Happy so far... (ASUS Eee PC 1000HE)

A few months back, when I started working on the .Net Micro Framework “Dare to Dream Different” contest, I started thinking about Netbooks.  The longest time before that I always wanted the biggest and fastest laptop I could get.  But the thinking changed when I thought about the fact if I won the contest I would need to pack up my project and a laptop… and being the photo geek that I am I would want at least one of my cameras with me as well.  Now stuffing a 15.4 inch convertible tablet, dSLR, and a CD binder sized project case into a backpack and jumping on an airplane sounds like a good bit of work.  (The dSLR is pretty much required now… I missed out on some great photos when I was in AZ simply because I only took a pocket point an shoot.)  Anyway, thinking that I wanted to scale down i started looking closely at the netbooks.

I had been hearing about them for several years now but I just wasn’t happy with how underpowered they were and the fact the only option of the OS being Linux (again 2 years ago) was a turn off.   (Hey, I’m a .Net/Windows developer now so quit complaining.) One of my friends (Allen… coding/support geek) got one of the original ASUS Eee PCs when they first came out.  And he seemed pretty happy with it.  Then recently another friend (Jonathan, support/photography geek) bought one of the latest models and seemed pretty happy with it.

I went to the Indy 500 race with Jonathan and got a chance to check out his computer.  I found the keyboard to be a little small, but very functional.  The next weekend I helped Allen with some source code and got a chance to checkout a few of the Acer netbooks.  They were pretty nice as well but just didn’t have some of the features of the Asus (and to be honest, I got burned by Acer a few years ago so now I avoid their gear were possible.)

One of the biggest concerns I had with the netbooks was the low power and small screen.  Being a developer I need as much screen realstate and horsepower  that I can get (Visual Studio is fantastic… but it’s not lightweight by any means.)    Reading review after review of raving fans I decided to push all in and buy one.  I decided to get the Asus Eee PC 1000HE.  The array of hardware that is included is very impressive: 10.2 Inch LCD (very bright), Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, WiFi 802.11n (2.4GHz), 3 USB Ports, 1 VGA, 160GB Hard disk drive, and an “all day” battery (up to 9.5 hours.)  I was a little disappointed that the only memory configuration was 1GB of RAM so i ordered a 2GB DIMM at the same time (largest amount of memory that is supported.)

The netbook comes with Star Office installed, but after being a Microsoft fanboy convert… that didn’t last long.  Now I have Office 2007 and Visual Studio 2008 up and running.  It get’s a little sluggish with Outlook, but over all it performs very well.  Having sat down and play around with some code as well as surfing the net and sending emails, I find this little device to be pretty good.  It won’t replace my monster desktops… but they wont slip in the front pocket of my camera bag either.  

If you are looking for a netbook… check out the Asus line.  Small, yet powerful enough while on the road.

-Matt