Asus Eee Laptop ... is it worth it?

[Alpha]

 

I need a laptop soon and I'm mostly going to use it just for the Internet and word processing. I want the laptop to be light weight and I'm not looking for a Dell XPS 20 pound laptop that's basically a portable power hungry desktop.

 

What I need is something efficient, stable, and secure. I've been looking at the Asus Eee and it seems to be exactly what I'm looking for. It has a 4GB hard drive, runs on Intel Celeron 900mhz processor, 512mb of ram, Linux, built-in wifi, and is less than 2 pounds or so. You can also install Windows XP on it and add special SD cards that can hold over 10GB extra HD space (don't forget flash drives). The max resolution you can run on is 800x600 and the screen is 7 inches.

 

However, the price is what throws me off. For all the goodies, it's $400.00 USD. It comes with a built-in webcam, power charger, yada yada. What bothers me is that I feel like I may be purchasing another GP2x (aka, a pile of garbage). It's small and lightweight, but is it durable? Some say the keyboard is quite flimsy, so I'm not sure what to expect if I buy it. I need this laptop to last me at least a decade (no joke).

 

The ram may be inefficient for XP, so I may need to pay about $50+ to upgrade it to 1GB of ram.

 

This is a picture of the screen with Open Office (at 640x480 resolution):

 

 

The reviews for the Eee have also been positive. CNET gave it a 7.4 and most laptop review sites gave it a 4/5 stars.

 

Asus Eee Gallery: http://laptopmag.com/News/Notebooks/Exclus...-701.htm?page=2

 

Video: (It's $400.00, not $200.00)

[Gryph]

I don't think I would buy that.

[Shibathedog]

depends a lot on what your going to use it for. You can definitely get WAY better spec'd computers for like an extra hundred maybe two hundred dollars from dell and hp and all them though. Smaller ones with WAY better battery life too. I think your really only supposed to consider this if cheap is the number one concern. Like you needed to buy a lot of them or something.

[solidius23]

i would add an xtra 100 bux like shiba said and get an hp,toshiba,or dell crap even and acer from wally world would be better.

[miskie]

Walmart has a couple of laptops for under 500 -- and if you time it right you can usually get a closeout model for the 400 you are looking to spend on this thing - I know they had some low cost Acer Aspire models, you might want to check walmart.com or your local store (Im sure there is one nearby, because everyone lives near a Walmart nowadays )

[ken_cinder]

Screw that, for $400 bucks I can get a nice little Acer with far better hardware than that. Sure it's nice and light, but beyond that......it's useless. 900mhz Celeron is ass slow these days, and if you've used anything newer you're going to hate it.

 

Look at this, first thing I came across from Staples that is not quite $100 more. Would eat that Eee for breakfast.

http://www.staples.ca/ENG/Catalog/cat_sku....mp;webid=716817

[L.S.D]

Get a Thinkpad. It will last you 10 yrs

[Jitway]

Hell no don't buy it. You can get a decent laptop for around 500, Acer or Hp and will blow this one away.

[Wizard]

This is probably the most retardest thing ever. Go out and spend that extra 100 for something that actually RUNs something.

[Kloplop321]

IF it was at least $75 less I would buy it

it would be quite nice for school stuff

[Exp44]

Frankly, my 3 year old Dell Latitude is better than that (Ok i admit it, the battery's no good, but still). If you are used to doing things in XP with good speed at high res, I don't think you will like this very much. I'd definitely spend an extra 100 bucks and get a PC that's much, much better.