KEY POINTS:
Asus has already sold out of its cut-price, open-source laptop, the Eee PC in Australian retailers.
Dick Smith seems to have reasonably good supply of the laptops here - a quick ring around of stores revealed that stock levels range from three in inner city stores to 17 at Manukau. They apparently are selling fast - a typical Dick Smith store usually orders in five at a time and they sell in three to four days.
So what's the appeal in this Eee PC? Well, I guess it's that for the price of a high-end mobile phone (the Eee PC sells for $599), you can get a portable computer that will do much of what the average computer user wants - surf the web, create documents, play games, edit and manage photos.
It's not the most powerful laptop on the market but it's not aimed at power users. The Eee PC is trying to do something else - get easy-to-use, highly-portable computers into the hands of average computer users with a particular appeal to students and computer novices.
Having said that, the blurb on the Dick Smith website aims the Eee PC directly at people like me: "Indeed, for journalists, photographers and other professionals who need to use a computer in the field to create, to communicate and to collaborate with other colleagues, the Eee PC's combination of power, extreme portability and rugged build makes it the ideal computing solution," the advertising guff reads.
The Eee PC has been getting largely good reviews. I had a good look at one recently and was impressed at the form factor - it's definitely in the "sub-notebook" category of devices which are ideal for carting around in your bag - it weighs just 920 grams.
The 4GB solid state drive is a touch on the small side but allows for quick loading of applications. If you stick to the applications you're currently using and back-up files to the web or an external drive, say a 2GB USB memory stick, you should be able to work with 4GB.
The Eee PC is shipping with a customised version of Linux, complete with Open Office, but you can run Windows XP on it. It will be interesting to see what sort of leg-up the Eee PC and computers like it give Linux in the consumer space.
Other specs for the Eee PC include: 512MB of memory, an Intel Celeron processor, Wi-Fi networking, Ethernet port, built-in web camera, external card reader and three hours battery life.
Would I buy one? Probably not, I just invested in a Dell XPS M1330 which has 4GB of memory alone and a 250GB hard drive. But I'd seriously consider it as a Christmas present for my increasingly tech-savvy mother, who just wants to check her email, do some Googling and write a letter or two.
The portability is its major drawcard - the Eee PC does this extremely well. It reminds me of one of those sub notebooks I always used to see in Akihabara, Tokyo's electronics district, but that never came to New Zealand.
Pint-sized laptops on sale here have largely been the domain of Sony and Toshiba and they've sold at a premium. The Eee PC challenges that model, which is great for laptop users in general.
Has anyone bought an Eee PC? Keen to hear any feedback on the little device.
