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A colleague of mine asked me to keep a lookout for the new Asus EEE PC. After hearing about it and looking it up, I was quite curious as to how it looked like and performed as well. Unfortunately, there weren’t any display units available at the PC Fair for me to play with. My colleague told me that there were units available at Mid Valley but even the shop there has sold them out. I was rather disappointed at that. I guess I’ll just have to settle with the reading the specs, listening to the descriptions, and using my own imagination.

The guys manning the Asus booth on the notebook level of the PC Fair described the EEE PC as a smaller more compact version of the ultra slim Asus U1F in the pearly whites of the Asus F8P.

The EEE PC has a small 7″ screen, a miniscule keyboard, and weighs in at a super light 0.92kg. The standard package is powered by an Intel Celeron 900MHz (or was it 700MHz?) CPU with 512MB of RAM and 4GB of SD storage. There are variants with with smaller and larger memory and storage. It is sufficient to effectively run the Linux OS. Although it is Windows XP compatible, I suggest against it since the standard XP install has a foot print of about 2GB which eats into the available storage. It comes with built in WiFi and USB ports.

Only a little larger than a handheld, it’s supposed to be the next gen PDA. While I don’t quite think so, I think it’s still fun to have. The cool thing about it is the small light weight form factor and the novelty of owning a unit. But other doing some basic web surfing and a little something for the kids to play with, I don’t see it as good for much else.

I would think that a 7″ keyboard would be too small for my fat stubby fingers but perfect for the ladies and younger ones. I’ll probably have to poke at it using a pen or stylus. Too bad it doesn’t have a touch screen. Similarly, the 7″ screen would make reading long articles difficult, albeit a little more friendly on the eyes than your average PDA. To be fair, the unit can do almost everything a normal PC can. Considering that my aging desktop at home is only running on a Celeron 1.1GHz with 256MB RAM, the specs for the EEE PC is pretty decent.

In actual truth, the EEE PC is not the first light weight PC on the market vying for the PDA market. The Sony VAIO U-series was available 2 years ago. The only downside about that unit is that it was going for thrice the retail price of the EEE PC!

The EEE PC is going for the introductory price of RM1299.00 during the PC Fair period. They are taking pre-orders for the EEE PC which will be available early January. The price is set to increase to RM1499.00 after the PC Fair has completed its tour. If you want to get your hands on an EEE PC, now would be the best time, before the price hike.

Personally speaking, I’m quite undecided on whether the EEE PC is a worthy buy. Again, the novelty factor plays a big part. That and the fact that the EEE PC is relatively feather light, ultra slim, and really very portable! I probably would buy a unit if I had money to spare. It will probably act as a backup unit that I can toss around when I’m on the go. Would be great if I’m on the road a lot as well. Must resist the temptation.