Travelling with the Asus Eee

I took my Eee laptop on a business trip to the USA as an experiment.

I could read my email, I did a presentation using it, I typed documents, I accessed documents remotely, I backed files up over the net, I video-skyped with the family at home, I listened to the BBC world news in the morning, I watched films on it in the evening, I listened to mp3s on it when I was working at my desk in my hotel room.

I quickly got used to the keyboard; after a week when I returned to my regular laptop I found its keyboard felt stretched. The only thing I missed was a single key page-up and page-down.

Sure it's got a small screen, and that is the only real compromise I felt. Even so, it never got in the way of getting work done. I installed Opera and used that instead of Firefox since Opera can use limited screen space more efficiently.

The Eee hasn't got as much storage as regular laptops, but if you're not storing photos and videos on it you won't run out fast. Apart from the inbuilt 4GB, I bought a 4GB SD card for €20 which is always in it, and had a 4GB USB stick with me as well with the music and films on it. That's a lot of memory! It's going to be a while before I need to actually use the SD card.


Video Skyping with home, this time in Venice, as captured by Simone Onofri