EEE pc 901 review Part 2
I have been using the eee most of the weekend now and must say that I am very impressed with its performance. Start up time is around 25 seconds and shutdown is around 12 , remember this is a fresh install of XP and no other mods have been done which could reduce this time even further.
The first thing I have noticed with using the eee are the buttons around the touch pad are rather hard to press. I can only assume its to prevent accidental clicks when you use the keyboard but you do start to get use to it, as a added feature its equipped with a multi touch trackpad. Keyboard wise its pretty small, I would imagine touch typists would quickly throw the eee across the room in a fit of rage within hours of using a keyboard this small.
Performance wise I found the eee to have plenty of resources for almost any day to day task. I found battery life to be outstanding; I managed to watch 3.5 hours of avi’s streamed over wireless with brightness and volume at max without any problems and still had about 30 minutes of runtime remaining. If you were to optimize the settings a little better you should get about 5 hours without much trouble at all.
To be continued…
EEE pc 901 review Part 1
I have been lucky enough to have been lent a 901 to check out. This unit came with a gig of ram and a 20 gig SSD also currently running windows xp. For Part 1 of this review I will focus on the physical aspects of the machine.
First impressions. Wow this thing is small. The most notable difference for me over the 700 was the screen. No longer are there silly speakers on the side which made the screen look smaller, this machine looks like a proper laptop with a nice bezel around the screen. This model is also gloss black which does show up fingerprints and marks but is easily wiped clean.. The eee also comes with a nice neoprene satchel which has the effect of taking care of those fingerprints most of the time.
IO wise on the left side the eee has lan, 1 usb and standard 3.5 mm speaker and mic jacks. On the right side we have power, vga out, 2 more usb ports and spring loaded mmc sd card reader. For me this was important as the SD card sits in snugly allowing it to stay put and not get bumped or catch on anything.
To be continued…
My First HDR
Last week I was lucky enough to have a quick play with a juicy eos 40d. I had wanted to give HDR a go for a while so when the chance came up I could not resist. This a quick shot without a tripod, Two exposures 2 stops apart then processed with photomatix.
NZ Vodafone Iphone failure
This is starting to become a hot topic now. Vodafone appears to be taking advantage of their market position here in new zealand.
I was once told an old saying, If you cant really deliver a product or service in its full capacity simply price it out side your customers reach. My guess is Vodafone's network is not ready to deliver vast amounts of data thousands of iphone would consume so they have priced it out of reach of most consumers until they can provide better service.
Check out this.
[youtube 291gK1ikf1w]
worst part is the vodafone rep doesn't appear to have done his home work at all and looks a little silly. This video also highlights how much vodafone screws consumers compared to overseas for data and call minutes.
Vodafone fails IPhone Launch
So today Vodafone NZ announced their plans to finally release the iphone here and this is what we get.
I have to say this wouldn't be the most appealing set of plans. Not to mention that iphone's tend to like bandwidth so 1 gig would not really go that far on a semi heavy user.
At these prices its more expensive than a HP on a decent car.
EEE 900 touch screen hack
I came across this nifty mod for the newer 900 eee notebooks. Also they included step by step instructions. and links to places you can buy the bits. All we need is a hinge hack to turn the whole shebang into a tablet.
[youtube 3wVhW6a9i7Y]
Holographic Google Earth
Cool little system, will be interesting to see people start hacking this.
[youtube rnkoLrZQIHU]
Dell Enters the sub $500 notebook game
As seen here Dell looks to be entering the sub $500 notebook range. From the pics looks like its going to be packing a web cam. I hope dell have their planning together and offer this various in flavours across the world. I also hope that they realise that there is a demand for machines in the business world and not just schools and developing nations.
