As I Xi It v2.3 » consumerism

Busy, busy

XiYu — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:07:55 +0000

I have reading and literature reviews coming out my ears!

Not much blog time, but there are a few written ones that need scanning.

I’m currently considering the Sigma 10mm fisheye lens, but I’m not sure if I’ll be using it enough to justify its £380 price tag.

Netbooks II

XiYu — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:10:47 +0000

Yesterday I popped into PC World and had a look at the Aspire One which was handily placed next to the EEE PC 901. To test the keyboards, I just typed in “the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” and made more errors on the EEE PC than Aspire One. I guess the larger keyboard does make a difference. The 8.9″ screen on both machines were surprisingly useable. The picture quality on both machines seemed fairly similar, but with the Aspire One on Linpus and the EEE PC on XP, I couldn’t find two identical images to see which had the better range of colours.

Out of these two, I’d pick the Aspire One. We’ll wait and see what else is on the market in the coming weeks/months.

Netbooks

XiYu — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 23:09:27 +0000

I really want one but I don’t actually have any real need for one. Well, perhaps as a glorified photostorage device or for email and internet on the go while travelling. There have been a few occasions when I wished I brought my laptop but didn’t due to size and weight.

On a day to day basis, I’m not sure if I’d really use it. I’ve already got a desktop, laptop and PDA, do I really need another machine as an intermediate between the laptop and PDA?? There have been times when I haven’t used my laptop for weeks either at home or on location. When I do use it at home, it’s usually when I’m defragmenting the drives or running the antivirus on the desktop.

A friend of mine has an EEE PC and he uses it pretty much everyday. It’s secondary to his laptop which I guess acts as his desktop. I was round my supervisor’s house the other day and noticed that her husband was testing out his PowerPoint presentation on an EEE PC, they seem to have quite a few laptops.

I’ve read the reviews, seen the hacks and mods people have done to their machines and it looks like a pretty versatile piece of kit. At such low price per machine, I’m tempted to get one. It’s a toss up between the Asus EEE PC 901 and the Acer Aspire One A150X, both running XP. None of that Linux for me. I think I’ll probably get the Aspire One since it has more storage and is cheaper than the Asus. The Aspire One looks prettier and has a larger keyboard. Battery life’s a bit on the low side, but that can be rectified with a higher capacity one. I’ll probably pop into a PC World at some point and see the machines in person before parting with my hard earned cash, perhaps wait a few weeks for the prices to fall and see if I still have a desire to have one.

These netbooks have been out for a while but I never took any real interest in them. I don’t know why in the last two weeks or so I’ve had a strong desire to pick one up. Apart from at my supervisor’s, I haven’t actually seen one being used out in the wild as so to speak.