I’ve never been a fan of laptops. They’re fiddly, annoying and why bother with something inferior when you’ve got a nice beefy desktop capable of doing anything.

Don’t get me wrong, I see the practical use for them but personally I’ve never had the need for one and have avoided getting one ‘just because’.

Last week when I broke the Liberty League NSW Dept of Fair Trading story my internet went down whilst I was writing and hadn’t come back up by the time I’d finished the post. Whilst I did manage to get the post published remotely, driving home I couldn’t help but notice how annoying it was to use somebody elses computer to publish.

For starters I didn’t have access to my image editing programs which meant a thirty second watermark job took me nearly half an hour in MSpaint. On top of this I wasted time on the internet searching for an easier solution first as I didn’t want to have to bother with paint.

Then there was the fact that if I wanted to do any editing to the post it would be on someone elses machine and the fact that post publishing I’d have to wipe my tracks. Not that I have anything to hide but it’s a habit of mine to wipe browser histories on other people’s computers and to leave them clean.

Any guy will tell you it’s a nightmare trying to track down a particular site you visited a few weeks back when your history is cluttered with 38,000 celebrity gossip and Hello Kitty websites (thanks girls).

So anyway, I’m on holidays as of today and am heading off on a roadtrip for a while in the mini. At first I was worried about being away from OzSoapbox for so long but then the idea of a laptop started to creep into my conciousness.

A few days ago I decided on an Asus Eee PC netbook and set off to MSY to purchase one. The following is a review from someone who dislikes laptops (or netbooks or whatever they’re calling them now) vehemently.

I first saw an EEE PC sometime last year when I was sitting in on one of my then girlfriend’s university lectures. I remember seeing it and wondering when laptops got that small, it actually looked a bit like a toy and if it wasn’t for the fact I could see Windows running on it, I’d probably have assumed it was.

I don’t need much in a laptop. I’m not going to be playing games on it or doing any huge multimedia editing or anything really that’s CPU intensive. Having said that I didn’t want something that ran like dogs balls either.

Size was also a big concern for me, I mean I can get the internet and check my email on my N95 but I’d rather not be typing blog posts on it.

The Asus 1000 HE netbook comes in black, is compact, has a 9.5 hour battery life, a 10″ screen, is wireless capable and features a 92% sized keyboard (92% of the standard keyboard size).

Sold.

I don’t plan on using this netbook outside of blog posts when I’m not at home but in setting it up over the last few days I have found it handy to sit on my coffee table. From here I can respond to emails and keep an eye on OzSoapbox without having to get up and use my desktop machine.

The 1000 HE comes with a ton of rubbish that you’re probably never going to use and will delete shortly after starting the pc up for the first time. MS Office student, Norton Security and some other crap come with it but they are all easily removed.

To install what I wanted I simply networked the Eee PC to my desktop and shared the desktops dvd drive. This worked a treat.

Using the 1000 HE isn’t as nice as a desktop but it’s definitely passable. If typing on my pc is like getting a really good handjob and using my N95 to type is like humping a cactus, using the Eee PC falls somewhere inbetween but definitely closer to the desktop experience (getting a hand job from a cactus?).

I have pretty big hands so my biggest worry was using the Eee PC would mean that I wouldn’t able to touch type fast without thinking. Thankfully I’m happy to report that despite my large hands typing on the 1000 HE is easy. Occasionally I do hit two keys at once but I’ve only been using it a few days and I’m sure I’ll adjust soon enough.

I’m not a big fan of carrying a separate mouse around so I’ll be using the touch pad on the netbook. Tracking wise it’s fine and easy enough to use although the pre-installed software Elantech has some annoying options you’re probably going to want to disable.

Whilst gestures like the two finger scroll are unbelievably responsive and handy, gestures like the double tap as a double click or zooming in by moving two fingers closer to eachother are ridiculously easy to do unintentionally.

All in all I wound up disabling all of the additional gestures apart from the scroll (two fingers on the pad moving in a sliding motion up or down is hard to accidentally trigger).

The 1000 HE comes with 1gb of DDR2 memory which I’ve read is quite easy to upgrade to 2gigs. As of yet I haven’t done this and I’ve found that 1gig of ram seems to be enough to power a browser, Youtube videos etc. quite comfortably.

Storage also isn’t an issue with 160gb of hard drive space. There is also some online storage thing called Eee Storage but I believe that’s a subscription based service so I didn’t bother with it.

One problem I’m kind of concerned about is the fact that the netbook comes with a recovery package on a CD. The 1000 HE itself doesn’t have a cd drive and the manual states that to run the recovery disc you need to plug in an external drive.

Currently I am using the drive on my desktop to install stuff on but should my Eee PC ever completely die on me I’m kind of not sure how I’ll go about fixing it, seeing as I don’t own an external cd drive and all.

I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it but it does seem somewhat worrying. Catastrophic failure in a pc is rare but when it happens you want to be able to wipe the drive and re-install the OS quickly. Without access to an optical drive I’m not sure how that’s going to be possible on an Eee PC.

Battery life is a very decent 9.5 hours and possibly longer in the power saver mode. I couldn’t really notice a difference in power saver mode so I’ll just run that while I’m on the road. 9.5 hours of battery life is more then enough to do some websurfing, blog admin and possibly write a post.

While the 1000 HE Eee PC isn’t something I’d want to use fulltime as a pc (although it makes a decent enough temporary backup should my desktop go down) it seems to be the perfect solution to writing blog posts whilst on holiday or out and about.

It’s small and light enough to carry with you and comes with all the features of a full sized laptop. Durability wise I don’t think I’ll have any issues as it appears to be well made although I get the feeling it’d shatter into a thousand pieces if I ever dropped it.

As of today OzSoapbox is officially in holiday mode. I haven’t scheduled any pre-written content so any content I post up will be coming to you live on location from wherever I am at the time. I’m crossing my fingers nothing catastrophic happens but if the last few days are any indication, the Eee PC should be more than up to the task of my online admin while I’m away.

The Asus Eee PC 1000 HE is highly recommended if anyone’s looking for a mobile blogging solution.


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