The Eee PC is eezy peezy a lap ahead
EVERY now and then, a new gadget emerges that fundamentally changes the consumer electronics space.
Last year, it was the iPhone, in which the remarkable touch-screen interface and ease-of-use changed the smart phone market forever.
This year’s contender is the less sexy but equally ground-breaking little laptop with the ungainly name of Eee PC.
Taiwanese computer maker Asus sparked a revolution with this little gem of a computer, effectively creating a new category everyone is calling the netbook.
Like the iPhone, the Eee PC (pronounced E PC) used a range of readily available technologies, combining them in a truly whole-is- more-than-the-sum-of-the-parts way. It forewent the DVD/CD drive (saving space and cost) and ditched the hard drive altogether in favour of the now abundant new storage format of flash memory used in those seen-everywhere USB sticks.
It also dropped Windows (although not for long) in favour of a slimmed-down version of Linux, the free open-source software. This was, in many ways, its boldest move, but it apparently failed to inspire mass-market consumer confidence and later sales of Windows versions picked up in non- techie markets.
But the biggest innovation was its price: starting at R2500, you could get a small wireless laptop that weighed less than a kilogram and an almost impulse buy.
The reasoning was so simple and sound, it took off instantly.
Its success has spurned a whole new category of ultra portable laptops. You may call them imitations, but various executives at the other computer makers assure me they had plans for such a device but were waiting for the new Intel Atom processor which all the new models contain.
It was designed for such small laptops and their specific power and battery needs.
I’ve been thinking about such killer gadgets a lot lately because we have just held our first Stuff Gadget awards, in which the editors of the 25 editions of the magazine around the world chose their gadgets of the year.
The Eee PC was the hands-down winner, as well as the category winner for computer of the year, even beating the MacBook Air.
While the early models had a dubious build quality, plastic feel and a keyboard that was just too small, recent models from other makers have taken the netbook a step further.
My favourite so far is the superb Acer Aspire One, although I have yet to play with the models from Dell, Toshiba and LG.
HP’s Mini-Note impressed me until it became bizarrely overpriced. It arrived in South Africa at nearly three times the price originally told to journalists.
So, if you had to choose, what would your gadget of the year be? I’ve been doing this for the past few years by writing a top-10 list for, amongst others, GQ and Wanted, and it’s interesting how these lists show the evolution of technology and its impact in our lives. Unsurprisingly, there is always a mobile in the mix.
The iPhone had some steep competition: from Nokia’s multimedia monster N96; BlackBerry’s best phone yet, the Bold; and Sony Ericsson’s picture king C902, but still took the award for phone of the year in spite of its poor battery life and awkward messaging.
TomTom’s clever GO 720 was our choice for a global positioning system (unfortunately the 920 isn’t available in South Africa or that would have won), while the Canon EOS 1000D was the unanimous choice for the camera of the year, a feat even more impressive because it’s a digital SLR and was launched so late in the year.
Next year, we intend running a competition for readers to choose the hottest gadgets of the year. Until then, hail the Eee PC!
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