dgoodwin's blog

I'm leaning pretty heavily toward buying some kind of a Linux powered mobile internet device, but am having a terrible time deciding between the Asus EEE PC, the Nokia N810, and the slightly older but drastically less expensive N800.

I'm looking for something that'll mainly be used loafing around the house, but hopefully powerful enough that it'll be all I need when traveling. Working from home I can't stand the sight of my desk in the evenings and the laptop has become my wife's primary computer, so I'd like something casual to poke around the web myself. Typical usage would be:

• web browsing (mainly Google Reader)
• e-mail (GMail currently, but mutt if I can tear myself away from the curse of Google convenience)
• IRC (probably via terminal over ssh)
• light instant messaging
• occasional text editing
• audio (internet streams, perhaps some mp3 as well)
• video (mainly xvid encoded tv shows)

The Asus EEE PC strikes me as the most powerful. It's borderline full on laptop functionality for an extremely low price (considering). It should be able to do all the above and more. I like that it has an ethernet jack in addition to the wifi support, which neither of the Nokia's does. (although this would rarely be used) I also like that there's the option to install other Linux distributions down the road and easily flash back to the factory installed OS within seconds. The full laptop'ish layout strikes me as the most convenient for actually getting some work done. I can't type for long on a laptop keyboard due to pain in the wrists and I suspect this would be even worse, but for short periods of time it should get the job done. The EEE strikes me as the most capable for travel, taking this should do everything I'd need.

The Nokia N810 however has tremendous appeal. It packs the same resolution on a screen several inches smaller than the EEE, slide out thumb keypad, GPS (albeit with limited software functionality), and a very vibrant user community. I don't consider it as hackable in that I doubt I'll be experimenting with any Linux distributions on the thing, but the platform is very open for development and it sounds like great apps are being written for it. It looks spectacular, is much smaller than the others, and strikes me as the most convenient device to just pickup and use. It *looks* like it's powerful enough to play video content from some kind of storage medium, but I don't think it's quite as potent as the EEE. I'm not sure if it's powerful or comfortable enough to be the only device used while traveling, but if not it's extremely close. The biggest problem however is the price. I didn't make the cut for a developer discount and without that it's the most expensive device of them all at around $475 CDN. ($75 more than the EEE model I'm looking at, and $200-$275 more than the N800 from Dell)

So finally there's the N800, very similar to the N810 and about half the price. No hardware keyboard (the most enticing), no GPS, slightly larger, slightly less powerful, and not as readable outside. While the N810 has advantages they don't read like enough to justify the drastic price difference.

So all said I'm kind of leaning towards the N810, but it just seems too overpriced to commit right now. The Asus strikes me as the most practical choice of them all, it's easily small enough to carry around just about anywhere, but I'm not sure if I want an uber-small laptop or an even smaller pocket sized tablet. The N800 is attractive only in that it's almost as cool as the N810 for a much more reasonable price, but then maybe the best bet is to wait on the N810 to drop. (although that'll probably then be followed by a newer hipper device and the whole cycle repeats itself again)

Having a hard time making a decision on this one.