I’ve had my Eee for a few weeks now and my experience with it has been pretty much as I expected: overall I’m very pleased with the little device, but there’s definitely room for improvement. The keyboard is usable (I’m typing this post on it now) but a few layout improvements would make it much better.
And, the infamous Wi-Fi issues have gotten me a couple times; I have no problems at all connecting to my home network (which uses WPA) but sometimes I can’t connect to public hotspots. Which isn’t too big of a deal, since I’m able now to tether to my Windows Mobile 6 phone with its unlimited data plan.
So in short, it’s living up to my expectations of an ultra-mobile PC to hold me over until the industry can “get it right” in this segment. And it looks like Dell may come to the rescue. Their “Dell E” line looks very impressive, and is set to start at $299 on the low end!
Dell certainly has the whole economies-of-scale thing worked out, and the fact that they already offer systems pre-loaded with Ubuntu is very encouraging. I’m certainly hopeful that they can put together a great Ubuntu system that works very well out-of-the-box and is supported with new updates, at least much better than the terrible Xandros flavor that Asus used but doesn’t offer updates for. I’m also very encouraged about their recent announcement that they will be pressuring their component providers to release fully open-source drivers, which should also help the Dell E have first-class reliability with its hardware.
If you look at the slides provided on the Engadget link, they also seem to be prepping their sales channel to position Linux as the best choice for this type of device, with XP also being “available” if users really want it.
I have the very strong feeling that by the time Christmas rolls around this year, there will be a great many highly-capable (and inexpensive) netbooks to choose from.
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