Yesterday, I wrote about my techno-lust with the Asus Eee. Not long after the post went live, the lowest possible version on Craigslist for $200. That’s $100 less than retail, and $40 less from any other price I’ve previous seen. I jumped at the opportunity to own it. I figured that in the worst case scenario, I could sell it for a very small profit on Ebay tomorrow. I love when I can try “new-to-me” technology with little or no financial downside.

So now I get to “the catch…” It is the pink version. My wife finds the whole thing rather comical. Not that there’s anything wrong with pink, it’s just not the color I would choose if given a choice. It should be an interesting conversation piece when I bring it to a conference next Tuesday (more on that later today). I think I will pay another $20 for a protective color that will make it look mostly black. If I can look for a silver lining, it will make a good hand-me-down for my wife. She could take it with her when she travels for work. I’ll be happy to upgrade to better versions when the prices get more reasonable.

If you are considering getting one, here are some quick thoughts on the Linux version:

• Linux isn’t bad – There’s a reason that one of the “E”s stands for Easy. It really is easy. I would have no problem giving this to my mom to use. She could get on the Internet and do most anything that she would want to do.
• Google Reader is bad on the 800×480 screen – I use Google Reader as my main way of reading blogs. Unfortunately the frames that Google chose to use do not allow you see your list of subscriptions by default. However, if you switch Firefox to full-screen mode (press F11), you get just enough real estate to cycle through your subscriptions in a very small window. For those with the newer Asus Eee 900 this shouldn’t be a problem.
• It’s relatively snappy – Because it has a solid-state hard drive, it boots up in 20 seconds. From Standby, it comes back in about 7 seconds. Websites render quickly. The slowest part of the machine is me – the keyboard is small that I current make a lot of typing mistakes unless I resort to a mostly two fingered approach. I think I will get better with it over time.
• Not sure if space is going to be an issue – With a 2GB hard drive there’s not a lot of room for extras. I have a 4GB SD card, but I’m not sure if I can run extra programs on that. My limited experience with Linux says this shouldn’t be a problem, but I haven’t tried it.

It doesn’t look like it’s going to replace my full computer any time soon, but it looks like it will do exactly what I expect it to do – get me online from the road with relative ease at a reasonable price.