The Netbook has come a long way in such a short time
Has it only been 22, 23 months since ASUS released its eeePC 701 to the world?
According to Wikipedia, Asus announced two Eee PC models at COMPUTEX Taipei 2007 – the Eee PC 701 and the Eee PC 1001. I thought the 1001 was launched a while later, at least after the 900. But then Wikipedia entries are not known for their 100% accuracy.
At the time, the other comparable machine was the one developed by OLPC, the One Laptop Per Child project aimed at making low cost computing available to the developing world. Because of the term “low cost computing”, any similar machine was tagged with the same expectations, which was not much. True enough, when the eeePC 701 was revealed, it turned out to be a very small machine with an almost unuseable keyboard and tiny squint-inducing 7″ keyboard. Nevertheless, early adopters took to the machine and began to laud its advantages.
There must be something to the tiny machine after all, when it came out in the news that the 701 was sold out in Australia soon after being launched there.
ASUS followed the 701 with the 900, then the 901, then the 1000, with the first numeral of each model series indicating the size of the screen.
The default operaing system for the 701 and 900 series was Linux. I bought a 900 Linux in July 2008, along with a copy of Windows XP Home to replace the Linux OS. The install was not successful, and I resigned myself to using Linux and living without most of my preferred apps on the 900. Nevertheless, with the 900, which I took on my panda volunteer trip in August 2008, I was able to edit photographs, go online to upload the photographs, participate in my favourite online forums, as well as update a client’s blogsite.
I’d always known there would be a netbook upgrade in my tech future. It came in January 2009 when I bought the ASUS eeePC 1000H running Windows XP, which I soon christened “H”. It remains my mobile computing machine almost nine months later.
Meanwhile, other companies had been sitting on the sidelines, watching how ASUS fared with its eeePC. When they saw the runaway success, they decided it was time for their share of the netbook market, too. Now, there are netbooks available from Acer, HP, Lenovo, Dell, even Toshiba, too. Most of them skipped the 7″ screen to begin with the 9″ screens as entry-level netbooks in their offerings.
Today, ASUS is not the only company selling netbooks. A lot of my friends prefer Acer. But because I began with ASUS, and it’s never disappointed me to date, I decided to stay with the brand when I upgraded to the 1000H. (By the way, I still have the 900 Linux version, and if anyone would like to buy it off me, please leave a comment. But only if you’re in Malaysia, and preferably the KL / PJ area.)
On the NaNoWriMo forums, especially the NaNo Technology forum, there are increasingly questions from interested buyers for opinions on this or that brand of netbook, or just for suggestions on which netbook is better. When I’m in the mood, I leave a comment, and it’s always for them to go to a store selling netbooks so they can have a first-hand feel for the different machines. I particularly like this comment I just posted in response to someone asking about the HP Mini 110:
The best thing for you to do is to look for a store that carries the HP Mini so that you can test it for yourself. It doesn’t matter what other people say – the important thing is how your fingers like the keyboard, your eyes the screen and your purse the price.
If you are interested in getting a netbook, reading up the specs is a first step. Next step – go to the nearest computer store and put your fingers on all the netbooks available there.
