JaniceHaruhist

The EEE PC is faster than the Mini, but how fast does a CPU have to be to run Pidgin and Firefox? I'll take a keyboard that I can actually use and a screen that makes stuff look good over a few extra MHz any day.

elgilicious

tnkgrl

My Seagate FreeAgent Go 160GB hard drive solves my storage problems without being a cumbersome brick in my backpack.

electrikecho

Andham

Mark Wilson

Ok, Yes the keyboard is great, but the touchpad SUCKS. Too small, in the wrong place, and a pain to use. At that, you're going to be hard pressed to use it while you wait for the thing to even boot. The Eee runs rings around it. Mind you I'm comparing XP to Vista but you'd think with a 7200 RPM drive and 2gb ram it'd be somewhat sprightly. NOT IN THE LEAST. Running Vista it chugs, it wheezes, and everything just has this lag to it that screams 'underpowered'. The Eee, even running Compiz or XP never felt this sluggish. The screen IS much much much better though, but Asus is about to fix that, aren't they!

My verdict? I'd rather deal with the keyboard on the Eee than tote this thing around. It's just too far over the size/weight line to fit the Libretto-sized utility-book segment. Bring on the Eee 900! As for the HP? RMAing it on Monday.

Buford T. Justice

I'm glad Asus started the trend. It was good for the industry. But that doesn't mean the Eee is the end all be all product. With competition coming from major companies like HP and Lenovo, we should all HOPE that better systems than the Eee are on the horizon. Because the Eee 4G is a good system that took a lot of important steps. But it's simply not what the mass public should settle for.

Mark Wilson

You are truly an exception to the rule.

It's like kitchen knives. You can buy dozens of types, each supposedly "best" for a purpose. But people get by with one or two their moms gave them from the drawer.

pyleg

So, it has replaced my desktop for 90% of my computing tasks. I'd call that a "real" laptop.

Once you install XP on it, you're all set.

To refute the reviewer's comment about $400 being "too good to be true", he's right. I had to spend $15 on a gig of ram, and $30 for a 4GB SDHC card. I already had XP. So, yes, I actually had to pay $444.99. I got swindled!

darex

That means that I also have a personal machine everywhere I go. That's where I can have things available that I can't/won't put on a work machine, like personal music, and movies (*cough*bittorrent*cough), and photos. In another use entirely, it's also small enough to fit in my camera bag, and be used to dump pictures from full SD cards to a portable HD wherever I happen to be; and also to preview pictures on a slightly larger screen (than the camera's).

So anyway, I don't need to decide which of two to carry, I just bring both, and with a real minimal weight/size penalty for the Eee. It's only when I have a special requirement, or am going away for the weekend or something, that I have to decide whether to bring something else as well.

Mandatory_Field

My point is this... the EEE is a real laptop. Prior to its release, I purchased all manner of Pocket PCs and handheld PCs, hoping to hit that sweet spot of high performance and Windows compatibility. None of these gadgets ever came CLOSE to the EEE in those two categories. It was incredibly difficult to find compatible software for my past ultraportables... now, it's nearly as hard finding software that WON'T work on my EEE.

It's easy to criticize the system for its small screen, keyboard, and hard drive, but the EEE utterly buries anything that had come before it. I suspect that the gap in performance between the EEE and Mini-Note is not nearly as wide.

ManekiNeko

baandoptager

I think the best thing about the Mini-Note coming out is that it's demonstrated that cheap ultraportables can have a solid build and not just plastic. It's almost like Apple made it. So it should raise the bar on that front.

Sockatume

FinalValgas

esh-satril

The number of people who want to decide every morning which of two laptops to carry is pretty small.

pyleg

man in gauze is king ramses II, silly.

jsin1276

Decisions, decisions...

Sleeper_Service

Benitocarmona

But I still see somewhat of a niche use for the Mini-Note; it seems that it compromises too much to be a laptop and not enough to compete with other subnotebooks.

In a way, I can also understand the PSP/DS comparison. The PSP is a better console; the DS is a better portable. The Mini-Note is a better computer (although with a VIA chip, I'm not too sure), but the Eee is a better subnotebook.

The Macbook Air in my opinion faces the same issue as the Mini-Note in a more pronounced way; too expensive to justify as a secondary computer, but not featured enough to be your main computer.

Guizzy

Nahh, I can't really: I'm sure that it's a nice and desirable machine. Mind you I'm sure that an Atom dual-core will beat the Via in terms of performance -- and possibly battery consumption. But once the price starts edging up into the twice-as-much-as-an-Eee category, it begins to make less economic sense:

You know that apocryphal $400 laptop that everyone posts about as soon as there is any mention of the Eee? You know, the one with the 15" mid-resolution screen, 120GB+ hard drive and built-in optical drive that you can get for the same price as an Eee? Well when you can have the best of both worlds and get both that AND an Eee for the same price as the HP, why bother with the HP?

The Eee is 1/2 the weight? That makes it more likely that you have it with you more often, when you can just throw it into a bag and forget about it (fugeddaboudit -- a translation for American readers). The really useful computer is the one that you have when you need one. On the other hand, the larger computer would give you the non-cramped screen, keyboard and storage; for more stationary and limited mobile computing. For when you actually need to type for more than an occasional 20 minutes here or there.

You would actually have to compromise less if you gave yourself those two highly divergent choices at once, rather than starting with the already compromised HP -- bigger and heavier than the Eee so not as portable, but more cramped and less capable than a cheap 15" "standard" laptop. And expensive enough that you can get both of them for pretty much the same price, as the HP. As an alternative choice, I'd have to say that getting two discrete devices for the same price would be the better choice, delivering more flexibility.

When they can make a really powerful computer in that form factor that IS powerful enough to be your main computer -- and it will cost much more than this, and may not be that long in coming -- then it will be worth considering the single and expensive over the multiple and cheap.

Mandatory_Field

Dillenger69

Playstation

baandoptager

Mark Wilson

aural

jrghoull

jrghoull

Mark Wilson

FrancesTheMute

FrancesTheMute

takemetoyourtoaster

i sense a battlemodo

MrBlahBlah

Senshi34

schwnj

mangamonster

weatherman

sfokevin

justinpe

foureight84

Lester56

phryed

kibets

Totalfixation

Arsenal6

enine

daftrok

Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish

"K! Come on, K! I feel like I'm gonna break the damn thing!"

DaOtter

I'm pretty stoked for one of these.

chucklebuck

demiwashere