Tesco RM Asus miniBook

[gshaw]

I got a 2G after seeing it down Tottenham Court Road - bought there n then

 

For general Internet browsing it's ideal, screen is a bit small but for casual sessions it's fine; same applies for the keyboard. I use mine mainly around the house when I cba to lug the large laptop about.

 

I got a 10 quid 4GB pocket USB HD from eBuyer then installed XP onto it so basically I get 2 OS, jus plug in XP as and when I need it

 

If you look around the eeeUser forums you'll see a post I made in there on how to get it going on an external HD. I didn't want to wipe out the internal Linux as it boots up nice n quick for day to day use, you need to mod an XP CD to allow USB booting, didn't bother with nLite though...

 

The HP looks nice as does the VIA Openbook that's coming out. Dell also have their version coming soon as well, although they tend to more towards £300 upwards rather than the original eee's £200 "what the hell" price

[HMCTech]

I am looking and getting ahlaf dozen of these Asus minibooks. Which does everyone think would be the best option, the RM miniBook or getting the branded EEE PC from any number of suppliers?

 

Also has anyone managed to get a short term trial of one from anyone? As I would struggle to get my senior management to see the possability without letting a teacher give it to a kid and give feedback.

[localzuk]

I am looking and getting ahlaf dozen of these Asus minibooks. Which does everyone think would be the best option, the RM miniBook or getting the branded EEE PC from any number of suppliers?

 

Also has anyone managed to get a short term trial of one from anyone? As I would struggle to get my senior management to see the possability without letting a teacher give it to a kid and give feedback.

 

They're all the same really. No actual difference between the RM ones and everyone else. I'd go for whatever is cheapest. We went for the RM ones as we bought their insurance with them.

[localzuk]

Yeah true, we're giving a few of them to students - so I've been trying to put a program on them called gimp (similar to photoshop) - its not happening yet!

 

Gimp?! You're not gonna get much photo editing done on one of em. The resolution of the screen would see to that!

[SimpleSi]

@alexpilot

 

If your buying today, it is more than likely that you'll be able to get a better spec machine for the same price shortly - how shortly I wouldn't be able to say.

 

I'm advising my schools to just hold off purchasing them this term and wait till September (got 30 of the asus 700s and love them but if I could get bigger display for same price then I would)

 

Having said that, the small display/kbd is not a real drawback for primary children using for short periods of time.

 

I just think that their will be big changes in the next few months and its worth waiting a bit to see if asus 700 type machines come down in price or bigger machines drop into the sub £200 bracket.

 

regards

 

Simon

[HMCTech]

@alexpilot

 

If your buying today, it is more than likely that you'll be able to get a better spec machine for the same price shortly - how shortly I wouldn't be able to say.

 

I'm advising my schools to just hold off purchasing them this term and wait till September (got 30 of the asus 700s and love them but if I could get bigger display for same price then I would)

 

Having said that, the small display/kbd is not a real drawback for primary children using for short periods of time.

 

I just think that their will be big changes in the next few months and its worth waiting a bit to see if asus 700 type machines come down in price or bigger machines drop into the sub £200 bracket.

 

regards

 

Simon

 

Hi Simon

 

The use we would have for them is for the SEN children who are in lessons but struggle with handwriting. So all that we would need use it for is a word processor nothing too fancy. The LSA would then save their work for them and hand it to teacher.

 

These children also spend time outside of classrooms and often search the internet with permission so the little minibook seems good.

 

I dont need anything powerfull.

[Martin_Ebuyer]

We're now stocking most of the range at fair prices, so it might be worth checking out some of the ready installed XP ones. However, they're installed with XP home rather than pro, probably with a view that if a school or college were too have them onsite, they'd use their existing site licensing.

 

I might also add that I had a rep at our offices showing their sub £200 mini laptop offering to me the other day which was based on 2Gb solid state storage running both XP & MS Office without too much trouble. In fact, I was suprised how fast it was, possibly due to the lack of other software on it being a factor.

 

Dell are also offering their slant on this market now, along with Acer shortly, HP and a few others so hopefully Asus will stop being a bit reclusive about their stock and make it easier for everyone to get hold of one.

[crc-ict]

Just to update on this, I've got an original Eee 2G Surf, running full-fat XP Pro with Office 2003 and a couple of other bits and bobs all on the 2gig HD. Shifted out My Docs and most profile folders to a 4Gb SDHC card to reduce write load on the SSD.

 

I've just completed a hardware inventory at one school on it, using Excel with a USB barcode reader to collect the data, then Access to make a database - it handled it all perfectly with no problems at all. Performance was good.

 

I think they're great - I would want to write War and Peace on the keyboard, but other than that, no quibbles at all.