I'm waiting to see how well the ASUS Eee PC turns out. There should be models on display at Best Buy within the next couple of weeks, so I'm hoping to play with one before I buy.
Pros: Ships with Linux, Solid state storage, Ultra portable, Good battery life (for weight), Supposedly rugged enough to let kids use, Almost cheap enough to be disposable.
Cons: Light on CPU power, Fairly tight storage space, Portability == small screen and keyboard and no CDROM drive.
Price is anticipated to run from $250-$399, depending on how much storage/RAM you want (cheapest model also excludes the web cam).
I plan to use this laptop for web browsing, word processing, network troubleshooting (@ work), and taking notes in college. I can always remote into my high-powered desktop for CPU intensive stuff (like compiles), extra storage, and CD/DVD burner access. I wouldn't do gaming on a laptop anyway, my desktop is sufficient.
~Bradley
Oren Beck wrote:
I do not need the full milspec explosion/waterproof models.. Just hopefully minor drop and knocked over drink resistance to protect my $500 ballpark investment. Much as I have been looking at CF-51 etc semirugged or the harder cased CF-71 family variants the $ to hardness trade offs seem dicey. As in perhaps I just should get a $399 low end from somewhere new and get the no quibbles even broken screen warranty . My average use profile is web browsing, light commercial use of OpenOffice and some music playing. I do not need shooter game frame rates etc. Battery life and stability are more important to me as examples. Beryl would be nice but not essential as a target max demand application. DVD/CD burner is a minimum optical drive. Within that overview recommends will be appreciated SO folks, if you were going to spend $500 on a new or Ebay sourced laptop what would it be?
Kclug mailing list [email protected] http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug