Eee PC

Todo

Buy two ultra high speed SD card.

Buy one USB key

Buy 7″ touch screen

Install Linux and XP onto SD card

Install touch screen

Story

I finally caved and bought Asus’s Eee PC, giving in to my lust for gadgetry. The addition of a laptop to my life is long past due, because I couldn’t justify it enough to get it. This time though, I figured that my dream laptop won’t materialize for another 5 years, so I might as well get a cheap one till then. Let me warn you first, that this post will praise this laptop so much that you’ll feel goose bumps coming out of your skin. It is perfect for my current needs.

Physical

It’s about the size of a hard cover book. Or in geek term, about the same size of 1.5 CDs lined up, which is a lot smaller than I originally thought. It’s great for people who value portability, but a drag for those who are looking for a powerful portable computer with the biggest screen possible. In essence, whether or not you like its size depends on how you plan on using your portable laptop.

With this size, it basically replaces the notebooks I always tote around with me to jog down random inspirations. It’s small enough to slip into a large trench coat pocket and un-obstructive enough that you can bring it to the can with you at work or take advantage of the 6 minutes wasted beside the microwave.

Hackability

There is a whole wiki dedicated to hacking eeePC. The ones I want are to install a touch screen, upgrade my RAM and boot from SD card. I’d say that this laptop is 100% hackable and has an active community support for it along with picture tutorials of how to gut the laptop.

Plan

The plan is to integrate the eee PC into one of my 2008 projects to create a personal mobile platform. The eee PC will act as the terminal to login, send command etc when the web server does the storage. Since I am running Linux on both I have to study and implement every path in this setup.

Successor

Since I’ve never followed the tech craze, I usually only upgrade to fufill a need. eee PC will allow me to recoup the time lost while waiting for something. It will only be replaced when someone can come out with a tablet PC with multi touch screen that can do Photoshop.