The One With Goodbye Armada, Hello Eee PC

My secondhand Compaq Armada didn’t work out as I expected. Sometimes it will open, sometimes it won’t. But when it does, I just use it to watch some videos. Although I haven’t touched it for almost a week now simply because I now have this:

It’s the Asus Eee PC 4G 701.

I would have gotten the white version but my girlfriend talked me out of it saying white is easily dirtied. Black also is, but at least it is harder to see dirt on black.

I am a copywriter and not really into heavy, techie stuff so this Eee PC, with its 4 gigabyte disk is enough for my purpose. I have a USB flash drive where I save my writings to make the remaining 1+ gig of my computer’s memory still free.

The monitor is perfect. 7 inches I believe is the smallest tolerable size for a laptop and this LCD wonder can match it up with its bigger brothers. It is bright and crisp making viewing less strenuous on the eyes.

Because I am a writer, the part of the Eee PC that made me apprehensive at first was the keyboard. It is small, no doubt about it and when I first placed my fingers on it, I felt like I was a small boy typing on a Vtech toy laptop. Surprisingly, it turned out great. While the keyboard is indeed crammed, it took me only less than 10 minutes to get adapted to it. In no time I was typing in my usual speed of 70 words per minute. Plus the keys are soft with no ‘clickity’ feel and sound.

The Eee PC is fast. Fast enough for its purpose and the programs that came with it. Mine only has the stock 512MB but it’s doing the job satisfactorily. Programs open up with a snap and I still yet to experience hanging.

There are only two things I don’t like about it. One is the touch pad. I find the clicker (or whatever you call it) too stiff that I have to exert an extra effort just to make a right or left click.

The other one is that the Eee PC heats up really fast, especially if you’re not in an air conditioned room. You can feel the heat rising up from the keyboard to your fingers as you type. And I’ve noticed that the hotter the machine is, the longer it takes to shut down.

Overall, the Eee PC is the greatest breakthrough in computers and mobile computing to be exact, for the first eight years of this century. It has its drawbacks but the flexibility and innovation that it brings to everyone is limitless. Heck, it can’t even be precisely categorized whether it’s a child’s laptop, a Third World laptop, a first-time computer user’s laptop, or even if it’s a laptop. It revolutionizes the industry that it’s creating its own category. Some say it’s a netbook or a UMPC. Whatever they finally decide to call it, the Eee PC, essentially, is a category by itself.