My wife's laptop has just expired (or at least XP on it has started BSOD'ing, needs a re-install at the very least) so she's looking for a replacement.
She doesn't *really* need a full-blown laptop and size and weight are important because she does have to lug it around with her quite a lot so the EEE PC might be a good choice.
However she needs to be able to touch type on it, does anyone here have an EEE PC? Is the keyboard OK? Is the 'bigger' EEE PC keyboard better? Any other suggestions?
On Sat, Sep 13, 2008 at 10:16:43AM +0100, Chris G wrote:
My wife's laptop has just expired (or at least XP on it has started BSOD'ing, needs a re-install at the very least) so she's looking for a replacement.
She doesn't *really* need a full-blown laptop and size and weight are important because she does have to lug it around with her quite a lot so the EEE PC might be a good choice.
However she needs to be able to touch type on it, does anyone here have an EEE PC? Is the keyboard OK? Is the 'bigger' EEE PC keyboard better? Any other suggestions?
I bought an EEE 901 yesterday; I'm typing this mail on it. It *is* a small keyboard; if she has dainty fingers she might be able to touch type, but I'm finding the layout/size a little hard to get used to. My main desire was for something small enough for regular train use, so I can live with it, but maybe it's worth looking at a 1000 (ie 10" instead of 8.9")?
I actually bought the 901 in PC World and they had a reasonable selection of netbooks that I had a prod of (plus, surprisingly, they were as cheap as anywhere else that had stock).
J.
On 13-Sep-08 09:16:43, Chris G wrote:
My wife's laptop has just expired (or at least XP on it has
started
BSOD'ing, needs a re-install at the very least) so she's looking for a replacement.
She doesn't *really* need a full-blown laptop and size and weight are important because she does have to lug it around with her quite a lot so the EEE PC might be a good choice.
However she needs to be able to touch type on it, does+ anyone here have an EEE PC? Is the keyboard OK? Is the 'bigger' EEE PC keyboard better? Any other suggestions?
-- Chris Green
I have an Eee PC 900 (Linux). I don't know if this has a "bigger" keyboard (probably yes, since there's no room for anything bigger).
The layout is, by and large, standard (except that the "#~" key, usually at the right of the "ASD..." row and left of the CR key, has moved up to the extreme right of the "QERTY..." row, so is not where a touch typist would expect to find it).
The main exception to standard is that the standard ASCII characters "" and "|" require special manoeuvres:
"": Fn+"Z" "|": Shift+Fn+"Z"
which is almost certain to cross wires in the touch-typing circuits!
One potentially useful extra is that some accented characters from ISOLatin-1 are marked on the keyboard as
á: Alt+"A" é: Alt+"E" í: Alt+"I" ó: Alt+"O" ú: Alt+"U"
with Shift+<above> for the upper-case versions. However, there doesn't seem to be provision for other accented characters such as à, â, è, ê, î, ô, not to mention å, ç, ñ, ø, etc., all of which one may well need to use if using the provided ones at all. Maybe ASUS had the Italian market in mind???
That being said, I find the size of the keyboard to be just adequate for my fingers, though it takes a few minutes adaptation when I switch from a "normal" board.
Hoping this helps, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 13-Sep-08 Time: 10:56:47 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
PS: I forgot to add to my previous that the Eee PC 900 fits very snugly into a "Case LOGIC Portable/In-Car DVD Player Case" which was about £20 in Tesco, along with its power cable and power "brick", together with a neat little Technika Mini Optical Mouse (with extensible cable) (again, £10 from Tesco) -- I hate touch-pads!
(Not that I want to advertise Tesco -- quite the reverse -- but I happened to come across those items one day and they nicely go along with compactness and portability of the entire setup).
Ted.
On 13-Sep-08 09:16:43, Chris G wrote:
My wife's laptop has just expired (or at least XP on it has started BSOD'ing, needs a re-install at the very least) so she's looking for a replacement.
She doesn't *really* need a full-blown laptop and size and weight are important because she does have to lug it around with her quite a lot so the EEE PC might be a good choice.
However she needs to be able to touch type on it, does anyone here have an EEE PC? Is the keyboard OK? Is the 'bigger' EEE PC keyboard better? Any other suggestions?
-- Chris Green
main@lists.alug.org.uk http://www.alug.org.uk/ http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/main Unsubscribe? See message headers or the web site above!
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 13-Sep-08 Time: 11:05:36 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
On Sat, 13 Sep 2008 10:16:43 +0100 Chris G cl@isbd.net allegedly wrote:
However she needs to be able to touch type on it, does anyone here have an EEE PC? Is the keyboard OK? Is the 'bigger' EEE PC keyboard better? Any other suggestions?
El Reg did a netbook comparison recently. See http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/09/12/rh_bg_netbooks/
Micro Mart also ran a comparison article in this week's edition. They concluded that the Elonex WebBook was "best value". Apparently CarPhone Warehouse sell a version with ubuntu loaded.
Mick
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The text file for RFC 854 contains exactly 854 lines. Do you think there is any cosmic significance in this?
Douglas E Comer - Internetworking with TCP/IP Volume 1
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc854.txt ---------------------------------------------------------------------
The message 20080913121242.26ca270c@shed.rlogin.net from mbm mbm@rlogin.net contains these words:
Micro Mart also ran a comparison article in this week's edition. They concluded that the Elonex WebBook was "best value". Apparently CarPhone Warehouse sell a version with ubuntu loaded.
Huh! Last time I spoke to Carphone Warehouse (asking about Linux-compatible broadband dongles, no-one in the dhop had even heard of Linux...
I find the (ickle) Eee keyboard quite adequate, but then, I use tryping of the hunt-and-peck school.
On Sat, 2008-09-13 at 10:16 +0100, Chris G wrote:
However she needs to be able to touch type on it, does anyone here have an EEE PC? Is the keyboard OK? Is the 'bigger' EEE PC keyboard better? Any other suggestions?
I have the Acer Aspire One which IMO has a better keyboard than the EEE 900/901. Basically the benefits of the EEE 901 would be better battery life, bluetooth and more storage (in the case of the base model SSD Aspire) however the Acer is £100 cheaper so you pays your money etc
Hi,
2008/9/13 Chris G cl@isbd.net:
However she needs to be able to touch type on it, does anyone here have an EEE PC? Is the keyboard OK? Is the 'bigger' EEE PC keyboard better? Any other suggestions?
I was using the 701 model at work for a bit. I found it quite hard to use the keybaord at first. The right shift is to the right of the up arrow key, which threw me off many times. The ` key to the left of the 1 is not there, so I found myself hitting 2 instead of 1 a number of times. Also the keys are quite small, and the pipe key requires the shift and Fn key to be pressed. ISTR having to press shift + Fn + up/down arrow to page up and down a terminal window.
I don't touch type, but i think anyone who's been touch typing on a normal PC might struggle with the 701 model. I'm not sure if the 900/901 models are any better.
Srdjan
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Anthony Anson -
Chris G -
Jonathan McDowell -
mbm -
Srdjan Todorovic -
Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk -
Wayne Stallwood