marchawkins.com » computer http://www.marchawkins.com where to go when you can’t get enough of me Sun, 22 Aug 2010 09:00:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Netbook Joins the Family http://www.marchawkins.com/2010/02/07/netbook-joins-the-family/ http://www.marchawkins.com/2010/02/07/netbook-joins-the-family/#comments Sun, 07 Feb 2010 06:19:38 +0000 Marc http://www.marchawkins.com/?p=41 As a card-carrying member of the Apple faithful, I’ll be the first to admit I’ve chugged my fair share of the Steve Jobs Kool-Aid. iMacs, MacBooks, iPods, iPhone – I’ve got ‘em all. So after waiting with the rest of the world for the unveiling of Apple’s tablet, for the first time in a long while I was left unimpressed with the latest Apple offering: iPad. Long story short – I’ve already got an iPhone that will seemingly run almost exactly the same apps as the iPad. Meaning I can’t do any real work on it other than email and web surfing.

So, a couple of days after the iPad announcement I headed to Best Buy and picked up an Asus Eee PC Netbook. It was $299 (quite a bit less with gift cards and reward certificates). Quick rundown of the specs:

  • 1.6Ghz Intel Atom
  • 1 GB RAM (which I upgraded to 2G)
  • 160GB hard drive
  • 10.1″ widescreen display

It came with Windows 7 Starter (complete with 3 simultaneous app limit and inability to change the desktop wallpaper) which I upgraded to Windows 7 Professional. It’s a pretty snappy little beast. Best feature I’ve found is the insane battery life. I’ve can surf the web with a few odds and ends (IM, etc.) for 3 or 4 hours and still have 30% battery left. Pretty crazy. Anyway, here are a couple pics (from Best Buy).

Asus Eee PC 10" Netbook Asus Eee PC 10" Netbook Asus Eee PC 10" Netbook Asus Eee PC 10" Netbook

In the meantime, I’ll be surfing the interwebs on this bad boy until the next Apple announcement…

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