Ultraportable laptop

[Kilauea]

My friend's mom wants an ultraportable laptop... I don't know a whole lot about laptops, neither do I about moms... but that is another story.

So, her needs are very basic. Accessing the internet wirelessly, doing emails, doing basic word-like, excel-like documents, surfing the internet and being able to install some chinese caracter program ?

Anyway, I found this computer which seems quite interesting, I'd like your opinion about it:
Asus Eee PC 4G or this one which has twice the HDD(still quite small tho): Asus Eee PC 8G

I know the HDD on those laptops is tiny, but I figure that she won't need a whole lot and if she needs more, she can always store on either an external HDD or a USB key. What do you think of those, do you have any recommendations to buy or not to buy... And do you have any other suggestions ?

I also read in a thread that talked about those computers, but it didn't say anything, so I'm asking in a new thread to get the information I need about those.

Thanks a lot

[glc]

She will kill you if she has to deal with a 7 inch screen and Linux. I'd look at an entry level Dell and deal with a bit more weight.

[Kilauea]

Ya, she might, but she wants it to be ultraportable, I don't expect her to be using it more than 30mins per day on average as she already barely used the desktop that was at her disposition.. She wants to be able to carry it in her purse... It shouldn't be too pricy....

My friend already has a 15.4" laptop and its too big, so is her brother's 14.1" laptop. But I assume it must be kind of hellish to type on such a keyboard...

Any other comments or info ?

[Alaron]

How about the Dell 12" ultraportables? http://www.dell.com/content/products...tab=bundlestab

[Kilauea]

Originally Posted by Alaron How about the Dell 12" ultraportables? http://www.dell.com/content/products...tab=bundlestab

I can see this as being a lot more powerful, but at nearly 1300$(in canada) its 800$ more than the priciest of the 2... and I am unsure it will be used a lot more than the small one. But of course, it could be used in another way without much problems. Also, I'd like to know what sort of battery life we can expect from that if we leave it with the basic 6 cells battery ?

[glc]

If she wants to put it in her purse, look at smartphones and PDA's, not notebook computers.

[Kilauea]

Do you have any suggestions for PDAs, cuz I really don't know them that well..

[Staren]

What does she want to do on the go exactly? If what she wants to be able to do is e-mail and check the web, a Blackberry might be a good companion to her desktop. BUT, if she needs to write more then e-mail, she'll hate any PDA or Smartphone.

Anything with real computing power, but under 4 lbs is going to cost a lot.

[Kilauea]

She would like to be able to surf the web, write emails, do basic word and excel documents... She'd eventually also want to watch some asian news from the web.. maybe even watch some tv series (from a usb key most likely)... The screen shouldn't be too small as they already have a 7" dvd player that serves as a sort of tv.

[kilgoretrout]

Here's a very positive review of that Asus Eee:

http://www.hothardware.com/articles/...view_Showcase/

The price point is certainly very attractive and they are selling like hotcakes according to all reports. Personally, I wouldn't want to be an early adopter on this form factor. That black border around screen doesn't make a lot of sense to me and I'm sure the next generation will eliminate the border and have a wider screen.
As for your mother's requirements, email and surfing should be no problem except those inherent in the small form factor. It runs a linux distro named "Xandros" which is designed to be very windows like. It comes with all proprietary codecs and plugins installed so surfing and multimedia should not be a problem. Foreign language support in the desktop environment used by Xandros, KDE, is very good and chinese language support is available but I don't know if it comes installed by default; I would guess not for a device sold in North America. That shouldn't impact websurfing Asian sites though as that's handled by the browser. It comes with Open Office which has reasonably good compatibility with MS Office but if she has to exchange a lot of documents with MS Office users there could be potential issues.

[glc]

I do see that it *IS* Windows XP-compatible, and it ships with drivers. However, I'd be concerned with trying to run XP and applications with such a small hard drive.

[Alaron]

How about something like a UMPC: http://www.buy.com/prod/samsung-np-q...204688005.html

[Kilauea]

I looked at that Alaron, but I can't seem to find any decently priced ones in Canada. They all seem over 1200$ which is too much for what it would be used for.

[kilgoretrout]

More on the Asus EEE. Here's a video review complete with a disassembly of the device by two English guys:

http://www.cnettv.co.uk/technology/dialogue-box/