy Mode desktop for Internet radio, Google Docs, iGoogle, and Wikipedia.

Admittedly I am still in the honeymoon phase, but I haven’t been disappointed at all. I did a lot of homework before buying, so I pretty much knew what to expect. The small keyboard will take some getting used to, but if I can type on my iPhone, surely I can type on the Eee. This smart little powerhouse picks up wireless networks flawlessly, and recognized my 8G SD card, USB mouse, and USB flash drive right away. So far I’ve set two wireless networks to connect on startup, installed Advanced Desktop Mode, and even installed a new (pink) color scheme. Not to be too much of a nerd but…w00t!

Tagged as: Eee PC, netbook, Pink