Life Without Wires: Our Eee PC
Oct 30, 2008 – By Eric Broockman
Recently, my spouse purchased an Asus Eee PC™. She bought it so that
she could have an inexpensive and lightweight means to get on the Internet
and check her Gmail™ when she travels. The device comes loaded with a
set of Linux based software applications from OpenOffice that are generally
equivalent to Microsoft Office applications. We purchased this Netbook at the
local Best Buy for about $300. It is small (about 9”), light weight,
boots quickly, and has a functional screen. I have a difficult time with the
very slippery keys on the keyboard, but they didn’t seem to bother my
wife.
The point of this brief blog, however, is not to deliver a technology review
of the Eee PC. What struck me about the system is how much more functional it
could be with the addition of a Wireless USB feature. For someone on the road
WUSB wouldn’t be that helpful. However, for someone at home, it would
be a very useful feature – especially if the main PC in the home
already had WUSB. In particular, there were two or three applications which
struck me as perfect for wireless USB. The first that comes to
mind is a WUSB enabled video adapter attached to your HDTV. In that way, you
could take your Eee PC to the couch and use your HDTV to display your Gmail
or the Internet. This would provide a way for people to use systems as they
do now, sitting on the couch, but give access to that big beautiful screen on
the wall.
Another application I thought of using was a WUSB enabled docking station,
such as the dynadock™ from Toshiba. The dynadock™ has full
docking stations with 6-USB ports, Ethernet, video out and isochronous audio
in and out. In this case, when the main laptop is being used elsewhere in the
home, the Eee PC can use wireless USB to connect to the wireless dock. This
gives the eee PC access to a number of functions possibly including the
22” widescreen LCD monitor as well as the USB HDD plugged into the back
of the dock along with the other peripherals. Instead of purchasing a low end
$600 Windows Vista laptop and enduring the slow boot time, the weight, and
the various inevitable Windows issues that always crop up, you can use a nice
simple Eee PC as a portable terminal and spend only $300.
Frankly I don’t see these early MID (mobile Internet devices) products
gaining the huge volume that Intel hopes for; especially if the software
doesn’t improve. However, I do see them as convenient traveling
companions for consumers and potentially a nice way to have a nice Internet
“terminal” in the house that saves the user a few bucks, sports a
fast boot time and is conveniently light weight. With the addition of
Wireless USB, these MID products could become that much more useful around
the home.
Courtesy Life Without Wires, the blog published by
Eric Broockman, CEO of Alereon.
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