How small can your laptop go?
Posted 29 January 2008 at 12:44PM by Ian Betteridge in Connecting to the Internet
I have a new love in my life. It's small, black and - according to some - an underpowered toy. And I also happen to think that it's an interesting example of the way IT is changing. Happily for my partner, my new love isn't another woman - it's a tiny, cheap laptop called the Asus eeePC.
The eeePC has only been around for a couple of months, but in that time it's become the geek status symbol de jour. It's a small laptop with a seven inch screen, a paltry 512MB of memory, and a flash-RAM based "hard drive" of only 4Gb. Although it includes some unexpected features - a built in web cam, support for wireless and wired networking, and voice over IP software - it's incredibly simple by comparison to most laptops. It's also very cheap, at around £220, and it's been selling like hot cakes. And it weighs next to nothing, which makes it a genuine "take anywhere" device.
It runs the free open source operating system Linux rather than Windows, but that's not really what makes the eeePC interesting. What's made tiny laptops like the Asus a real, practical choice isn't just the increasing power that you can get into a small package, but the combination of wireless internet access and "software as a service" products which work in your web browser. You don't need masses of storage if your documents are online, and you access them through services like Google Docs, Zoho, and so on. Why run an expense package on a single, powerful machine when you can access something like BT Web Expenses from anywhere you can find wireless internet access, using only a web browser?
Of course, there are times when you are not going to have internet access, so it's essential to have "offline" applications available to you. The Asus takes care of this by including OpenOffice, the free office suite which includes word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software that can read and write standard Microsoft formats.
Some people will always want a fully-featured, powerhouse of a laptop. But thanks to software which runs on the web, not every user needs one.
Have a question about BT Web Expenses? Join the our community.
New feature: Rate this post!
Average rating: 0/5
Comments
2. At January 29, 2008 5:28 PM, anjanesh wrote:
Linux strikes back.
Asus also builds an instant on motherboard in P5E3 series where the user gets the choice to boot instantly into a net ready embedded linux environment called the Splashtop whose slogan sums it all up -
'On or Off, with nothing in between 'Asus would be one of few companies that truly put money in hardware level research rather than simply build machines out of kits.
3. At January 31, 2008 3:38 PM, Ian Betteridge wrote:
Luke, don't forget that your mobile was probably subsidised by your network - the unsubsidised cost of a Nokia M95 (for example) was around £800 when it was first released.
You'll all be pleased to know that I'm *still* loving the eeePC!
4. At February 1, 2008 8:15 AM, Bob Roberts wrote:
I'm sure geeks have set their sights on the new ultrathin MacBook Air (www.apple.com/uk/macbookair). The thickest point is 1.9cm, has a dual core 1.6 or 1.8ghz C2D cpu, 2gb of ram and an 80gb HDD. So ultra slim it can fit in any briefcase and also has wireless N as standard. Apple seem to have gotten it right by not sacrificing power and performance for size...
5. At February 1, 2008 2:19 PM, Anjanesh wrote:
along with performance and featuresd apple has also not sacrified price either for the Air .
Yes apple has got the specs right and it decided not to have an ethernet port or a card slot unlike the eee.
both have that unique price / value combination in their own manner but how much one is getting for £299 is bit ahead of the £1,199 quoted for Air.
Post a comment
As 14 days have passed, comments are now closed for this entry.
1. At January 29, 2008 4:48 PM, Luke wrote: