Little Inbox

After selling our previous laptop Compaq Presario V3000 (AMD Turion 64 X2 1.6Ghz), we decided to buy a simple "netbook" as a replacement. We need a netbook which is easy to carry aound for checking our webmails, post some blogs etc. Browsing through the range of laptops offered at eSquare, Gadgetzone and PC Depot, we came across a budget netbook Eee PC 900 which is around RM1199~RM1250 range.

Eee PC is a budget laptop from Asus which define the 'netbook' range back in 2007 when they first launched 7" Eee PC and took the world by storm. Now, you can find Eee PC with a variety of "flavors" ranging from 7" to 10".

Eee PC 900 comes with 9" screen with resolution of 1024x600. The storage media is 30GB HDD (which many retailers claimed is SSD but is actually a Seagate Lyrion 3600rpm hard disk). You can't trust the retailers on this as they didn't verify the model number of the storage media. It would be wonderful if the Asus includes 30GB SSD instead, but no, not this time.

Eee PC 900 is equipped with meagre Celeron-M 900Mhz which is just enough to run Windows XP. We have installed Windows XP on this machine and it runs without problems. The start up time is quite slow, and you'll need to wait more than a minute before you can actually do anything productive. We suspect that the slow HDD is the culprit as we have plug in 2GB of RAM for this machine. No, it has to be the hard disk, followed by the bus speed and processor speed.

9" screen is the bare minimum for us. 7" is just too small to browse the websites comfortably. 10" would be perfect but you'll need to fork out extra RM400 for it. Of course you'll get some performance improvement if you opt for Atom N270 variants. But with recent economic slowdown every penny counts.

The WiFi and touch pad is good on Eee PC 900... especially the touch pad with multi-touch ability like the iPhone's. The keyboard is not as good as the regular notebook keyboard. Another thing is the netbook is generating a lot of heat for its size. Not sure whether it is common for all the Eee PC.

Overall, we'd give 6.5 out of 10...just average, but that's okay, for it is cheap enough to justify the slight inconveniences. :)

If you pay attention to the news recently, you'll know that Apple just opened an online store in Malaysia! Now you can shop for your favourite iPods and get it delivered to your doorstep within 2-3 days. What's more, Apple is offering free engraving for your iPod so that you'll have your personalized message permanently printed on the back of your iPod. Cool huh?

As much as we'd like to see iPhone for sale in Malaysia, but nope...iPhone is still not available in the store yet. You'll still need to get overseas unlocked set if you want to buy it in Malaysia. Not that it is difficult to get... with the help of lelong and mudah, you can basically get your iPhone anytime. But hey, why buy outside if you can directly from Apple.