Love my eeepc!

Someone (thanks EWS) managed to get hold of an Asus eeePC eeepc.asus.com/uk/ portable for me just before x-mas. And it is a gem.

It is a tiny little laptop with a 7" screen that runs Linux and just works. Out of the box it found all of my various wifi networks (home and work) and with its solid state disk (i.e. fast and no moving parts to break) it is quick to boot and run applications.

On the negative side, the size of the display (800x480) is a bit limiting vertically. Reading emails the "preview pane" is only a few lines deep, which is OK, but of course so many emails expect a longer page length and have the "if you can't read this email..." at the top which means you have to open every email to read it. I will be looking for a new email client to address this.

The other annoyance so far is the lack of a bluetooth stack. It would be perfect to be able to sit on a commuter train and collect email, surf the web etc. via a mobile, I will try and do it via a cable, but it's not the same. tnkgrl has done the hardware hack of soldering one onto the motherboard (tnkgrl). Which is attractive given that there seem to be problems using a USB dongle, and I had a quick try at using a broadcom based Belkin one. Given time I will try a bit harder.

But I have to say that for the price it it absolutely great.