Despite the tightening purse strings of the new Credit Crunch Austerity Britain, the Ferry family coffers were recently opened to purchase a new PC.
Despite regular complaints from cost centre no.1, investment in mobile phones, MP3 players and other such essential paraphernalia of modern life is a rare event.
Having finally caved in to demands from Mrs. Ferry for a laptop PC which could be used whilst travelling, I was delighted to pick up the Asus EEE 701 4G PC for a grand total of £212 incl. VAT. Its intended to be a "chuck in the bottom of the bag" laptop for Mrs. Ferry so that she is always connected
Although the EEE could be considered a very low end device in terms of performance and spec (it has a very small hard disc and a measly 512KB of onboard RAM - a laptop spec typical of 2 years ago) its 2 biggest attractions are undoubtedly its low cost, and its diminutive size.
Its only 22*16*2 cm, about half the size of an A4 notepad (see a picture of it next to its larger, and rather more expensive big brother, my Lenovo T61p). Nevertheless it still manages to have a workable keyboard and screen, a webcam, and all the usual laptop bits & pieces
So here we have a fully functional laptop, useable for Microsoft Office and email, for about the cost of a decent mobile phone.
On a trip from Aberdeen to Edinburgh last week (courtesy of National Express trains with their free wireless) I had a very productive 2 hours on the wee Asus, so I have commandeered it as a general use lightweight laptop. As I am often on my pins running customer discussions, its also been used to drive PowerPoint presentations .
There are a few compromises of course - the 7" 800*480 screen clips the view of some websites and applications, and will not suit everyone. Likewise the low price is in part due to it shipping with a customised Linux desktop equipped with Firefox and OpenOffice.
This may be useable for general note taking and home email, but after trialing it for a day, it was obvious that I, like the vast majority of business users, am too reliant on the Office applications (particularly Outlook 2007). In any case, Mrs. Ferry found the unfamiliar Linux environment unusable. As its only got a 4Gb hard disk (flash-based incidentally - no moving parts) and low end processor, its tricky to squeeze Windows Vista on it so I went for old faithful Windows XP.
Although the low-cost laptop initiatives such as one laptop per child have been targeted at education and developing nations, one could easily see devices such as the Asus appealing to the hardened road warrior/executive - enabling him to carry a laptop in situations where he wouldn't normally do so due to risk or convenience. this may be one of the factors behind the announcement of Microsoft ongoing support for Ultra low-cost personal computers . As the announcement says, this is targetted at "companion devices with limited hardware capabilities" which is how I use my Asus - its convenient for my trekking around Scotland, but like Charlton Heston and his Rifle, you could only wrest my 4GB Vista 17" widescreen Lenovo laptop out of my dying fingers.
Some will prefer more powerful fully functional Ultra-Mobile PCs which like those from Samsung, Sony, and more recently HTC with its Shift. But I believe the attraction of these small but perfectly formed devices is their "disposability" - you would think twice about checking email on your £700 small but perfectly formed UMPC whilst sipping a White Tornado in the Saracen's Head, but you might risk your £200 Asus.
Since toting my Asus around the offfices of Corporate Scotland, yours truly seems to have become a minor fashion trendsetter- with several others follwing suit. If you too want to be part of the in-crowd, follow the steps below: