the 200ok weblog

price and portability

Two key reasons to buy a netbook in the first place are that they are cheap and tiny. With the Eee PC I have a neat little laptop for about the same amount of cash that my first iPod took out of me, which is kind of impressive when you consider the 1000H is one of the more expensive models so far.

And yes, it's tiny. The 10" model is heavier than the 9" (for obvious reasons), but it's still really light. I really don't notice the extra weight in my backpack on the days I carry this with me, a sharp distinction from the 15" MacBook Pro I used to borrow (which weighs a ton).

The Eee's portability is particularly noticeable getting through airport security checks. I've lugged a few different laptops through airports and they've been a real pain. However the Eee was a breeze - probably mostly because you can pick it up easily with one hand, leaving the other hand free to grab your bag.

battery life

In power-saving mode the Eee easily goes for more than five hours, putting far more expensive and heavy machines to shame - most laptops seem to need power by the two hour mark. Asus claim a maximum of seven hours, but to be honest I've never had it running that long in a single stretch away from power.

To put it into real terms... during the flight to Perth for Edge of the Web I spent time editing my presentation, watched an episode of Top Gear, wrote a draft of this review and still had three hours of battery left.

The only battery-related niggle is the battery LED. For no sane reason, it blinks green all the way from 80% down to 20%; at which point it starts blinking orange. This means the LED is blinking uselessly most of the time. I don't need to be alerted when power is 80%!

keyboard

The keyboard was the reason I never bought a 7" Eee PC - I couldn't type on it, it was just too small. But the increase to 10" was a critical difference - it's still small, but usable.

The keyboard has an excellent feel, apart from a slight rattle in the right-hand side. My only complaint is that the right-side shift key is in the wrong place. Asus had to compromise on the placement of the shift key to preserve the layout of the cursor keys.

What this means is you have to be careful, or else an accidental keystroke on the up arrow will have you editing the line above your intended focus. It's annoying and it's really my biggest complaint about the machine.

Still I'm getting used to it and the only netbook I've seen with a better keyboard was the Acer Aspire One, which didn't compete with the Eee on any other critical factor on my list (particularly battery life).

touchpad

This machine has one of the most natural and responsive touchpads I've ever used. It really is nice to use and with the low resolution it's plenty big enough. The multi-touch features are great.

screen

The 1024x600 screen is fine. On the rare occasion something doesn't fit vertically, you can switch to a 1024x768 mode - you scroll slightly to the extra screen area, which sounds a bit odd but actually works pretty well.

performance

I haven't had any problems with the performance of this machine. It does take a little while to start up, but once running it's fine - which has been true for many laptops I've used.

The Eee switches between three modes (power saving, high performance and super performance) depending on factors like whether it's on battery or mains power. Obviously you can override that behaviour, trading off some battery life to run at full CPU power.

Either way it handles work tasks just fine, particularly using StarOffice; it plays music and video with no hassles; and I've not had any issues with common browsing tasks.

I'm not sure how it would cope with something like Photoshop, but I'm not planning on doing any photo editing on the Eee. I have a desktop with a nice 22" monitor at home for that.

glitches

I've had one or two minor glitches. I needed to upgrade the touchpad drivers to get it working in some browsers; and if you have a password set on your machine it will bounce back out of sleep to the login screen the first time you hit the sleep button (you have to hit it again to actually sleep the machine).

I've also found you need to be patient and wait for Windows to finish shutting down before you close the lid. Apparently there are some system dialogs which prevent shutdown and the Eee doesn't seem to override these at the hardware level - which is bad if you've already shoved it into your bag.

Really these are minor issues and I think they're more related to the OS than the hardware.

I've had the Wacom Bamboo for a few months now. I'd used a Wacom Intuos at work for about 18 months before I bought it, so I already knew I liked using a tablet.

how and why i use a tablet

I use the tablet as an alternative/replacement for a traditional mouse. I use it for everything except gaming; for which I keep a Microsoft Intellimouse 3 connected.

So I use the Bamboo for all of my browsing, coding, word processing and the relatively small amount of Photoshop work I do (photo retouching and cutting up images, but not original artwork).

My main reason for the switch from a mouse was an RSI problem in my wrist. The position of the stylus just seems to put less stress on my wrist than a mouse. The transition to a tablet does take a couple of days, so if you haven't used one before just be prepared for a short adjustment period. It really is worth it!

bamboo breaks the cost barrier

The main barrier to buying a tablet for home use was the cost. The Intuos3 is nice, but at AUD$569 I wasn't going to be justifying that purchase too soon. The smaller 4x6 Intuos3 only runs to AUD$379 so I could perhaps afford that; but I'm not wild about having the extra buttons on the left. At work I actually turn the 6x8 around and remap the touch area, so the active surface is quite close to the edge of the keyboard. It looks a bit odd but it reduces reach by a couple of inches; and I don't miss the extra touch area anyway.

Although Wacom did have a budget model before (and still do in fact; the Graphire is still available), it wasn't as nicely packaged (or as good looking) as the Bamboo. Plus, it didn't come with a stand for the stylus; and that would be a pain in the bum.

The Bamboo just hits a sweet spot of good specs, nice looks (it's black!) and really low price at AUD$130. Having used the more expensive model at work, my main concerns were how the cheaper tablet would feel; and what the quality would be like.

so what's it like?

It turns out I needn't have worried about it being cheaper. The Bamboo has a really nice feel - grippier than the slick surfaced Intuos, but that actually just makes it feel more precise for general computing tasks.

The stylus isn't quite as nice in the hand as the Intuos stylus, which is a pity. I'd love to be able to buy a better stylus and a heavier base for it to sit in. Still, the Bamboo stylus isn't bad, it's just not quite as nice as the chunky, rubberised stylus with the more expensive tablet (and keep in mind we're talking about another produced which is four times more expensive!).

There are some preset function buttons, but I don't use them all that much since I have keyboard shortcuts worked out for most things. Still, it never hurts to have extra buttons around. They're a little heavy to click, although that might loosen up over time if you actually use them a bit.

touch ring = fail

The only real disappointment with the Bamboo is the Touch Ring, which just doesn't work for me at all. This is a pity as scrolling is a key weakness of ditching a standard wheel mouse for a tablet. You don't want to be stuck scrolling by pointing and dragging, as that's quite tiring for your hand.

So anyway the touch ring is meant to respond to an up+down motion for scrolling and a circular motion for zooming. Scrolling barely works for me - I have to have several goes to get it to respond. Zooming does work a bit better but I don't really use it that much.

scrolling

I've ended up with a slightly odd compromise for scrolling - my wheel mouse is tucked to the left of my keyboard; and I use the scroll wheel on it with my left hand.

As a sidenote, I have heard of people being unable to reverse the mouse buttons for left-hand use while the Bamboo was connected; but I didn't have any trouble setting different click settings for the mouse. This may be because I have the full MS Mouse software package installed to manage the mouse.

final thoughts

So, who should buy a Bamboo? Well, basically anyone who hasn't used a tablet before and wants to try one; and anyone who gets sore using a mouse. Professional designers and artists might be better off investing in the more expensive models, but for an aspiring artist (or an artist on a budget) the larger Bamboo would be well worth a shot before shelling out the big bucks.

All up, the Bamboo is a good quality tablet with a really low price. It is inexpensive, not cheap. My only regret is that I didn't buy one sooner.