The laptop made affordable

My wife wanted a laptop for her to use at the office for spreadsheets, word processing, and presentations. Aside from this and browsing, she doesn't really need anything else at all. So you would imagine that getting a laptop with the basic requirements will be easy as pie.

Unfortunately, that pie is quite expensive even in its most basic form. And we did not want to get a second-hand laptop either because we wanted something that comes with at least a 1-year warranty. We need at least 50,000 pesos to buy a decent laptop. And so she has been saving up for this piece of necessity.

Last December, there was a flurry of buying spree at our office for laptops. And they were personal purchases. When I checked out what the ruckus was all about, I was astounded to find this nice bit of news: you can now buy a laptop for 17,000 pesos! Whoa.

I immediately informed my wife about it and without second-thoughts she handed over the cash and I bought her laptop and I bought her a nice laptop bag to go with it (am I a nice guy or what? hahaha)

The laptop I'm talking about is the Asus Eee PC. Catchy name, isn't it? The laptop came in cutesy white last December so it looked like a small Macbook, but now you can also have black and other colors (but beware, the other colors don't come with a built-in webcam).

The Eee PC comes with the following specs:
7" display
Pre-packaged with Linux and OpenOffice (but is Windows XP compatible)
Ethernet connection
Wireless Internet
512MB memory (DDR2)
4GB Solid State Disk Drive
Stereo speakers and headphone
0.92kg weight

Now, the Eee PC also comes with a 1GB memory and 8GB Solid State Disk Drive model (I don't have the price of this yet)

What I like about the EeePC is its size. It's so easy to carry around! Plus it has wi-fi capability and webcam built-in. It also has 3 USB ports to plug in your other peripherals such as an external hard disk drive, or CD-ROM Drive.

What I don't like about it is its hard disk size. 4GB can be easily filled-up so what we did was we bought a 4GB memory card and inserted it into the built-in memory card slot. The OS stays in the hard disk, and the data into the memory card. Also, the monitor has a resolution of 800 x 480. They could have adjusted the monitor resolution to 800 x 600, a standard resolution size. What happens now is that when there are window prompts whose lower part goes beyond the bottom of the screen, you have to adjust the display to 800 x 600 so the screen will slide and you can click on the buttons. Or, you can click "esc" for cancel or click "enter" for ok. Well, ok, there are workarounds...

The keyboard is also nicely laid-out and you can type on it rather easily but I won't expect anybody to be writing novels and multi-page reports on it. I suggest getting a full-size USB keyboard for those tasks (but that would look sooo uncool).

But still, where can you get a laptop for 17,000 pesos! Overall, its usability makes it a worthy buy. If you need a laptop to do your office work on-the-go, or need internet access minus the small phone screens, the Eee PC packs in a lot of value.

This is not a paid advertisement.

The Eee PC beside the 15" Mac PowerBook I use at work. Pardon the mess :-).

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