Thoughts on the eee PC: the not-so good

As I said in the earlier blogpost, though I’m in love with the form factor of the eee, I do have some concerns about it as a machine and as part of a school program. Here are the main things I have seen using the machine for about a month now:

  1. The size doesn’t bother me at all. I have no trouble viewing applications or web pages. Likewise, I don’t have any problem with the smaller keyboard (of course I’m not a touch typist…I don’t know how difficult it would be if I were). I don’t like the fact that the screen is significantly heavier than the keyboard. It works fine on a table top, but when I rest it on my lap, it continuously falls over, often causing me to make typing errors. I correct this by putting a book underneath which helps.
  2. Another good reason for the book is to keep the heat of the machine from burning my legs! I wonder about the overall power efficiency of the machine, since it gives off a lot of heat both underneath and through the keyboard. It doesn’t become uncomfortable, but you do feel the heat through the keys on your fingertips after typing for a while.
  3. Probably partially as a result of this, the battery life is poor. The book claims that it should be good for four hours, but I get closer to three, less if I am doing significant wireless work. I’ve read on another blog that a new version of the computer will come with three batteries which will help, but that’s more weight to carry and more charging to remem ber.
  4. The touchpad (like most touchpads) is temperamental and hard to use. Attaching a mouse makes the machine MUCH easier to use.
  5. The video card is not particularly robust. When I try to stream video from the web the video pauses often while it is loading the first time. I ran a side-by-side test with one of the wireless laptops currently used by teachers, each streaming a 20 minute video. The Toshiba played the video without a pause, but the eee was constantly pausing to load more data. Now, there are workarounds for this, once the video is downloaded it plays without a problem, and you can always download a video ahead of time, but I wonder whether this would become a hindrance over time.
  6. The lack of a CD/DVD drive doesn’t particularly bother me, though this might cause some compatibility issues down the line. If a textbook or reference was only available on CD, it would have to be converted to another media. I also wonder whether we would have issues with software that teachers really want that would be unavailable for Linux.

To have students get an eee PC would by necessity mean a scaled down machine, not one designed for high-level graphics. Rather it would be a tool for writing, research and other basic classroom uses. I’m not sure whether this machine will meet our needs (the first edition certainly doesn’t), but I do think it is something to watch as we examine other machines.

“The great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn’t get bigger or heavier.”
Bill Gates

2 thoughts on “Thoughts on the eee PC: the not-so good”

  1. I think that your concerns about battery heat are important. Keyboards that are too small can be difficult for non-touch typers also.

  2. Everything Greg said was true, but for $350ish dollars this machine is great. For simply word processing and Internet, you wouldn’t have a lot of distractions for our students. Also with the Linux operating system we could customize the eeePC so that they wouldn’t have games to play. I wonder is there is a handwriting pad they could plug in to take notes like One Note. Now that would be super duper cool!!!

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