Asus EEE

(Cruddy camera phone Pic of my Asus)

The Asus EEE, a small Mirco laptop with a seven inch screen, 4 gig SSD storage (now they have an 8 gig model), 512 Meg ram (I upgraded mine to 1 gig, helps a lot), Wifi, 3 USB ports, video out, web cam, stereo speakers, and SD slot. This little laptop is $399 and I know you are saying, uh, I could get a real laptop for about $100 more but the thing with the little Asus is it is very portable, very usable, and just overall cool. If you think about it, a good PDA would cost about the same but this little guy has a real keyboard, touch pad and even though it comes with Linux, you can load Asus approved XP on it, they even include a DVD that has all of the drivers and a reloader for the pre-installed Linux. The Linux that comes on it is pretty usable, I was able to access my WPA hidden network at home with no problem, and any thumb drive I plugged in it saw. It comes with "easy" mode by default with tabs at the top of the screen. You can browse the net, open Microsoft documents with Open Office, look at PDF files and some basic games along with Skype and the web cam made for a good OOTB experience. But if you are like me, you want some more meat and when I looked on the internet I found that there were a couple of ways to tweak the OS so you had a more full laptop. And one other nice thing is the ton of information on this little guy on the internet. People have been hacking on it like crazy since it came out. Everything from changing the OS to adding more hardware internally. Anyway, if you need a small laptop for anything or just a really cool gadget, this is it. It's great for traveling and the built Wifi seems to have a pretty good range. It can run for about 3 hours on a charge and video and sound playback are actually quite smooth. Right now I'm running eeeXubuntu, a special version of Xubuntu (based on Ubuntu) that has EEE drivers already built in. If you want to make a secuirty and penetration testing laptop, backtrack 3 beta has all of the drivers for the EEE built in as well, even the Compiz-3D stuff works with no problem. Anyway, here are some really good links on the Asus EEE, check them out.

Asus Site:http://usa.asus.com/search.aspx?searchitem=1&searchkey=eee+pc

Got mine from Newegg, came in really quick: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220261

News, Mods, hacks: http://asuseeehacks.blogspot.com/

Really good Wiki and forum on it: http://www.eeeuser.com/

Best instructions for Ubuntu install, definitely use the script pack at the end: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/ubuntu

Very good details for installing Backtrack 3: http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/260/42/

Installing XP was easy but this site has very good instructions on it, my only problem was I stripped too much out with N-lite and couldn't get the webcam going so you might want to just follow the Asus install instructions in the book, it takes up a lot more space though but was more functional in the long run. http://www.i64x.com/eeexp.php

Good tips for making the EEE more usable: http://www.laptopmag.com/advice/tips/5-asus-eee-pc-customization-tips-youll-love.aspx?pid=6

And the current OS I have on mine, seems to be a good balance between space and goodies I need: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/ubuntu:eeexubuntu:home

Good util for XP on the EEE, lets you control brightness and other stuff easily: http://www.cpp.in/dev/eeectl/