In a very weird twist of fate, I once again have in my possession a eeePC 4g 701, the original netbook. I purchased one originally almost a year ago for close to $400, and now there are a wide variety of netbooks out there that are not only cheaper, but vastly superior.
For a month or so I was a big fan of the eee PC. I thought to myself that I could get over the small seven inch display with the weird resolution, and could also get used to that evil keyboard. The fact that I spent $400 probably also had something to do with it.
Still within a few months, I found myself using the 7" laptop less and less, and within six months the little netbook was really of no use to me. But now, with a large armada of different netbooks available, the older 7" eeePCs can be found used for very cheap, and suddenly the thought of using one as a hobby toy has grown on me.
Now that I am looking at the 701 in a hobby way, (I have a couple desktops to play with, as well as a 17" inch laptop.. when I originally had an eeePC it was my only laptop, and for a time, it was my only computer) I am becoming a somewhat fan of it.
The resolution of the thing sucks. There really isn't anything else you can say about it. You can't view modern websites in it, and if you install Windows XP on it, you're going to have problems running software because of the low resolution.
The keyboard is awful. That's all you can say about it. While the keyboard is fine if you are just surfing the internet, it's truly awful in every other aspect. I have no idea why ASUS decided to put a Right Shift key right next to arrow keys, but the poor placement of this key leads me to screwing up during any typing. The fact that the keys on the keyboard are very small allow me to constantly make typing errors. I suppose I could one day grow accustomed to the smaller keys, but I really don't see myself putting forth the effort.
The 701 is a hobby machine for me now; I've spent the past couple of days trying various operating systems on the unit. A year ago, I had Windows XP on a 701, but after a month of usage, the boot time had increased to several minutes. Right now I am using something I found called eeebuntu (I found several Linux distributions based off of Ubuntu, so I am unaware if this is an 'official' fork of Ubuntu).
Because this new 701 (well new to me, anyways) is used, I'm not really worried about the warranty and am now deciding on what to do first, either installing a touch screen (DealExtreme has a complete 7" touchscreen kit that fits this unit for $40 shipped) or purchasing a 10400 mAh replacement battery so I can actually use the thing without the AC adapter (the original batteries on these things suck; I can not believe that for a device this small the battery lasts for less than two hours). I purchased a $5 4gb SDHC card to help deal with the small 4gb SSD, but because this is a Surf model, the SSD is soldered directly to the board and can not be replaced.
We'll see what else I can do with this thing.
