If the ASUS Eee PC isn’t on your holiday wish list this year than you may be left with coal in your stocking. This very special holiday season promises record low profits, increased global and domestic market uncertainty, and CEO’s left to think about how they can cut costs while maintaining productivity and sales. Computer companies like Apple, HP, Dell and Acer are finding a new consumer market with mini-laptops. While Microsoft continues changing fonts in Windows Vista and calling it Windows 7. Computer companies are betting that easier to use systems like Windows XP, OS X, and Linux on ultra portable hardware are going to be just the thing to get consumers excited about computers again. The latest company to make a dent into this new frontier is ASUS with their line of 8.9” mini-laptops. ASUS laptops come pre-installed with everything a business user needs to create documents, presentations, surf the web, and email. There is nothing additional to buy, the Windows XP version comes with Microsoft Works and the Linux version comes with Open Office. These are no toy laptops, they with come with a standard Ethernet port, WiFi, USB 2.0, SD drive, VGA port, and Solid-State Memory and amazingly start at under $300?
I have had my ASUS 900 with Linux for about 4 weeks and it is already my primary PC when away from the office. Yes, I said Linux not Windows. Let’s be brutally honest many of us make our livings working with Microsoft Windows, but the fact remains they are vulnerable to a slew of viruses and quite frankly I don’t want to get blindsided by having to buy additional licenses for the full version of Microsoft Office or be forced to register the OS over the phone every time I need to reinstall a licensed application. Why would I want to subject myself to all of that worry and headache if all I want to do is write documents, give a few presentations, and send email? And yes Open Office is compatible with the Microsoft Office suite, and so far I have been able to work back and forth between Open Office and MS Office without any issue.
Now let me be perfectly clear I am not suggesting that mini-laptops will replace Enterprise workstations, no way, they are just not robust enough to run my most intense applications and I’m not going to run Oracle or SQL on my ASUS anytime soon. I can tell you though my ASUS boots fully and is on the Internet in about 30 seconds, and it only runs on Solid-State Memory with SSD drives as small as 4 GB all the way up to 20 GB as of this writing. I can conduct business with a laptop this size. I cannot conduct business on a Blackberry or iPhone they are too small and I feel like a teenager every time I text reply to a co-worker. I’m a big boy now and I would like a professional quality keyboard and the ability to run big boy applications not just play MP3s or download ring-tones.
For those of us not looking for an office solution consider the ASUS for any of the little darlings you have at home that do nothing more than a little home work and download music all day long. Maybe consider a mini-laptop for your more computer challenged family members. Hey grandma! have I got a computer for you, there’s no start button and if you want to go to the web you click on the button that says “Web”, what could be easier? The ASUS interface, called “Easy Mode”, presents like a cell phone so that even the most novice computer user can navigate easily. The ASUS has a tough exterior and is very durable, and with no spinning disk you’re less likely to lose data if you do have an accident. And with a recovery image already stored on its own internal partition you can easily recover to your factory install in just a few simple steps. I’ve actually done the recovery install and it worked in about 15 seconds.
America it is time to rise up and tell computer companies that Windows and Macs are not the only game in town and we won’t be pushed around into being told how we do our computing. I don’t need a start button, or a piece of fruit on the front of my computer to launch an application or surf the web and I’m tired of having my intelligence insulted every time someone suggests I can do work on my phone. Well I can’t, it’s a phone, I can barely see the damn thing much less write an email or do anything remotely useful. I want to spend my money on something that can help me to do my job better than I’m doing it now, not just impress my kids or let me play the latest version of Grand Theft Auto.
And just to set the record straight “I’m not a PC”….. I’m a person with a job and I have work to do.—Tony
For more information on the ASUS EEE PC go to www.asus.com .
