Review from a N800 Owner :

• http://lnxg.ca/?Hardware:Asus_Eeepc_701

Have you tested anything like, for example, a regular 640x480 .avi encoded with Xvid? I'd be interested to know how that runs (I'm guessing too many dropped frames to be watchable).

I just tried a 600MB divX file. To my surprise, it played perfectly. In hindsight, I don't know why I was surprised. It _is_ a 900MHz Pentium M-based CPU. I'm now trying a 1.3GB DivX of one of my movies, I'll report back. (Had to copy this one to the SD card from my N800, it'd be too big for the internal drive!) For those interested, the bundled video player is SMplayer.

I've also tried a few of the bundled games. Frozen Bubble 2.x works well but the music is jerky, Penguin Racer (TuxRacer) is okay but the framerate is pretty low. Still, it uses OpenGL, so at least DRI works out-of-the-box.

The EeePC is a pretty capable Linux subnotebook. It sleeps, wakes, and has working DRI. Not bad at all. The WiFi is a little flakey compared to NetworkManager with Ubuntu. It's using the pre-NetworkManager thing that KDE had. It's okay, but not great. Much worse than the N800 for getting on and off WiFi networks.

More Infos:

• http://forum.eeeuser.com/index.php

The 1.3GB video played fine too. There was a bit of a framerate drop in high-action sequences but this was barely noticeable. (I was paying close attention.) By comparison, neither were particularly playable on my N800, even with MPlayer, though I've never really wanted to watch a video on a 7" screen, let alone a 4".

I owned an n770, own an n800, and will probably own an n810 at some point, but I have never been too sure what I can really do with the IT's.

To the contrary, the eee pc, which I have now owned for 2 days, makes a super secondary computer and is a real computer, whereas the IT's are still just gadgets to me. I expect that I will actually use the eee pc quite a lot. In fact, I am typing this post with it. The eee pc will be my short trip business travel laptop, and I can keep it in my briefcase just in case a need arises. The n800 just cannot do what I need to do on the road. In fact, I rarely carry the n800 around.

On the eee pc, I have open office so I can actually read and write ms word documents, and I was able to install the metaframe citrix client, so I have full access to my entire work network. Out of the box I can stream sirius over the device using the built-in browser. There is a pim (haven't tried it yet, but it i there), and I can attach a printer. I do wish they had but bluetooth on the eee pc, but I guess everything has its shortcomings. Also, while the device is fairly snappy, I am going to add ram and make it 1gb.

Within a few years I will probably have a notebook running linux that has say a 10" screen and slightly larger keyboard (the keyboard is usable but a bit cramped) with a small ssd drive, wifi, bt, and 3g with 6 hrs battery. Such a device is perfect for business and would sell because the software costs effectively nothing with the linux environment and even tht hardware is not too expensive to make.

I will still use the IT to browse the net from a living room chair, and the broswer on the IT is better than the one on the eee pc, but I have never found much real use for the IT's or been able easily to make use of the IT's alleged abilities.

I am selling my microsoft stock on Monday

I agree with what you are saying, but feel that I have to repeat what has been said earlier: Think of NIT as a swiss knife. Yes, if I am forced to choose one, Eee would be it, not NIT. But most people, me included, own several knives: pocket knives, hunting knives, daggers (not me), etc. What do you think I carry in my pocket everywhere I go?

Good observation. A few years ago, my computing solution involve an SMP desktop machine paired with a Sony Picturebook (8.9" widescreen, Crusoe CPU). Nowadays it's a 14" laptop plus the NIT.

In short, you don't want the NIT as your main computer (screen too small, storage too limited), but surely the EEE is also insufficiently powerful for most of us on this forum?

(Would be great for my mom though)

The only thing stopping me from ordering an EEE is the 800x600 screen resolution - it's too similar to the N800 screen resolution to make it a worthwhile improvement and it's frankly too low a rez for a device of this size... Now, if it were 1024x768 I'd snap one up without thinking...

It's not similar, it's the same - 800x480, not 800x600. But you should give it a try in real life, if possible, before dismissing it altogether - 800x480 on a 7" screen with all the tools and options available in the x86 world (like Firefox & extensions) is a completely different experience than 800x480 on the tablet's 4" screen with maemo.