Misbeeehaving! (But all fixed now.)

Without reading the manual, I decided to set up the wireless router today. I plugged it in, turned on the Mac and configured away. It worked. I was happy. I turned on the Asus Eee. The connection worked, too.

I figured that was that.

Later in the afternoon, I brought the Asus Eee into the bedroom, so I could surf a bit before joining Lucien for siesta. I tried connecting, and got a surly “no DHCP offers received” message from the Eee. I tried thrice. No luck. The connection was always “pending,” like those really useful bills in Congress.

I googled my problem and ran into others with similar issues at the eeeuser forum. I reset the router around five times, fiddled with leaving it open, using WEP or WPA, created a connection entry under the Networks app and finally got it to work. I don’t know which thing I did worked, exactly. It could have been a matter of throwing out an entire bunch of banana peels, crossing my fingers, and slipping on the right one.

Happiness and sanity restored.

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The Asus Eee is out and about!

No, I haven’t customized its desktop, gone into advanced mode or installed additional programs, but the Asus Eee doesn’t mind at all.

I tucked it into my big brown tote together with the Huawei E220 modem from Globe Visibility (which it recognized without pain yesterday), a generic wireless mouse, the external hard drive and its charger. It didn’t add much weight. Having one bag instead of two (as I usually do) made watching out for Lucien less of a strain on my back. I could pick him up, and Barney too, and not grimace with discomfort. (The Asus Eee is a road warrior’s dream, but in my opinion it is also ideal for that psychographic loosely called “progressive mommy.”)

A brass band leading a procession of umbrellas just trudged by. It is not a good day to be having a funeral, not this close to Christmas. Sundays are the best days to have funerals in this town. When we walked Lola Que to church, there was another incoming we had to swerve to avoid. I expect it’s because most of the guests would be able to spare time on a Sunday.

I mention this because I can. We were never wired, or wireless, whenever we would stay here. The bamboo straining in the wind, the angry insectoid drone of tricycles, the narcoleptic haze of an early afternoon in my hometown – I experience them as my fingers touch type, and the world balances somehow.

Yes, the Asus Eee is almost no match for a little pack of snacks.

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More on the Asus Eee.

One of the Asus Eee’s clincher factors is its price. At approximately P19000 SRP, it’s cheaper than high-end phones – and you don’t need to squint too hard at the screen. I am really liking the screen; it’s just enough to be useful. Horizontal scrolling doesn’t bother me too much, but it might frustrate other users accustomed to visiting information-heavy sites. I visit at the most 10 bookmarked sites a day, most of them simply designed.

Skype is built in, although I hardly use the app, even on my Mac; I don’t really need to make international calls when IM’ing is practically free. The customized UI has tabs on startup: internet, work, learn, play, settings… Simplified, practically newbie-proof, and enough for what I do when I’m traveling or working out of the office.

I’m blogging from bookwormcafe at Serendra, waiting for a lunch appointment. So far so good. The Eee showed me Wifi options and I just clicked “connect.”

The 4 GB hard drive won’t hold images, videos or music the way I’m used to. Not that I intend to use this little one for editing, or huge presentations.

The Asus Eee came with a neoprene case, which I am now using as a placemat. Even with the case it didn’t add too much weight to my tote. So now I don’t have to bring two bags. I think women are a natural target for this ultraportable, and it shows in the color options Asus released. Baby pink! Pale yellow! I bought the white version, though. I don’t think I can stomach a baby pink PC.

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The wee but definitely not twee Eee.

The name leaves it wide open for sick rhymes, but the Asus Eee is quite the pint-sized performer. It is a superduperultraportable running on Asus’s modified Linux OS. The keyboard is almost too tiny to be useful; but with a modicum of hand-eye retraining, it works. The Asus Eee has a 7-inch screen, bordered by two speaker grilles. Atop the screen is a built-in webcam. Lid closed, it could pass for a pocketbook. It could even fit in an evening bag.

I got the white version. A computer shop near the house offered it in a package with an 80 GB external drive, and with 0% on installment I think it qualifies as one of the best tech deals this season. It is not a primary computer, not by any means. The 4 GB hard drive hardly qualifies as a hard drive. For frequent travelers and kids, it’s a fantastic option at an irresistible price point. (Street prices reportedly range from around P18,000 to P19,000. Most cards will let you pay in 12 monthly installments.)

It is impressive how Linux sits in it quietly and compactly, and does its Windows mimic well. I feel better about buying a PC preloaded with Linux; I can convince myself that I haven’t really strayed that far away from the cult of Mac.

More later.

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