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Asus EEE PC 4G Software review

March 4, 2008 – 3:51 am

The EEE PC comes with a linux distribution. If you never tried an open source OS, you don’t have to be afraid: the EEE is really easy to use and intuitive. The user interface is divided into 5 tabs: Internet, Work, Learn, Multimedia, Settings, Favourite. Each tab is associated with corresponding programs.

Internet tab

Please note that our eee pc has been bought in Paris, thus the french interface.

The webmail icon leads you to the popular webmail sevices (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo or AOL). Next to it is the internet browser Firefox, a shortcut to your iGoogle homepage, if you are using the service. The messenger is Pidgin, a great messaging software supporting AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, and many others. Skype is included and offers you to talk over the web. Please note that the installed version doesn’t support the webcam, but the latest software upgrade enables it. There are also shortcuts to Google Documents, a world clock, wikipedia, and a webradio webpage.

Work tab

The EEE PC provides the Open Office suite, with a great text processor, a spreadsheet application, and a presentation application. The Open Office suite can also work with Microsoft Office Word, Excell and Powerpoint documents. Further more, you can find Adobe PDF reader, IceDove Email client (and not Mozilla Thunderbird), a file manager, and a program to write post-it like quick notes.

Learn Tab

Science software includes a periodic table of elements, and Kstars – a planetarium software showing the night sky with stars, planets, and events like comets. A hangman game is included, as well as a dictionary.
The Maths part has a fraction tutorial, a geometry program, and a function drawing program.

Multimedia tab

The game part bundles that windows feature – Solitaire, and ktuberling – a classic for kids (Mr Potatoe head).
The multimedia player, SMPlayer, can read divx, rm, wmv, mpeg, asf, and avi video files in full screen. It supports subtitles, and remembers where stopped watching a movie, which is a very useful feature.
Amarok manages your music, playlist, podcasts or webradio with ease.
The photo manager retrieves every pictures and classify them, and handles slideshows.
The webcam can shoot pictures or record videos. You can also record sound with the magnetophone.

As you can see, Asus bundled about forty open source programs, covering every aspect of an everyday internet, home or office computer use, out of the box. I presented the EEE to a few persons with very little computer experience and all of them found the interface simple and easy to use.