Say hello to my little friend…

Isn't it shiny?

So I recently bought me an Asus EEE netbook, one of the cool blue seashell ones. I don’t know about you, but whenever I make a major purchase (major meaning > $100), I first like to list the goals that I hope to accomplish with said purchase. That’s just how I roll. Here were my goals for the netbook:

1. Primarily for reading blogs, email, Twitter, Facebook — check
2. Lets me shop online or aimlessly surf the web from the couch — check
3. Sits on the kitchen table for most of the day without running out of battery power — check
4. Is easily schlepped around — check

Yes, the EEE meets all these goals admirably. Especially the battery thing. I haven’t dipped below 85% remaining yet, as far as I know. It kicks my old HP’s battery to the curb. That old thing couldn’t even play one YouTube video without gasping for breath.

Because the EEE is so teeny, and therefore RAM and hard drive space are at a premium, I made several modifications out of the gate, which I highly recommend. First, I immediately upgraded the RAM to 2GB. It is handy if you have a computer geek friend with a collection of tiny screwdrivers for this task, because that little door on the bottom of the computer is not easy to get off, let me tell you. I saw an immediate improvement in blog loading and especially video playing time once the memory was increased, so I would say this is a necessary step.

I only intend to use the netbook for web applications, so I also uninstalled all application bloat that I know I wouldn’t be needing, like Internet Explorer and the Microsoft Office trial. Here’s a nice checklist for optimizing the EEE. I did everything except compressing the hard drive, since it seemed like opinion was divided on whethere this was worth doing in the EEE forums.

I wanted a lightweight browser, so I selected Google Chrome, which does a good job of maximizing screen space and not overloading memory. Chrome has a few quirks, though. If you customize the XP desktop, checkboxes in web pages disappear, for one; also, there is no one-click subscription to RSS feeds in Google Reader for some insane reason. But I quickly found workarounds to these.

All in all, the EEE was a good purchase that meets my specific needs. I will not be using it as my primary computer for tasks like writing, managing my finances or editing photos, and I think anyone who tries to do those things on a netbook will quickly become frustrated. But the EEE finally lets me surf unplugged, and that is well worth the price of admission. I don’t even mind that it shows every single fingerprint.