Rui CarmoNothing much has been happening, other than I’ve started coding Hashi, moved to a new floor at the office (with the usual comedic value associated with trying to fit two closets’ worth of stuff in cardboard boxes), and my mind, when it can spare some time from the splitting headache the humid weather has nudged my sinuses into causing, has again been on getting an Asus Eee PC 901 or an Acer Aspire One 150 (no, no MSI clones – definitely).
The underlying reasoning being that with my computer use at home becoming more random and unpredictable (literally at the kid’s whims), I need something that I can literally toss aside in a fraction of a second. And run vim. And Python. And preferably under Windows, since some of the stuff I have to play around with only works under that, whether I like it or not.
And, let’s face it, running a cheapskate OS is best done on a cheap, throwaway computer.
A little digging around revealed that Acer seems to have difficulty selling their stuff here in Portugal. Which is not strange, considering their local web page is ‘Iberian’ (meaning that it is most likely maintained in Spain), and retailers I contacted complained about shortages and delays in shipment. The Asus’ keyboard feels small and cramped, but it is going to be available here next week, and another weekend with a 701 made it seem at least tolerable.
Still, the Acer does have a better keyboard, as illustrated in this pseudo-review. The video feels awkward and somewhat naïve, considering that I’ve been tracking the device for over two months now, but it might be just the thing for those of you who never heard about it or visited these forums to see what people are doing with theirs.
And yeah, there are some nuts running Mac OS X on it. For what it’s worth.
Update: In the meantime, I got word from Acer that they’ll only start selling the 150 (XP, decent battery, etc.) over here come end of September. So I guess I’ll have another look at the 901 next week.