Asus Eee 4G

Customer Reviews:

Great for traveling [Posted on 2008-05-02]
This unit has a very sensitive wireless adaptor. When laptop computers in the area were showing three out of five bars of service, this unit shows 100 percent service. So far it has done everything I expected. It has replaced my laptop when traveling.

who the heck buys a mac air and why when you can get this [Posted on 2008-05-02]
This is a great ultraportable laptop. Very useful on the road or at home.

Like:
- Very light at 2 lbs, even lighter than the mac air. Even the power adaptor is light. It can fit almost anywhere in your travel bag.
- Power is adequate for what it does. Boot up time is fast, if you stick to Linux it comes with, browsing internet is fast, and good for editing your Office documents with the included Open Office. Open Office by the way can open your Word, Excel, and power point files but if they have some special features in those files, they could look kind of funny when you open them up.
- Flexible with OS. You could install Windows XP in it. Asus provides the needed drivers if you decide to do this.
- 3 USB ports. That is great. I always found less than that to be inadequate. It quicly recognize anything I connect: Portable hard drives, keyboards, mouses.
- VGA connector for external monitor or projector. This is great. You can open your power point presenstation with Open office and do your presentation on the road. You may need to edit your Power Point presentation though as Open office is not 100% compatible.
- Default easy mode Linux it comes with is great for people that are intimidated by the technology and for kids


Don't Like:
- It does get warm
- Battery life could be longer for a laptop that does not use a disk hard drive. I get around 70 minutes of web surfing. There are optional batteries that will extend the life though.
- the 4GB hardrive is adequate for saving some regular stuff, but if you want to take your music collection, you will need to buy an SD memmory card and put it permanently on the card reader. That is what I did and it works fine.
- As expected the keyboard is crammed and only useful for short inputs or quick editing. If you are going to do heavy word processing, then you will need a USB keyboard
- The default easy mode Linux the unit comes with is great for begginners and kids like I said above but it is unflexible to do change to your preference like: do your want smaller icons, change the background, etc. I always like changing the background on my computers. I get bored of looking at the same color set up for too long. There are ways to change the background but now you need to change to a different linux flavor and some familiarity with Linux which I think most people dont have.

Even though I try to be fair by listing the likes and donts, I still think when you put them all in balance, the positives are too great and that is why I give this product four stars.

Love it! [Posted on 2008-05-02]
It is as advertised. Perfect for travel when one wants to check email, use internet for checking flights, restaurants, etc. The word processing program is fine for short notes and keeping a log. Keyboard is tiny, but I have small fingers, so it works for me -- an external mouse adds to ease of use and convenience. And it is so cute! Everyone who sees it comments on it. I also purchased the Continental adapters, which makes it great for international travel when one is not doing heavy work requiring lots of computing power. A great value and just fun to use.

I loved it...but... [Posted on 2008-05-03]
I thought the basic functionality was great and very stable, but two things caused me to return this unit. I tried to connect to my secured wifi at home. I entered the encryption key (26 characters) and connected just fine. Next day I tried to log in and it again asked for the the key. According to some forum discussions, this problem is a known issue. It also would not recognize my digital camera on usb connection when I never had a problem with my desktop using XP. Once these bugs have been worked out, I would consider buying again.

Pretty much what you'd expect for size and cost [Posted on 2008-05-06]
Since I bought it last month, I take this computer everywhere. It's completely replaced my Apple MacBook Pro MA895LL/A 15.4" Laptop (2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM, 120 GB Hard Drive, DVD/CD SuperDrive) as a portable due to my light needs (writing, e-mail, web, remote desktop) while mobile. The biggest failing of this device is a flimsy feeling on the keyboard. Everything else on the unit feels solid and properly weighted, but my keyboard was not properly secured and the whole thing tends to bounce around under my fingers while I type. The key depth is okay, and the feeling of your hands being cramped on the smaller keyboard goes away after about a day and a half of use. I do miss having BlueTooth connectivity and recommend purchasing an adapter if you do a lot of mobile work with your cell phone.

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