05 Feb 2008
So small and thin is definitely in again for notebooks in 2008. But the rapturous reception afforded to the tiny and cheap Asus Eee PC by the PC and Linux crowd, and the swooning ranks of Apple fans when Steve Jobs unveiled the wafer-thin expensive Macbook Air are nothing new.
Along with the semi-mythical all-day battery and roll-up TFT screen, small and thin are two constantly recurring design themes in the laptop world.
Unfortunately, the road is littered with the corpses of the many failures. Remember the Mitsubishi Pedion/HP Omnibook Sojourn - still the thinnest notebooks in the world, as far as I know - the Compaq Contura Aero, or even the Zenith MiniSport? Yet every time the wave comes back, it’s confidently pronounced that technology has finally matured enough to make these miniature marvels a roaring success. The most recent wave has been the crop of ultra-mobile PCs (UMPCs) we saw a couple of years ago, but which have so far largely failed to take the world by storm.
Sadly, I still have my doubts, as I believe the problem runs much deeper than being able to cram lots of processing horsepower into a stylish chassis the size of a paperback book. But before I explain, don’t get the idea that I don’t think the Eee and Macbook Air are impressive bits of kit. They are, particularly the Asus with its incredible sub-£200 price point.
There will always be a niche of users who will kill to get their hands on a PC that fits in their jacket pocket. But the mainstream business user will never be prepared to make the compromises needed to live with these devices.
The Eee PC has miniscule amounts of storage by modern laptop standards, and a low-resolution screen that cramps your style compared to today’s high-res screens on Windows notebooks. The MacBook Air seems to have all the flaws of its ancestor, the Mitsubishi Pedion non-removable battery, hard drive and memory, plus limited expansion ports.
I think of the two, the Asus Eee has the best chance of starting something new. Versions with bigger screens, 3G and more storage are all promised, and even XP is now supported. But it’s the price that’s the killer £199 is almost petty cash territory these days, and certainly sales are reported to be impressive, although feature bloat could easily start to push up that compelling price tag.
Given that we should be trying to make PCs and laptops smaller and more efficient simply for the sake of sustainability, these products should be welcomed, but my gut feeling is that this wave will ultimately prove to be equally as transient as the previous ones.
A first class article and bang on the money. Gimmick laptops (or gadgets)can only survive on mass sales, based on usability/cost. In short professionals buy productivity.
As for the Asus:
The PC 901 and beyond will disappear without trace within a year!
Once again the tech-heads and the marketing men have got hold of a great idea and ruined it.
Why was the 700 such an enourmous success? The PRICE! A useful simple solid state portable pc with good battery life and a free OS.
It has a spec. that could have been written by a user. By someone who actually uses a portable ON BATTERIES.
What it had was needed, not 'perceived' to be what everyone wanted.
Things it doesn't need: Fast processor, short battery life, fast Internet, advanced vide/media player. huge hard drive, masses of ports. game playing, high price tag.
All the things the 901 has got! Keep it cheap, simple, and keep increasing the battery life. Also not needed: XP, Vista, OSX.
Quite rightly pointed out, it isn't as if anyone hasn't tried this size before: Toshiba, Olivetti, Psion, IBM, Sony and many other have been making (and stopped making) machines of this size for years and years. What the eee 700 had (now past tense) was a useful colour wordprocessor with email/web access. What 90% of users actually use.
Once you have to plug a portable in it is worthless, we all use our main machine, if you want to watch DVD's buy a £50 portable player.
If Asus dropped the price of the eee 700 it's sales would take off again!
Unfortunately the 700 will be dropped to make way for another £300+ toy.
Posted by: pbg 14 Jun 2008
Well, I consider myself a business user, and I just took my Eee on a business trip to the USA as an experiment.
I could read my email, I did a presentation using it, I typed documents, I accessed documents remotely, I backed files up over the net, I video-skyped with the family at home, I listened to the BBC world news in the morning, I watched films on it in the evening, I listened to mp3s on it when I was working at my desk in my hotel room.
I quickly got used to the keyboard; after a week when I returned to my regular laptop I found its keyboard felt stretched. The only thing I missed was a single key page-up and page-down.
Sure it's got a small screen, and that is the only real compromise I felt. Even so, it never got in the way of getting work done.
No it hasn't got as much storage as regular laptops, but 'miniscule' it is not. Apart from the inbuilt 4GB, I bought a 4GB SD card for 20 euros which is always in it, and had a 4GB USB stick with me as well. That's a lot of memory! It's going to be a while before I need to actually use the SD card.
Posted by: Steven Pemberton 12 Feb 2008
I don't understand this kind of review. The Asus eee will only "fail" if it leads to a product that better or even less expensively fills the same need, and thus displaces it. I think it performs somewhat better than the giant computers filled with vacuum tubes.
Tradeoffs are relative to the state of current technology. The Asus eee performs far better than the circa-2000-issue MobilePro that I picked up for before the eee hit the shelves.
Its functionality is "limited," of course; but to what? Oh, just word processing, spread sheets, web surfing, phone calls via Skype, and on and on. The keyboard is smaller than laptop-norm, so you have to type slower--unless you plug in a keyboard using one of the unit's three USB ports. The eee has only a few gigabytes of storage--unless you add storage via drive. In other words, given the convertability of the unit, the user himself determines what the tradeoffs are going to be. Do I or do I not lug around a keyboard along with the eee itself? Maybe if I know I'm only going to dash off a few emails, I don't bother. Maybe if I'm going away for a couple weeks and plan to write an article or three, I bother.
P.S. What's the difference between "as transient" and "equally as transient"?
Posted by: David M. Brown 06 Feb 2008
I think this article, and many like it, largely miss the point. In regard to the Asus EEE, it's not designed to be a "business" laptop. It serves a specific niche. Not perfect, but one heretofore unmet, at least at this price point, which is key. This assertion is proven by the several hundred thousand units that have purportedly already been sold ie pent-up demand.
What is amazing is that the major players don't "get it", or haven't up until now. For myself, the Asus EEE will serve as a second "Internet appliance" with a usable keyboard, but not take the place of my primary laptop.
Posted by: JerryG 06 Feb 2008
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