1. Skip to content

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:00am

Blog | Giant mug...

Blog | Giant mug...

...or little computer? Actually, it's the latter. I bought a tiny Asus eee PC from the airport (works out at £180 by the time I get the VAT back) to see what it's like to work with while travelling.

I have to say that on the whole I'm pretty impressed with it. I wouldn't want to write a large report on the tiny keyboard, and the touchpad can be infuriating, but I managed to use it to join an online MA chat session today and found that it works very well with BBC iPlayer Radio.

Skype runs well on it too and the instant messenger client works with MSN messenger and GTalk.

The main problem is that the battery only lasts 3 hours or so. Currently I'm looking to see if I can charge it with my solar panel backpack. While it won't be able to run it in real-time (my panel only gives 6.5W and the eee pc needs 22W to run) it might trickle charge the battery to give me some extra juice on the road...

Author: Sean Clark