I ordered a 4G EeePC on Sunday from newegg. It arrived twenty minutes ago and I’m typing on it right now. I’m already in love and am feeling open to questions. Ask away, but be warned that I may be slow because I’m busy playing with my new toy.
Also, in anticipation of the most important question, it’s pink!
I believe I speak for the entire IT world when I say, when color is the most important feature of a computer, I will take up arms against our color coordinated overlords.
I saw one of these in a store, and was amazed at how small it was. Ridiculously impractically small. It seemed a step backward, to me.
How easy is it to type on?
It looks cute and good ratings on newegg. Compare to a full size standard keyboard, how’s the comfort factor so far? Are you migrating from a desktop PC or a laptop?
How’s the graphics? Is it getting hot?
I thought the typing would be more difficult, but it’s not. I have trouble with the right shift key, but that’s about it. My typing is more or less the same as it was before. I can type reasonably quickly without looking.
I’m happy with the graphics so far. I’ve not done much with my photos, other than look at my flickr site, but I was excited with how nice they looked.
I’m switching from a Dell Inspiron 5100 that was purchased in June 2003. It’s far less warm than that. As far as comfort, I’m curled up on the couch with the Eee balanced on one leg. It’s a little wobbly, but comfortable. There’s a noticeable lack of wrist space, but other than that, it’s a-okay.
I’ve had an 8G for a week and I’m loving it. I’m guessing that several of my colleagues will get one, too, for business travel.
GuanoLad, where’d you see it in a store? I haven’t found anywhere in the US that has them in a brick-and-mortar, though I understand that Toys R Us has them in the UK and at least one store has them in Vancouver.
MissMossie, are you digging the nice fast startup?
Sounds like the perfect laptop for a nine-year-old whose desktop PC is broken. She prefers hanging out in our den with us as well, but we don’t have the room for another full-sized desktop and most laptops are so expensive.
She’ll probably use it for surfing the internet, playing games, and art projects (she’s fond of MS Paint). Speaking of which, what applications come pre-loaded? I see it comes with Linux OS.
I’m not in the US, I’m in Australia, and saw it at a store called JB’s. But it may have been a display model, a “coming soon” sort of thing. Can’t remember. I just sort of glanced at it and then wandered away again.
The Debian world is going nuts over those. Are you on Xandros, or have you installed something else?
MissMossie Glad you are liking the Eee. I assume you have found the eeeuser website for help with any issues (installing different Linux versions, special versions of software designed for the smaller screen, etc.).
I know you didn’t ask for them, but here are my two big tips based on my two months of owning an Eee. 1. Get a USB drive or SD card for storing data/files. This is probably not as big an issue with the 4G ( I have a 2G surf and there is only 400MB of space available out of the box). 2. Look for ‘low profile’ skins or add-ins to the programs you use the most. For instance in Foxfire, I loaded an addon called littlefox that shrinks the toolbars and standard icons to small but usable size and gives more screen area for the actual websites.
Although the screen is quite clear, the web default is a little bit small first thing in the morning. In Firefox, CTRL + the scroll wheel on the mouse will toggle font sized up and down.
I think the eeeusers site is helpful (though I’ve been reading, not posting). Among all of the posts that begin “so I took the cover off and…” or “so I swapped out Xandros for a true Debian but now…” are useful hints for everyday users about finding files, updating, using programs, and identifying and managing problems.
susan, I am loving the quick boot time. I learned that ctrl - + trick quickly, that and F11 for full screen. I have seen and posted to the eeeuser forum. I felt like I was cheating on the SDMB, but I needed to find out if the eee would do what I wanted it to do.
Brown Eyed Girl, you’re most likely correct. It looks just like a shrunken down laptop, even more so than some of the fake laptops that you can buy at toy stores. There’s quite a bit of preloaded software that she might use including Open Office, FireFox, and MtPaint, which is like MSPaint on steroids. Way down at the bottom of this site there is a list of all of the included apps. It’s a lot. If you have questions about any of them, feel free to ask.
Hostile Dialect, right now, I’m running Xandros just as it’s been loaded. The eee has both an easy and an advanced mode. The easy mode has a lot of big buttons to push and a bar at the bottom that resembles the Windows bar sans start button. The advanced mode runs, more or less, like Windows. I may load the advanced mode to make some customizations which are easier from advanced, but for now I’m kind of digging the easiness of the easy mode. I doubt I’ll change the OS entirely.
wouldn’t you like to know, thanks for the tips. I already had a 300G external drive, so storage isn’t a problem. Combine that with the handful of SD cards I have for my camera and I’m good to go.
What’s the loading time for OpenOffice like? I find it pretty slow even on a desktop machine - but you’re loading from flash memory…
I’m jealous. I ordered one (from Dabs in the UK) back in Feb and the delivery date keeps getting pushed back. They’re now telling me it will be the end of April.
Mangetout, the OO Word type program took exactly ten seconds to load. I just timed opening MS Word on my Dell and it took thirty-five seconds. Needless to say, I’m happy with a ten second oad time, but I’m curious what it’s like on other machines.
kferr, that sucks. Is there any way to cancel your order and get it elsewhere?
I’ve looked around, but nobody seems to have them in stock.
kferr, you may want to look at the eeeusers forums periodically. People post when the eee has been spotted or is in stock.
Have you named it?
I haven’t named it yet. My Dell is called Peter (pronounced Pay-ter) Gustov and I’ve found that naming him has helped me develop a weird emotional attachment to him, so I’m not sure that I want to name the eee. I probably will, though. Right now, Rose is coming to mind as a name, but I don’t know. It seems too cliche for a pink computer. Peter Gustov is the boy’s name I like if I were to ever breed, so I might go with my girl’s name, Eileen Jane, for the eee. Eileen seems like it could fit.
Eee and OO?
Ah.