I received it this past weekend and have been carrying this little machine around. It runs a Xandros Linux operating system. The systems is very straight-forward and easy to use. It’s perfect for on the go computing. I just need something to jump onto the Internet or small tasks like taking notes wherever I go. It’s tiny and unobtrusive. Boots up really fast from a cold shutdown. One complaint I have is that it gets hot which then kicks off the somewhat noisy fan. Battery life could be better since this thing doesn’t use your standard hard drive. It uses a 4GB Solid State Drive (no moving parts). The folks over at the EEEUser site have been doing alot of hacking to their system. I think I’m fine with the default OS installation. I thought I was wanting a full-blown Linux OS but this interface from Xandros is very useful and I don’t need anything more than what is offered there.

This thing isn’t going to win any computing race. But when you think about the purpose of this machine, it does the basics at a quarter of the price of something similar in size. Don’t expect to buy this to be your primary machine. The screen is too small and it doesn’t have enough juice to be doing heavy lifting like image manipulation, video editing, or even documentation. But for the times when you just need a machine to quickly get onto the web or jot down a quick note, this is perfect. So for those who can’t afford a MacBook Air but would like a portable system, I ask you to consider this.

The upgrade was definitely worth it. Now I can run Parallels and other applications without any hiccups. The Parallels Windows instance loads up much faster now that I’ve allocated 1GB of RAM for the Virtual Machine. I must admit, this has been a pleasant experience using my Mac. Adding this much memory has made this machine shine. Things not only “just work”, they work responsively too. Let’s just say my next laptop will definitely be a MacBook Pro of some sort.

I found myself perusing their website for more of these videos and saw one for iLife. OMG, this was a good one. I was almost going to dismiss the entire iLife application to be something cool and may one day use it. But after watching this video, I wanted to jump on and begin managing my pictures better with iPhoto. The video showed the basics of using the application and got me up and running. So tonight I spent my time importing all my pictures into iPhoto. I have to say the software is very well thought out. I mean I imported an entire folder of albums and it knew that each folder was an album for a particular event and automatically created “Events” for each sets of folders. Amazing to say the least. I think I’m finally getting why Apple products are such fan favorites. For example, things like knowing when to turn on and off when you insert and remove your headphones on your iPod is awesome! They really thought about their products before they even begin building it. That attention to details and making everything so damn easy to use, really wins over demanding users like myself. It’s so hard to not want to use an Apple system now. I find myself missing things like Expose when I’m on the PC. Damn you Apple for brain-washing me!

Finally did it after a couple months of contemplating. I’ve been actively using a mini at work but it’s an old G4. Now I need to get Windows XP running on it.

1. Radiohead’s highly anticipated 7th album, In Rainbows (October 10th)
2. An Apple system with the new Leopard operating system (In October)
3. NBA 2K8 Xbox 360 game (October 2nd)

I’ve already pre-ordered the game and will be placing my order for the Radiohead’s disc box set soon ($80). I am still debating about adding another computer system. It’ll probably be a little after the initial release of Leopard just so I can read about other people’s experience. It’ll be my first OSX system.

Who wants one?