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Toybox: Light-weight Linux box very useful (Computerworld NZ)
Computerworld NZ
reviews the Asus EEE 701 PC.
"I really like this little Linux-based machine, and I would find it very useful in my everyday life for checking email, updating Computerworlds website and subediting stories from home, and writing quick stories from out in the field. But, sure, the keyboard is not designed for longer stints of typing.
Weighing less than a kilogram, the Eee 701 is so small and light it fits in my small-to-medium-sized handbag, and that is a definitive plus. The machine features a 4GB solid-state drive, 512MB of memory and an Intel mobile processor. Storage can be expanded by using the SD card slot."
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Talking about long stints of typing... Posted Jan 26, 2008 7:57 UTC (Sat) by ldo (subscriber, #40946) [Link] ...I did some serious Emacs editing on my Eee for the first time, eight days ago. I was at a client's place, they needed some changes done ASAP to an app I'd written for them, and last time I tried to use Emacs from one of their Macs, it sucked. But with my Eee, all I needed was a space to work, and an Ethernet connection (they didn't have wireless), and I was away. After three hours of typing, the change was done. The little keyboard hardly bothered me at all.
Talking about long stints of typing... Posted Jan 26, 2008 13:22 UTC (Sat) by NigelK (guest, #42083) [Link] Three hours to type how much? ;) I love my Eee 701 - my old Nokia 770 has now been replaced. Nokia seems to have been outmaneuvered by the rise of the UMPC.
Talking about long stints of typing... Posted Jan 26, 2008 15:34 UTC (Sat) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link] I rather like my Nokia N810. That and Eee are intended for a bit different use. N810 fits very well into pocket so you can keep it with you always whereas Eee is heavier and larger. Which means that Eee is nicer to use for longer periods as its screen and keyboard are physically larger, but you probably wouldn't want to use it with one hand while e.g. hurrying to a metro.
Talking about long stints of typing... Posted Jan 28, 2008 10:19 UTC (Mon) by NigelK (guest, #42083) [Link] For me, the N810 and Eee were in the same bracket - both were being sold at very similar prices. I wanted something portable that did wifi, web browsing, YouTube, BBC iPlayer, streamed MP3s, streamed video files, and did it reliably. Form factor was an issue in that it had to be a lot smaller than a laptop - the Eee fits nicely in my coat pocket. What put me off the N810 was reliability and Flash video playback. After a couple of years using the N770, a crashy web browser was no longer acceptable, and Flash video had to be smooth as silk whilst streaming (otherwise what's the point?). I'm still gobsmacked that I've now got an uncrippled Linux PC in such a small form-factor at such a low price. I think it's also more powerful than the two Pentium III boxes I still use in my home network. Amazing. And if you remember that far back, this is cheaper than the Sinclair Spectrum +3, so I'm even more astounded :)
Talking about long stints of typing... Posted Jan 31, 2008 16:32 UTC (Thu) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link] > What put me off the N810 was reliability and Flash video playback. After a couple of years using the N770, a crashy web browser was no longer acceptable, and Flash video had to be smooth as silk whilst streaming (otherwise what's the point?) AFAIK N770 Browser crashing was mostly because 64MB RAM is just not enough for www-pages with JavaScript and/or Flash (i.e. crash = Glib used by the Gtk widgets and some other components abort()s the process when an alloc fails and things built on top of Glib expect allocations always to succeed while process is alive, so it cannot be even changed). My N810 has 128MB of RAM and is much better, the browser seems really stable. There are still some sites with JavaScript and/or Flash which can consume considerably more than 128MB (it's easy for web designers to do that with either JS or Flash), but on N810 they (at least normally) seem just to slow everything to crawl instead of browser crashing. I avoid those kind of site as I don't see much point in ruining my browsing experience by pages bloated with dozen(s) of ads etc. Flash video is pretty far from silk smooth, but to me it's usable enough (10-15fps depending on video and what other active content the page has). Anyway, the selection is more of a matter of taste, whether one want's something that fits better into pocket or something that has more power, you cannot have both, at least without seriously crippling how long your battery lasts.
Talking about long stints of typing... Posted Jan 27, 2008 2:13 UTC (Sun) by csawtell (subscriber, #986) [Link] But if you had opened an xterm, which loads the X-11 environment, from within the O/S X Terminal, emacs would have worked in the way to which you are used.
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