handyfloss

I just posted about the abundance of laptops in the conference I am attending this week. Now I feel like comenting about my experience with the Asus eeePC 901 I acquired some weeks ago.

I have seen a couple other eeePCs, a black 9xx one, and a 7xx one. Apart from these, most other computers are laptops, not [[netbooks]]. I actually expected to find more, and for a plethora or reasons. There are some pretty small Vaios around, but only they compete in terms of size and weight with the eeePC. Not even the Macs. Not even the MacBook Airs that I have seen. Yes, the screen of the eeePC is tiny, but I would hate carrying around those monsters just to have a big screen on the road.

Secondly, my battery can last for 6h of work. Since I only use it during the breaks, and intermittently during the talks (closing the lid to suspend it when not in use), I can easily use it the whole day without plugging it at all. Other people can’t live w/o plugs. In 3.5h this morning, I spent less than 30% of the battery.

Thirdly, there is the price. I would expect that the Vaios I mention above cost easily 5-6 times more than my sub-300-euro jewel. The other laptops are probably cheaper, but still in the range 2-3x the price of my laptop. This is not negligible! I have no functionality missing, I can do everything the others do, but at a fraction of the price, a fraction of the space in my bag, and at a fraction of the weight on my back when transporting, and knees on using.