{"id":833,"date":"2008-06-03T23:16:08","date_gmt":"2008-06-04T04:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/?p=833"},"modified":"2008-06-03T23:16:08","modified_gmt":"2008-06-04T04:16:08","slug":"dell-mini-inspiron-new-asus-eeepcs-its-the-keyboard-silly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2008\/06\/03\/dell-mini-inspiron-new-asus-eeepcs-its-the-keyboard-silly","title":{"rendered":"Dell Mini Inspiron? New Asus EeePC&#8217;s? Its the keyboard, silly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, it looks like Asus is <a href=\"http:\/\/crave.cnet.com\/8301-1_105-9957648-1.html\">rolling out more Eee PC&#8217;s<\/a>, with bigger screens &#8211; up to 10 inches. They&#8217;ll be loading it with an Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor, and they&#8217;re promising 7.5 hours of battery life.<\/p>\n<p>Now we&#8217;re talking. The Eee 701 that I own is piss poor with regards to the battery life. And the other thing that has annoyed me for a while with the Eee, is the keyboard. Its just simply too small. I try to touch type with the Eee, and its not that my fingers are fat (really, they&#8217;re comparatively thin and long), but its just difficult. The new Eee&#8217;s don&#8217;t have such an improvement.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re still going to be shipping with 12 or 20 gigabyte SSDs. One thing I notice with the Eee is that for critical bits of information, I definitely do not even need more than 4GB of storage.<\/p>\n<p>I think I&#8217;m over the Eee. I&#8217;ll probably run OpenSolaris on it soon (I wonder if ZFS performs well on flash based storage?) and dock it with a real keyboard, mouse and monitor. And I think that&#8217;s where the Eee could shine (or where OpenSolaris could shine) &#8211; support a limited set of hardware from a few laptop manufacturers, and one might be a great success if everything &#8220;just works&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s caught my fancy this week? The <a href=\"http:\/\/hardware.slashdot.org\/article.pl?sid=08\/05\/30\/1540203\">Dell Mini Inspiron<\/a>. There are <a href=\"http:\/\/yourblog.direct2dell.com\/2008\/05\/28\/something-from-dell-at-d6\/\">photos<\/a>, and the specifications according to Slashdot (take it with a grain of salt) state:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Atom 1.6 GHz &#8211; just like the newer Eee&#8217;s<\/li>\n<li>3 USB ports &#8211; Apple better start worrying&#8230; Seems nicer than the Air, but naturally, OS X simply rocks<\/li>\n<li>Ethernet<\/li>\n<li>Card reader &#8211; I&#8217;ve found reading SD cards really handy<\/li>\n<li>Mic\/line-out<\/li>\n<li>VGA port, with screen resolution at 1280\u00c3\u2014800 &#8211; winner! It sounds like this might actually be a 12&#8243; screen, which I like<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All for under-USD$500? Eee and Macbook Air killer. Of course, no mention of what kind of disk storage will be available. Frankly, I don&#8217;t care if its not flash or SSD; throw in an 80GB 4,200rpm 1.8&#8243; drive even. <strong>SSD is a solution for a problem that doesn&#8217;t exist today for laptops<\/strong> (it offers next to no benefit to hard disks, in battery life or performance).<\/p>\n<p>So Dell, you&#8217;ll have my business, plus the extended 3-year &#8220;everything&#8221; warranty if you come up with something like the above. Make sure the keyboard is usable. Heck, if you can fit 1280&#215;800 on something smaller than a 12&#8243; screen, that&#8217;d be fabulous. And don&#8217;t forget to throw in WiFi and Bluetooth. Forget an optical drive. Pack it all in with a 7 hour battery life, and you&#8217;ll be selling Mini Inspirons like there&#8217;s no tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>Heck, bring back the idea of docking stations! (I realise that a lot of young folk reading might have no idea what a docking station is, but these were fairly popular in the 90&#8217;s for laptops, to &#8220;enhance&#8221; their capabilities with parallel ports, serial ports, an optical drive, etc.) Charge us a whole bunch more for a sensible docking station. The Mini Inspiron might not be someone&#8217;s only laptop, but neither is the MacBook Air.<\/p>\n<p>No mention of what OS will be on it. I don&#8217;t really care what flavour of Linux comes with it, I&#8217;m probably rooting for Ubuntu LTS, but if it comes with something crap like Xandros (aka Eee PC), its easy enough to replace it with something more sensible.<\/p>\n<p>All I can say is that the next couple of months should be real fun for mini-laptop purchasers. It almost seems like you&#8217;ll end up owning several mini-laptops, keeping them in various parts of the home&#8230; after all, as we all move online, everything we need will be within a web-browser, right? :)<\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\"><div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\"><h3 class=\"sd-title\">Share this:<\/h3><div class=\"sd-content\"><ul><li class=\"share-email\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"\" class=\"share-email sd-button share-icon\" href=\"mailto:?subject=%5BShared%20Post%5D%20Dell%20Mini%20Inspiron%3F%20New%20Asus%20EeePC%27s%3F%20Its%20the%20keyboard%2C%20silly&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bytebot.net%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F2008%2F06%2F03%2Fdell-mini-inspiron-new-asus-eeepcs-its-the-keyboard-silly&share=email\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to email a link to a friend\" data-email-share-error-title=\"Do you have email set up?\" data-email-share-error-text=\"If you&#039;re having problems sharing via email, you might not have email set up for your browser. 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They&#8217;ll be loading it with an Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor, and they&#8217;re promising 7.5 hours of battery life. Now we&#8217;re talking. The Eee 701 that I own is piss poor with regards to the battery life. