Our 20″ iMac (Intel), 12″ iBook G4 (1.2ghz) and eMac all work fine, but I wanted something to tote around that was light and would be fun to experiment around with.

Only thing in the review is that it mentions the Atom N270, but it’s actually the N280 with faster front bus of 667mhz instead of 500 (N270). Well written.

I’d love to converse with other Mac users to see how they’re getting along with their Eee’s…

Steve aka MacLifer

It plays movies that Windows Media Player has no clue about ( I didn’t think that .divx files were so exotic).

But the best part is the battery. I have the performance settings flat out and on my latest trip I watched two movies (3 1/2 hrs) and played music for another couple and the battery meter showed 50% charge remaining.

On a couple of informal tests heavy with Internet it lasted about 7.5 hrs.

I use XP occasionally as I am not that familiar with Linux yet and I have to say that XP works well within its limitations.

I upped the RAM to 2GB immediately (a 5 min, $20 job) and I kind of expected to be faster than my 5 yr. old Powerbook (1.5GHz, 1GB RAM). Well, it ain’t!

I just wish I could run Mac OS X on it. I know it can be done, but it is brain surgery .

Like what? I read ebooks on my 1000HE with FBReader. It works fine. It should be even better when the epub support improves more.

With the display brightness at 30% (plenty bright enough) and WiFi off, I can easily get eight hours of reading. I haven’t pushed things until the battery goes flat, so it may go even longer.

It may be subjective, but I find the LED backlight on the LCD display to not be as harsh as the conventional CCFL backlight on my desktop PC.

As a dedicated ebook reader, it is not ideal. As a multipurpose device that I can read on, I think it is the best compromise I have used so far, and I’ve been reading on electronic devices for many years.

The only multipurpose device I had that was better in some ways was the Nokia N800. I could read on it for 6-7 hours and it was pocketable. I needed to move up to something larger mostly because I needed a bigger display.

I still would like a dedicated ebook reader some day. When the capabilities of such devices improve and when I can afford it, I’ll eventually get one. Until then, I’m happy with my multipurpose netbook.

I don’t know about printers and the USB HD, but I regularly run the Asus on my Airport and it recognizes the “n” protocol and works like a charm for surfing and for streaming video. So far I’ve been getting about 7 to 8 hours of use, which is far better than I get on my MacBook.

I mainly use the Netbook when I am on the go, or when I want to stream video when I’m in bed, etc. I don’t use any anti-virus software because my usage is basically to follow RSS feeds for TeleRead, do posts for TeleRead using Windows Live Writer when I’m not at home base, and do streaming stuff. No worry about viruses if you are careful. Up to 3 years ago I was a 100% Windows user and I never had a virus because I simply was careful about what I was doing.

As a Mac user, I am looking for a netbook that will talk to my Airport Extreme/Express network with attached laser printer and USB HD.

Since this netbook will be for when I travel, I am not interested in any flavor of Windows: too many viruses, horses (Trojan and otherwise) a etc.

I take it that you run the Asus on your Airport network: any comments?

Thanks

AM