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The last entry detailed the unboxing and first impressions of the Eee, let’s take a closer look.

Boot-up
Noted for its fast boot-up times, I couldn’t help but think how slow it was, I’m used to my Mac being ready for use as soon as I open the lid (MacBook Pro), or touch the keyboard (iMac), having to wait for around 15 seconds will certainly not impress any Mac users. For PC users however, the Eee probably feels like an improvement.

Interface
As soon as the custom version of Linux has loaded (Xandros), the user is presented with a novel interface. The UI has six categories, each having its own tab (see below)

If all you want is to surf, write e-mails, IM, Skype etc, then this is fine, but if you want to expand the features, it can start to feel quite limiting. I was delighted to learn than a terminal window can be brought up by pressing ctrl+t. No more having to type simple notes in the bloated and sluggish OpenOffice, unix vi is just fine by me.
The UI also feels like a hybrid, the tabbed menus may be unfamiliar at first, but once an app is loaded, the window will have an XP look and feel.

Applications
For most people, the default apps should be all they ever need. Firefox, Skype, an IM client, OpenOffice, PDF reader, eBook reader and others are ready to use out of the box. One app that did surprise me was a virus checker … on Linux? I guess this was here only to somehow reassure Windows users.

Usability
So you’re thinking that I’d be happy, it’s small, light, quite cheap, and comes with all the apps for general purpose computing. However, there are a few key issues.
The keyboard. It’s small, and for anyone who touch types, they’re not going to like it. It’s not the size that is the main problem, it’s the awkward layout. In particular the right-hand shift key is too small (not full length like a normal shift key), and more critically, it’s placed beside the up cursor key. This means every time I try to capitalize a letter, I miss the shift key, and instead move the cursor up and start writing in the middle of my previous text. Annoying for the first few times, but after the thousandth you want to give up using it.
The trackpad is also frustrating to use, it’s very unresponsive and you have to push on it harder than seems necessary to move the cursor. The right hand edge of the trackpad allows for scrolling the active window vertically, technically it works, but horrible to use in practice.
Finally, the screen is too small for using some of the apps like Thunderbird. The main problem is that they’ve taken a standard UI and used it completely unmodified, and that just doesn’t work. I wish they’d taken some time and made a Linux distro specifically for the Eee.

The best solution I found for the limited screen space was to try and do as much work as as possible from within Firefox. With Firefox’s full screen mode (F11), this removed any unnecessary toolbars / taskbars and focuses on the content. So instead of using OpenOffice I would try to use an online word processor, instead of Thunderbird I would use a webmail client. This will lead to a theme of a future thread, but could Firefox be my next OS?

There were also some other issues. My USB memory stick is a 16GB Corsair unit and it wasn’t recognized by the Eee. I also upgraded the memory from 512MB to 2GB and it would only recognize 1GB RAM.

However, there are some good features also. The home button returns the user to the main screen if they ever get lost or confused (a la iPhone). There are also dedicated buttons for selecting the right mouse button.

Light at the end of the tunnel
So for the first few days I didn’t like the Eee much. I took it a few places (trains, cafes etc) and it was ok, but I wasn’t feeling any love for the machine. The Eureka moment came when I connected an external monitor, keyboard and mouse. Wow, the Eee makes a great desktop. Even here there are limitations however, the external resolution only goes to 1024×768, far too restricting, but at least I can use all the bundled apps without difficulty and the dedicated mouse and keyboard solve the ergonomics issues.

In its new ‘desktop’ mode, I could quite happily recommend this machine to people who only have basic computing needs. If it was this or a bottom end Vista laptop, then I’d recommend this. No need for daily virus updates or the even more annoying Windows updates, the Eee will let you get on with your task.

However, I’m still feeling restricted by the bundled apps, next time we’ll start changing the OS itself.