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div class=\"sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled\"><div class=\"robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing\"><h3 class=\"sd-title\">Share this:<\/h3><div class=\"sd-content\"><ul><li class=\"share-email\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"\" class=\"share-email sd-button share-icon\" href=\"mailto:?subject=%5BShared%20Post%5D%20Dell%20Mini%20Inspiron%3F%20New%20Asus%20EeePC%27s%3F%20Its%20the%20keyboard%2C%20silly&body=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bytebot.net%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F2008%2F06%2F03%2Fdell-mini-inspiron-new-asus-eeepcs-its-the-keyboard-silly&share=email\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to email a link to a friend\" data-email-share-error-title=\"Do you have email set up?\" data-email-share-error-text=\"If you&#039;re having problems sharing via email, you might not have email set up for your browser. You may need to create a new email yourself.\" data-email-share-nonce=\"17e2c75428\" data-email-share-track-url=\"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2008\/06\/03\/dell-mini-inspiron-new-asus-eeepcs-its-the-keyboard-silly?share=email\"><span>Email<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-facebook\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-facebook-833\" class=\"share-facebook sd-button share-icon\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2008\/06\/03\/dell-mini-inspiron-new-asus-eeepcs-its-the-keyboard-silly?share=facebook\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Facebook\" ><span>Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-linkedin\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-linkedin-833\" class=\"share-linkedin sd-button share-icon\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2008\/06\/03\/dell-mini-inspiron-new-asus-eeepcs-its-the-keyboard-silly?share=linkedin\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on LinkedIn\" ><span>LinkedIn<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-twitter\"><a rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" data-shared=\"sharing-twitter-833\" class=\"share-twitter sd-button share-icon\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2008\/06\/03\/dell-mini-inspiron-new-asus-eeepcs-its-the-keyboard-silly?share=twitter\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Click to share on Twitter\" ><span>Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/li><li class=\"share-end\"><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[1],"tags":[216,213,74,215,214,218,217],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4vJD-dr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1315,"url":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2009\/02\/11\/netbook-shopping","url_meta":{"origin":833,"position":0},"title":"Netbook shopping","date":"11\/2\/2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I was in MidValley today, looking for a tiny power adapter for the power adapter on my Eee PC. After much searching, Ace Hardware seemed to have what I was after. However, post-dinner, it became clear to me that walking by the IT Mall there would be kind of useful.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":703,"url":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2008\/01\/26\/adventures-in-eee-pc-land","url_meta":{"origin":833,"position":1},"title":"Adventures in Eee PC land","date":"26\/1\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I bit the bullet, and picked up an Asus Eee PC today, while I failed at an attempt to get a rack. Its a 4GB model, with the webcam, and its on its 3rd run, i.e. I've got a model without a mini-PCIe connector. The slot is there, but the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":712,"url":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2008\/02\/03\/the-eee-pc-after-a-week","url_meta":{"origin":833,"position":2},"title":"The Eee PC: After a week","date":"3\/2\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"After writing my impressions on Eeedora, it seemed only natural to write about the hardware. There are definitely some issues that I found with the Eee PC that I am not too happy about (and some that are just great). For starters, who makes a laptop these days, without integrated\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":710,"url":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2008\/01\/30\/asus-eee-pc-olpc-all-in-one-week","url_meta":{"origin":833,"position":3},"title":"Asus Eee PC, OLPC, all in one week","date":"30\/1\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This month has clearly been an interesting one. Maybe, I should reserve it to be just this week. On the weekend, I went looking for a rack, and came back with an Asus Eee PC. Today, while there were about 70 OLPCs given away to lucky, random linux.conf.au 2008 attendees,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":744,"url":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2008\/03\/13\/consumer-hardware-shipping-too-many-linuxes-by-default","url_meta":{"origin":833,"position":4},"title":"Consumer hardware shipping too many Linuxes by default","date":"13\/3\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"At the top of my head now, Linux is hitting the mainstream desktop market, in many variants: Xandros, on the ever popular Asus EeePC's Foresight Linux, on the new Shuttle KPC's (USD$199), which are basically small form-factor desktops Fedora, a modified variant anyway, running on the OLPC's gOS, a variant\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1409,"url":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2009\/04\/09\/netbook-tweaks-at-barcampkl","url_meta":{"origin":833,"position":5},"title":"Netbook Tweaks at BarCampKL","date":"9\/4\/2009","format":false,"excerpt":"At BarCampKL last weekend (wow, time flies), one of the more interesting talks I attended was Preetam Rai's session, on Netbooks. Carolyn was suspicious that a Mac head was at a netbook session, but the reality is, I've always been interested in netbooks, ever since I picked up the Asus\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;General&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}