I finally get my hands on an Asus Eee solid state mini-laptop and a fine thing it is.
No I was not sent a review machine, and no, no one lent me one, I got my hands on a demo Eee at Micro Anvika’s Tottenham Court Road shop.
The £219.99p (inc. tax) Eee, weighing under lb, has that undefinable quality, charm. As soon as I see it, I want it.
The menu is a doddle to use; the Linux-based applications seem as easy to use, and much the same, as XP.
The Eee makes the 6lb luggables coming out of Dell look Neanderthal.
God, I want it, and I can afford it, but there’s only one thing that stops me buying it: it’s almost exactly the same form factor as my mini-Fujitsu Lifebook tablet laptop bought a couple of years ago.
Can I justify buying the Eee as well? I’d really like to, but it would be an extravagance.
So I look for a disadvantage in Eee, and it is this: the Eee has only 3.5 hours battery life.
My little Lifebook, with the souped-up battery option (an extra £100), has a 7.5 hour battery life.
Why the HDD-based Fujitsu has so much longer battery life than the SSD-based Asus is a mystery to me.
Maybe Asus should work on this, because I really want to eliminate all the reasons for not buying an Eee.
The Eee looks like a laptop specifically designed for SSD, not an HDD laptop with an SSD option.
It will, I expect, change laptop design forever.