[Asus Eeee]

I finally chose the Asus, because all other things being equal, the HP cost over 100 dollars more, with near identical specs and came installed with Windows Vista, that I would have to downgrade.  The MSI Wind shipped with 2G of ram, and Windows XP installed, but does not have 802.11n.  The other two models do.  And yes, that matters in my world.

So, my Asus Eee will arrive black, with 1G of ram.  (Blue was sold out in some venues and a hefty premium in others.) And a chip will arrive separately.  In my opinion, it’s significantly less hassle to pop out 1G and pop in 2G, than to change the operating system.  But that’s just me.  And I must have XP for some of the work I do.

[asus ram]

Also, the HP 2140 has been discontinued, making it near impossible to find at this moment, since previous model discontinued and stock that is left is only available at one retailer.  And the new model has yet to be released. 

My very first thought was to purchase the Dell Mini 10.  But it doesn’t have a ram upgrade available, costs top dollar, and my own experiences with Dell have been mixed.  One person called me to rave about Dell.  And another called to warn me about them.  I thank you both.

I should mention that I stopped by Best Buy, who online carries these devices.  The store had many, many varieties of netbooks.  Though not a single one of them was any of the models mentioned above.  I touched the keyboards and looked at the screens.  They haven’t changed much.  I spent years carrying laptops through airports, years fixing them, returning them, loving them and cursing them:  I pretty much know what I want.

I know also:

• I have called the ThinkPad the StinkPad for years. You can brand them Lenovo.  But I still think they stink.
• Toshiba has beautiful screens.  And they’re built like tanks.  I don’t want to carry a tank in my purse.
• HP, Dell and Sony are fancy, expensive brand names.  But Hewlett and Packard were just a couple of guys from the South Bay.  I’m not paying $150 more just because they made it.

I asked DH to weigh in on several points.  His most honest commentary was that he cannot imagine purchasing anything so small with no room for expansion.  But the netbooks appear to suite my needs. 

Exactly.

My needs and wants are this:  small, highly portable, wi-fi connectivity, flash drives, XP.  DH, being a man who plays video games and doesn’t mind when his laptop and the zillion papers he piles around it weigh twenty pounds does not think that way.  I think that since I am already managing a 34 pound child, the weight of all other objects should be small or at the minimum negotiable.

One more thing to note for fellow geeks.  I run all sorts of client side dbms and cms software.  And I still never need the kind of space, power or processing speed that DH does to run his games.

Asus propaganda page linked below.

ASUSTeK Computer Inc.

Eee PC 1000HE

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• Asus Eee Day 2