Elonex One v Asus EEE PC (Assus won)

Well here we go at my first blog and as I was involved with computers and radio all my working life we'll start with computers.

Ever since I started with computers way back in the mid seventies (PDP11/40, papertape, teletype and 8k magnetic core ram) I've always had to keep abreast of things and gradually they came into my home life, Our kids were children of the BBC B age (Floppy drives, tv screen and cassette tapes) then we moved onto the Texas (speech synth and game cartridges) and then on to the ubiquitous pc (286,386 + Hard drives). Like everybody else we now take them for granted in our household there are 2 laptops, 2 desk/tower pcs and wireless lan not to mention about 3 discarded PC shells from various mods and upgrades; what more could one want!!

How about a Laptot, (the new in phrase for those new tiny portable pcs). Recently, to keep my mind exercised, I've been faffing (my son in laws phrase for mucking about) Linux and there have been various baby Laptot aimed at the third world child education, the emphasis has been on low cost (under 100$) no moving parts like hard drives and floppy drives, and based around wireless connection.

Anyway back to the point Elonex announced back in February that it was releasing a sub £100 Laptot so I decided to blow some of the pension and try one, after all it was aimed at primary age kids so even I should be able to manage''!!! After a great deal of waiting and delay it arrived and one week later it went back as "unfit for the purpose" perhaps I'd better explain.

1. First I had trouble connecting wirelessly to my home net signals were only half the strength they should be and it kept disconnecting.
2. It took far too long for it to start the wordprocesor or spread sheet that you would loose a class and they'd be pressing keys like mad. (Did I mention I'm not short of teachers opinions here, One RE teacher,One DT teacher and a head of IT next door)
3. The web browser was very limited and you couldn't watch video clips, so not much use for schools who use pod casts a lot.
4. For SEN children to gain IT literacy though the slowness might be just the start they need

So it went back; in various discussions it was suggested that the Asus Eee pc could be just the thing so I trawled the web and found a company ,www.oyccc.co.uk, who did a brand new 4Gb one for £166 so I opted for that. I must say I'm really pleased it just worked. I'm a member of BT FON which allows you to log onto the net at any BT Openzone at places like hotels and restaurant so I looked up my local "hotspots and found a cafe in town, not my favourite, that had acces and went for coffee. Well it may have been me or my fingers but I couldn't connect but I could see another cafe radio signal so I tried that and it worked. So my wife and I then looked at Post Boxes at Argos picked one and after coffee went to pick it up..!! We could even have watched Corrie that the wife had missed the previous night. Try doing that we a PDP11/40.

If you want my opinion; go out and get a Linux Eee PC it just works no messing and none of the kludge you get with windows, also if your hands get cold in the winter the left hand side gets pleasantly warm so no need to buy a hand warmer!!

Just in case you are wondering the picture is a computer room that I helped maintain im the mid eighties it belonged to the Joint European Torus experiment at Culham Laboratories. The computers were made by Norsk Data who also provided the computers at Cern so you can. The two sites were permantly link by high speed (for the time) data lines so perhaps you can see why Berners Lee decided to write a browser that would allow scientist in related research to rapidly find information.

Thats all for now

Phil (a Silver surfer)