Budget computing: The Asus Eee PC

Prices of personal computers are going down. Nothing special about it you should say... Well... in the 1990s I used to say a PC was costing around $1000 - the same price in 1990 and in 2000. Of course in 2000 the machine was a lot more powerful compared to the 1990 one, but basically the things you were able to do with it were pretty much the same... I was an active programmer at that time and all the time I was using a $1000 PC to get the job done.

Today I am a C-level email worker, getting paid to read and write emails and do a little Web browsing... My latest email machine is a dual core, 2GB RAM, 200GB hard drive. Oh yes I could live with a smaller drive but I simply like to have all the stuff with me - music, pictures, and of course documents. And yes I could live with 200MB of RAM, but unfortunately my Vista OS could not... I was living in 200MB RAM space for 5 years on the Windows XP street, but after moving to the Vista street, I had to opt for 10x more. Dual core? Sure, one core is constantly occupied by various application update processes checking day and night if there are new versions available. So there must be the second CPU core to do some productive work...

But what happens if we take a step back? I remember my first Windows XP laptop. It was the Compaq Armada M-series. 650MHz CPU, 512MB RAM (why would you need such a monster? - my friends kept on asking me...), and a 6GB hard disk. Windows XP was a screamer on that hardware. And I paid for that machine a small fortune. Especially the RAM was unusually expensive, as most of the hardware used to have 64MB or 128MB of RAM that day.

Let us have a look at the Asus Eee PC model 701, a $300 subnotebook. 900MHz CPU (underclocked to 630MHz to save on battery life). 512MB RAM. And 4GB flash SSD drive plus a CF slot for another 4 or 16GB... Windows XP screamer spec? You bet... almost. I was tempted to buy one, but finally have decided to wait for the Eee 900 series (a screen 1024 pixels wide is way more convenient compared to 800 one). But really... The Eee PC 701 means you can have a top performing email machine for $300. Budget computing finally delivered. The demand for the Asus is enormous and the machine has created a class of its own. Suddenly Sony and HP are promising their own $300 - range budget laptops. Light, inexpensive, connected. Anyway... who needs 64-bit OS to write a piece of email and read a few pages...?