I just purchased the asus one – I bought the white 8 gig linux solid state model.
I didnt even boot the versin of linux that came with it just booted straight of a usb key and installed ubuntu intrepid 8.10. Everything near enough works out of the box apart from wireless and the SD card. I had to install backport modules and modprobe the wireless driver and add a small script for the card readers. I tried updating the kernel to kernel 2.6.27-8 and installing the backport modules but no wireless so im currently running kernel 2.6.27-7. Which is fine.
I was running a asus 701 before this for a year so i have something good to compare it with. For one the screen is far clearer far better size for apps etc. The keyboard is well more useable i can acctually type fast on this keyboard the asus keyboard was just to small! The build is very robust and the size is very good. Now one big problem is the ram upgrade – i though id pop another gig in the laptop but you have to totally rip the machine to bits to install it!! Madness! They give me a slot for 3g which ill never use but i would have used it for memory upgrades… but as i always say you cant please everybody!
Ubuntu runs slick and the screen seems to accomadate most applications bit of a pain when setting up evolution as you have to use hot keys but apart from that its cool with apps and desktop usage. Now im sure the solid state disk just isnt as fast as the asus solid state – its very slick when using but when installing apps using apt it seems to slow down – like grind right down – after the apps installed its 100%
So so far so good – these are currently £179.99 in comet and currys – snap one one up they are a bargain.
