[Leica] Experience with Apple? (Now: liliputing.)

[dlridings at gmail.com (Daniel Ridings)]

My daughter has been using (been glued to) one of those Asus computers
for about two months now. She has little fingers and they just fly
over the keyboard. I keep missing the shift key, but I'm sure it is
something I could learn (I'm a touch typer).

I was going to pick up a PDA (or a smart-phone) but decided to go with
one of these instead. Here in Europe it is easy (and cheap) to hook up
a mobile internet modem to it and I can kill time on trains and train
stations.

They're quite the eye-opener. Apple got really peeved with they came
out with it and beat them to the solid-state-small-machine (at a
fraction of the price).

Daniel


On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 11:01 PM, Jeff Moore <jbm@jbm.org> wrote:
> 2008-08-06-23:56:48 Mark Rabiner:
>> I see people with 6x9 inch laptops. White ones.
>> I want a laptop that size I'd carry it around with me.
>> Take it to the movies and to the bathroom.
>
> Funny thing.  I just got one of these...
>
>  
> http://www.amazon.com/Display-Intel-Processor-Solid-Battery/dp/B001BYB620/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1218138157&sr=8-2
>
>  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220371
>
> ...as a "throw it in a bag when you might not bother to bring a
> computer if your lightest one weighs seven pounds" thingie.
>
> And as you suggest, for the first time I found myself answering email
> and such while visiting, um, the smallest room in the house.
>
>  http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/5/messages/686.html
>
> Because the little thing fits on the tiny table where I've been
> accustomed to balancing a paperback.
>
> And now, please erase that image from your memory.
>
> The teensy computers have become known as "nettops", because they're
> tiny laptops do drag around if you expect to do some keeping in touch
> via the 'net, but don't expect to do heavy typing.  Because to be that
> small, the keyboard has to have smaller-than-normal spacing, and your
> fingers have to kind of scrunch together.  That, and the screen is, yes,
> a little smaller than my 17" Macbook Pro.
>
> Of the Asus Eee PCs, the 901 caught my eye because:
>
>  - Of the models which use the newest, lowest power flavor of
>    reasonably-speedy Intel x86 processor (the "Atom" family), this is
>    the one which is still nice and small (the inch-wider 1000 series
>    might be more comfy to use, but gets close to being as big as a
>    "real" laptop), and
>
>  - It still has a nice solid-state disk (no hard drive to whir at you
>    or bust if you drop it).
>
> And of course you get the Linux flavor, because:
>
>  - You get a more stable and efficient OS, fine for the purposes of
>    this sort of machine;
>
>  - With the money saved by not having to buy a Windows license, for the
>    same price they get to throw in a nominal 20G of solid-state disk
>    instead of 12G;  and
>
>  - Lets face it, Windows is just icky.
>
> The most-comparable Mac is the Macbook Air which manages to be almost as
> light as the Eee 901 (2.5 lb 901; 3.0 lb Air) but have a nice big screen
> and keyboard and shiny MacOS.  But maybe "nice big" (though really thin)
> isn't what you feel like right now.  And for the SSD (Solid State Disk,
> mister acronym-hater Rabiner) version of the Air they want $2600.
> Versus $600 for the Eee.  An investment versus maybe a what-the-hell.
>
> There's of course more on this whole class of cute little computers:
>
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC
>
>  http://www.liliputing.com/
>
>
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