Blogging on an EEE

I’m typing entry this using an officemate’s new, black Asus Eee PC with Xandros Linux. She and her husband bought it over the weekend, and she brought it to the office today so I could help in setting up GPRS connection with a Nokia phone.

We tested the Internet connection with the office LAN, and it worked! Meanwhile, to activate the GPRS connection, the Eee had to be in the full desktop mode, which we could not activate because we could not download the needed updates. She asked me to take it home so I could use a direct Internet connection to download and install the updates.

Since I’ve been using Ubuntu for some time already, I did not encounter any problem with the instructions provided on the EeeUser Wiki. The full desktop is now enabled, and the Eee looks better with it.

While I liked the Eee, I still regret that I could no longer own a Palm Foleo, which was pulled out before it even hit the market. Even if techies say the Foleo and the Eee do not belong to the same product category, I cannot help comparing the two. The Foleo looks better than the Eee. The former has a bigger screen, and it looks thinner than the Eee. It also has a rubberized surface, and seems more elegant than the mini laptop I’m now using.

Honestly, I was a bit disappointed when I saw the Eee for the first time this morning. I guess I expected a mini version of the Macbook with its neat form. The Eee seemed a bit crude and reminded me of an old IBM Thinkpad.

However, the Foleo is no more. I’ll just have to wait for the Foeleo II. Besides, being able to play with the Eee–which could be described as small but powerful–heightened my excitement for this gadget. I hope I could get my own Eee next month–or when I raise enough money.