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I tried an Eee
Nov. 15th, 2008 09:42 pmI went to a BJ Wholesale Club today and found that they sell the Asus Eee. They sell the smallest one. It has the 7 inch screen, the 8GB SSD and WinXP Home. The thing is as cute as all hell. If BJs had stocked them beneath the demo unit, I might have failed my save vs. shiny and bought the damn thing. Fortunately, for laptops and the like, they make you fill out a form that you have to hand to someone, I think. (I'm not real clear on the specifics. This is in part so that I'm not tempted to spend an extra $300 that I wasn't planning on spending, for example.)
Naturally, I had to power it up so that I could take the keyboard for a spin. The demo unit was a little too far away and approximately chest height. I couldn't get my hands in a very comfortable typing position. However, I think I got about as far an assessment as I can get playing around with it for a minute.
The good news is that my hands fit on the keyboard. i.e., home position isn't all that cramped. Note though that I have small hands. My violin teacher in high school used to give me detailed explanations of all games he had to play with fingerings that I didn't have to play. e.g., he had to move fingers out of the way in order to place other fingers. Of course, this sucks when you're playing piano.
The bad news is that since the Eee keyboard is a shrink to ~85% of a normal keyboard, the spacing is off. This makes touchtyping decidedly unintuitive. I keep wanting to hit where I think the keys ought to be. Of course, that's not where they are because everything is ~85% of what it used to be, including distances. Also, I had to really smack a few keys to get them to register. That might be because this is the demo model though. I suppose if I had one of these things, I might eventually get used to the keyboard. It's hard to say. I wanted to be enthusiastic, but I ended up frustrated instead.
Intellectually, I recognize that a 7" screen is larger than a 5" screen. Looking at the Eee though, I don't think that it's any more useful than a 5" screen. In that case, I might as well get something with a 5" screen and a thumbboard. I can keep it in my pocket and type about as fast as I think I can on an Eee. Unfortunately, the Nokia 810 is reputed to have a horrific thumbboard so the second half of that last sentence may not be true. (The OQO has a terrific thumbboard. I've tried it out. It's also extremely expensive.)
I'd love to try out a Raon Digital Everun Note. It also has a smsll keyboard. However, it's has the non-alphabetic keys as half keys on the top, making more room for the keys I use the most. If they did it right, this would mean that most of the time, keys are where I expect them to be (until I hit some sort of punctuation mark). Having some keys were I'd expect them to be sounds much less frustrating than having none of the keys be where I expect them to be. However, the Everun Note is not priced for impulse purchase. (It is, however, likely the most computationally powerful device in its form factor. If you need that computational power in a device the size of a VHS tape, that might justify the $800-$1000.)
Of course, if I'm at a desk, I could always just plug in another keyboard into any mini-notebook. There's something rather odd about that though.
As I might have mentioned, my current laptop is a bit flaky. Right now, that's ok because I don't use it for a whole lot and rebooting will de-flake it for a little while. I can glide along for quite a while with it this way. However, say that I find myself at an intense 6 week writing workshop over the summer, flaky laptop isn't going to cut it. I'm scoping the field for possibilities just in case. (Also, I'd like to pack everything I need for six weeks into carry-on luggage if possible. Yes, this may be doing a lot of laundry. This also means that I'm not looking at the 17" laptops. Ideally, it fits in my pocket along with a keyboard which fits in another pocket. Yes, it sounds like I'm talking about the OQO, like intensive 6 week writing workshops weren't expensive enough by itself...)
Of course, the statistically more likely scenario is that I will have done all this window shopping and not actually buy anything. Like I said, I can glide along with my current laptop for a while. If I have no urgent need, I may want to wait to see how Windows 7 shakes itself out before I do anything. (I'd love to do linux. However, most of what I do with my laptop these days involves handwriting recognition in English and Chinese. The Everun Note scenario involves me installing Vista on it and hoping that its touchscreen isn't too sensitive to ink on. As an aside, I don't know why it has a touchscreen because the screen doesn't twist and fold over the way it does on a tablet PC.)
Naturally, I had to power it up so that I could take the keyboard for a spin. The demo unit was a little too far away and approximately chest height. I couldn't get my hands in a very comfortable typing position. However, I think I got about as far an assessment as I can get playing around with it for a minute.
The good news is that my hands fit on the keyboard. i.e., home position isn't all that cramped. Note though that I have small hands. My violin teacher in high school used to give me detailed explanations of all games he had to play with fingerings that I didn't have to play. e.g., he had to move fingers out of the way in order to place other fingers. Of course, this sucks when you're playing piano.
The bad news is that since the Eee keyboard is a shrink to ~85% of a normal keyboard, the spacing is off. This makes touchtyping decidedly unintuitive. I keep wanting to hit where I think the keys ought to be. Of course, that's not where they are because everything is ~85% of what it used to be, including distances. Also, I had to really smack a few keys to get them to register. That might be because this is the demo model though. I suppose if I had one of these things, I might eventually get used to the keyboard. It's hard to say. I wanted to be enthusiastic, but I ended up frustrated instead.
Intellectually, I recognize that a 7" screen is larger than a 5" screen. Looking at the Eee though, I don't think that it's any more useful than a 5" screen. In that case, I might as well get something with a 5" screen and a thumbboard. I can keep it in my pocket and type about as fast as I think I can on an Eee. Unfortunately, the Nokia 810 is reputed to have a horrific thumbboard so the second half of that last sentence may not be true. (The OQO has a terrific thumbboard. I've tried it out. It's also extremely expensive.)
I'd love to try out a Raon Digital Everun Note. It also has a smsll keyboard. However, it's has the non-alphabetic keys as half keys on the top, making more room for the keys I use the most. If they did it right, this would mean that most of the time, keys are where I expect them to be (until I hit some sort of punctuation mark). Having some keys were I'd expect them to be sounds much less frustrating than having none of the keys be where I expect them to be. However, the Everun Note is not priced for impulse purchase. (It is, however, likely the most computationally powerful device in its form factor. If you need that computational power in a device the size of a VHS tape, that might justify the $800-$1000.)
Of course, if I'm at a desk, I could always just plug in another keyboard into any mini-notebook. There's something rather odd about that though.
As I might have mentioned, my current laptop is a bit flaky. Right now, that's ok because I don't use it for a whole lot and rebooting will de-flake it for a little while. I can glide along for quite a while with it this way. However, say that I find myself at an intense 6 week writing workshop over the summer, flaky laptop isn't going to cut it. I'm scoping the field for possibilities just in case. (Also, I'd like to pack everything I need for six weeks into carry-on luggage if possible. Yes, this may be doing a lot of laundry. This also means that I'm not looking at the 17" laptops. Ideally, it fits in my pocket along with a keyboard which fits in another pocket. Yes, it sounds like I'm talking about the OQO, like intensive 6 week writing workshops weren't expensive enough by itself...)
Of course, the statistically more likely scenario is that I will have done all this window shopping and not actually buy anything. Like I said, I can glide along with my current laptop for a while. If I have no urgent need, I may want to wait to see how Windows 7 shakes itself out before I do anything. (I'd love to do linux. However, most of what I do with my laptop these days involves handwriting recognition in English and Chinese. The Everun Note scenario involves me installing Vista on it and hoping that its touchscreen isn't too sensitive to ink on. As an aside, I don't know why it has a touchscreen because the screen doesn't twist and fold over the way it does on a tablet PC.)
