New toy showed up @ work - an Asus Eee

[WalkinTarget]

So, I came into work today and we were handed a box to toy around with. All of you techno-nerds know that we love getting new toys, so we opened the box and found an Asus Eee 4gb laptop.

This is a loaner to see how it would work in an elementary environment, and my initial reaction was, geez this thing is TINY !! Our first problem with it is how to get it on our network, as we are running Novell on our network, and the OS on the Asus doesn't support the Novell client. So we may be loading another OS on it before we do anything else.

Anyone else play around with one of these things ? Offer up your impressions or suggest some software to put on it. Just this morning I had looked at an alternative, the Everex Cloudbook, so its rather interesting that this showed up today.

Added a pic for reference: http://techdigest.tv/asus-eee-pc-review.JPG

[Hammy]

Last month this guy from our Asia office came into our office with that thing.
It's his field PC and he showed me how responsive it is, etc. The ability to go to a customers' location without dragging a heavy laptop along with anything else you might need is key- Especially if you are relying on Taxis and Trams.

Gen II of this one should be out in Dec this year, and I am told that it is going to be pretty darn nice and should solve some of these problems. I heard that they will double hte memory on this thing and give it some of the stuff you are already complaining about.

These Gen I versions are exactly what you got it for. To gather response data for the Gen II device, which is already built to a certain extent.

I dont know about the Novell client, but in a cost effective environment Novell is going to be a factor. I'm now wondering how they plan to address that thanks to you.

Ping (the guy I was chatting with) said that he likes it because when he is doing a presentation, he doesnt have to worry about customers trying to see his monitor, they just cant unles they are directly in front of it.

I agree.

From my perspective- I think this is what the marketplace needs and even if it isnt successful- it makes me think of devices like the Apple Newton that failed miserably but helped the marketplace broaden the vision and create something useful.

[Dead...Again]

My boss has one. You can actually Install XP on an SD card and boot to it. That is what he normally does. It is a little sluggish when booting from the SD.
IMO the biggest drawback to these is the kb size. The keys are so small that you end up hitting extra keys. I told my boss he should glue erasers to his finger tips.
It is very small and light, though, and the wireless works well in most places.

[WalkinTarget]

We are loading Novell SuSe Linux 9 on it now, as that obviously supports the Novell client, but like I said, we have it for a week to work with it, and it will be deployed in the elementary schools where finger sizes are quite smaller than us grown ups.

We are transitioning from full labs to mobile cart labs, and these are perfect for kids, but again, we are having to rethink all of our software advice which was purely Windows based before, but with these units its all open source and free.

You end up eliminating software as a large chunk of your budget by passing on Windows and Office and using Linux and Open Office. In an elementary environment, thats a good move, as those kids don't NEED to know Office until they are at a Jr. High level.

[WalkinTarget]

Well, the experiment is over ... the Eee went back to the vendor. We then picked up an OLPC unit yesterday (One Laptop Per Child) to look at that. Yea, its the funky green thing that looks like it should have a Fisher-Price label on it somewhere.
The keyboard was even more painful to use, as the first thing I did with it was to open its word processor and start typing. But again, these are NOT for use in the Senior High or for anyone other than Elementary kids, so for them, they would love the idea of having a laptop that was more in line with their physical dimensions.