{"id":161,"date":"2008-04-12T09:19:09","date_gmt":"2008-04-12T09:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/?p=161"},"modified":"2008-04-12T09:19:09","modified_gmt":"2008-04-12T09:19:09","slug":"quick-review-of-the-asus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/quick-review-of-the-asus\/","title":{"rendered":"Quick review of the Asus"},"content":{"rendered":"

From a post I made over at Horizons Unlimited <\/a>– these are my intial thoughts after using the Asus as a primary machine for a week whilst being away – full review to follow in a month once I’ve used it properly.<\/p>\n

—————————–<\/p>\n

\"My<\/a>Okay so a quick update before the full review gets going – I’m using the ‘wee beastie’ as my primary machine whilst I’m away with work at the moment – so it’s getting heavily used each day.<\/span>I’ve been scared about messing with the OS too much as I’m away from another machine that will help me fix it – but I have updated all the software and run the advanced mode – had a little explore of Xandros as a distro and played with it’s more esoteric features.<\/span><\/p>\n

OS<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>– Xandros is a bitch if you’re used to more power and flexibility in your OS, it’s perfect for the Eee, but it’s going as soon as I get a chance to flash to Ubuntu – YMMV depending on your computer know-how and it’s not something I’d recommend for the feint of heart. The boot time on Ubuntu if done properly is only 5 seconds longer than Xandros – worth the wait IMHO.<\/p>\n

Build quality<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>– fantastic, very sturdy little machine, been thrown in and out of my bag all week with no visible abuse – comes with a handy little neoprene bag to keep it’s beautiful baby blue cover nice and pristine – no use on the motorbike yet.<\/p>\n

Keyboard<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>– takes some getting used to, and even after a week (I’m a touch typist) there’s no illusion that I’ll be putting out 20 page documents – but I can type at about 80% of my usual speed and for blog posts, forums and email that’s sufficient.<\/p>\n

Wi-Fi<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>– works like a charm – in easy mode and advanced mode alike it finds and connects exactly like a windows machine, but perhaps not as simply as a Mac – easy to see what’s going wrong if it can’t connect and direct comparison between an IBM thinkpad and MacBook Pro show it sees the same number of connections, it is a little over-optimistic about signal strength though.<\/p>\n

Web cam<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>– what do you expect? It’s not as wonderfully clear as an iSight on the Mac, but then again it’s perfectly useable in everything except very strong back light – perfectly sufficient for Skype (once you’ve installed the Skype update).<\/p>\n

Storage<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>– I have the 4gb version and was left with a little over a gig after the OS instal – that’s a little tight but after using if for a week I’ve not had any problems – docs are quite small when saved in Open Office format (it ships with open office, but you can save the docs as MS Office should you wish), the video I download I’m dumping to my cameras 2gb SD card and I’m leaving my photos on the camera SD card, uploading directly to flickr.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The built in SD card reader is well placed, it takes a while to soften up a little – I was slightly worried about how stiff if was when first using it – but no damage to the cameras SD card as it’s been in and out all week. If you’re going to run Windows I’d suggest you install it to a sep SD card or a USB memory stick.<\/p>\n

I’m going to be buying an\u00a0<\/span>8gb SD card from Amazon – \u00a314.53<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>– to leave in there to store videos \/ photos etc if I really need them – but frankly I don’t think that’s going to be an issue.<\/p>\n

Sound<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>– the in-built speakers it ships with are not going to power your house party, but they’re perfectly useable if it’s quiet and you’re on your own – you’ll probably want to plug in some headphones though, and the volume from those if perfectly sufficient.<\/p>\n

These are my initial thoughts and I’m sure they’ll shift as I play a little more – I’ll post here as I discover new stuff that may help others – my next step is too see if I can mess around with short AVIs I’ve shot on the stills camera to do video podcasting whilst on the road…..<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From a post I made over at Horizons Unlimited – these are my intial thoughts after using the Asus as a primary machine for a week whilst being away – full review to follow in a month once I’ve used it properly. —————————– Okay so a quick update before the full review gets going – … Continue reading “Quick review of the Asus”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asus","category-reviews-gear"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelondonbiker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}