French tempted with €199 Eee PC HSDPA bundle French ordinateuristes can now buy Asus' elfin Eee PC with integrated HSDPA 3G, courtesy of local carrier SFR. The package bundles an white Eee PC 4G with a similarly hued USB HSDPA modem capable of download speeds of up to 3.6Mb/s. SFR wants €299 (£223/$435) for the lot, but it's pledging to give €100 of it back after buyers …
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"French ordinateuristes can now buy Asus' elfin Eee PC with integrated HSDPA 3G"
"Integrated"? Is that a mis-translation? I would have thought "bundled" would be more accurate, since the 3G dongle will dangle or stick out (a lot) from the casing.
Have tried a Voda 3G USB dongle with my Eee, and it works a treat (out of the box on shipped GNU/Linux distro, no additional drivers required). But it's a bit dangly.
John
I've recently had a chance to try an Eee PC. I Really wanted one, and found a local dealer who had one I could try for a bit.
Lovely form factor. Very readable screen. Obviously built to the price though, because just using for 10 minutes I thought it was going to break on me. Really. Things moved and creaked on it when I picked it up, and it's really not heavy enough that it should do so. Then there's the keyboard. I have small hands, so it's about the right size for me. But it still didn't really work right. Some of the keys seemed to stick and not work when pressed. Others doubled up on their output. The keyboard is actually on a separate tray that isn't properly attached, and some of the keys had managed to find their corners trapped under the rest of the case.
It's cheap. Not "inexpensive". Cheap. As in shoddily built. Feels like a toy, but I've seen much more robust toys.
Which is really unfortunate. I was prepared to get one right there and then. I love the idea. The concept is quite good, and it's really very portable and could be really useful. Unfortunately, in this case, the execution left a lot to be desired.
The keyboard problems you experienced, keys getting stuck etc., I haven't experienced any of that with this Eee I'm typing on which I got last Nov, perhaps the build quality has dropped with production being ramped up to meet demand or it hasn't been treated well. I find the build quality of the Eee pretty good, I haven't been too gentle with it (it's slowly building up a collection of 'war wound' scratches) and nothing's getting loose or creaking badly.
The problems I've had with the keyboard are the actual layout of the keys with some in the 'wrong' place, namely the right shift is the wrong side of the up arrow, there's no right Ctrl key, the "\" is a sub-key of Z which only works when you press the Fn at the same time, and the worst of all is the "" key which for some reason they decided to place it to the right of Esc instead of underneath which means I've often mis-typed numbers because I expect them to be 1 key to the right of where they are. I have quite large hands and haven't found the small size of the keyboard a problem but actually really like it, when I go back and use regular sized keyboards they feel like over-sized comedy keyboards - the same with mice because I bought a mini-mouse for it which is about 1/3 the size of regular mice and I really like that too.
Hi there
Like Haku I have not experienced the problems you have with my Asus EEE which I have had for a fortnight now.
It seems reasonably solidly built, with a slightly deformed space bar being the only key related issue. Yes the keys are somewhat smaller than my big mitts would like, but since I have written stories on a Psion 3a I can cope,
There are key placement issues, I keep putting it to sleep instead of toggling the Wireless, but that's something I'm getting used to
Maybe you had a dodgy one. I'd look again elsewhere and see whaty you think
I take it you work for a competitor's PR agency and are trying to trash the eee.
I've had one (black) since before xmas and no problems, the case doesn't creak even after being dropped a couple of dozen times and spending plenty of time rolling about in a rucksack. No keyboard problems to speak of.
Nothing cheap at all about the build quality - it matches that on the toshiba and sony laptops that are kicking around here.
Then again anyone who can't afford to buy one to try at £199 would probably moan about anything and everything.
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