eee pc

I got an Asus eee pc (model 900) the other day (I ordered it through buy.com). I'm going to a conference next week (zendcon), and I didn't want to lug around my laptop (it gets pretty heavy after a few hours). I didn't need much--something with a Web browser, an ssh client, something to pull images off of my camera (a Kodak Easyshare v1003), and a text editor for taking notes. The eee pc fits that nicely, and it only weighs about 2.5 pounds.

It's got an 8" screen which I'm finding to be perfectly readable. The keyboard is pretty small, but I'm getting used to it (I'm posting this from the eee pc).

It has an SD/MMC card reader, 3 USB 2.0 ports, and built-in wireless (802.11 g/b). It has 1GB of RAM and a 20GB solid-state hard drive (the thing boots to the login prompt in about 30 seconds). It even has an integrated 1.3Mpixel Web cam.

I'm finding the eeeuser wiki to be very helpful (especially a post about getting gwenview to import photos from my camera).

One little wrinkle I experienced was that the wireless adapter was inadvertently disabled, and it took me a little while to figure out what had happened. The eee pc typically recovers well from going to standby mode, but once when I tried to resume, the screen looked like static and I couldn't get it to do anything. I had to hold down the power button and reboot. When it came back, it refused to join my wireless network. I finally figured out (with the help of the diagnostic tools) that the wireless adapter had been disabled (dunno if I accidentally did that, or if it was a fluke). Anyway, holding down the special function key ("Fn" in the lower left) and hitting F2 toggles the adapter, and I was back in business.