“The Asus Eee PC has been out for a few months now and while people are still buying them in droves, much of the luster has worn off of the device. During the first few weeks of ownership, it is hard for most people to get over how cheap and portable it is, but, as with anything else, you get used to it. After some time, once you see it as a tool and not an innovation, you can start to fine tune your opinion of the Eee PC and notice which parts of it really bother you and which you have learned to live with.”
“It will be really interesting to see what happens as other players enter the market, especially Shelton-based devices, but as long as you use the Eee PC for what it’s intended for you should be quite happy with it.”
Well, yeah, the screen isn’t huge, but you knew that when you got it. This device isn’t made for editing movies or page-setting. On the other hand, it is ideal for web-conferencing on the go, email, browsing the web, office work on-the-go, and remote access to the mothership without having to lug around a heavy computer.
If Asus eventually puts a 10 or 12″ model at a competitive price, they are going to be selling them like hot cakes.
“it should have arrived with the 8.9″ display that we have been hearing about. Even if this would have increased the price to $500 or so, I think most buyers would be more than happy to make the move to a more usable screen”
I do not agree the least, if I have to pay 500 dollars for a laptop I go for the lower end of the DELL offer and I have a 15″ screen.
People choose the Eeepc because it is light, cute and cheap, change one of those factors and they would have started to wonder why there is no XP inside! ( aside from the fact in Japan they are selling models with one in)
The Eeepc is an experience that gave me back my laptop as much as the Wii gave me back the fun of console playing.
It is a Tool? Very well, I agree on that but God is it a great tool, one that actually does what you’re supposed to do with.
Agreed. There’s a sweetspot of price vs features. The moment it crosses the line upwards it will be compared on equal terms to actual laptops, and it will LOSE that comparison.
I’m sorry to say that the public has been brainwashed to some extent by the industry into always buying the latest and shiniest and most powerfull hardware whether they actually need it or not. This new generation of cheap, small and light-featured notebooks attempts to challenge that. But it walks a very fine line, price being the main advantage. Deviate from that line and it loses most appeal.
I purchased my EeePC on Halloween. I had purchased a Nokia N800 less than a month before, so initially didn’t find the EeePC that compelling. However, over the last few months the EeePC has really grown on me. Despite owning a MacBook, the EeePC has pretty much taken over as my main PC. The size and weight, not to mention having a fully-supported Linux laptop, far outweigh any of the niggling “problems” like screen size for me.
Yes, I’d probably like it even more with a 9+” screen at 1024×600, but the EeePC is a fantastic little machine and the $400 price point is/was key to its success. If Asus had bumped the screen size, they probably would have had to bump the price as well.
With the size, I’ve given up on PDAs. The EeePC is small enough that I can tote it wherever and whenever I might have previously taken a Palm. Also, you can tell that Asus put a lot of thought into the design. It’s a very sturdy, silent machine. Asus nailed the form-factor; the EeePC is incredibly easy to carry with you, they mostly nailed the UI, they nailed the price,
I was initially frustrated with Xandros and replaced it with eeexubuntu. It was only after using it for a week or two that I realized how much effort Asus put in to the UI and design of the EeePC interface. For the most part, I think they nailed that too and I’m back to the stock OS with the stock “Easy” interface.
So, with upgraded RAM, a new IceWM theme and extra repositories, the EeePC is now my main machine. Plugged into an external monitor at 1280×1024, I’ve done web development, image manipulation and no-compromise browsing. It’s certainly slower than my MacBook when running multiple apps simultaneously, but the speed in launching apps is pretty much the same with the EeePC as it is with my 2GHz Core Duo/2GB RAM MacBook.
A late-model 12″ PowerBook had been my favourite computer purchase. In fact, despite the speed improvements, I hadn’t been terribly pleased with the MacBook as a replacement laptop. Yes, it is a good machine, but it’s much larger than the 12″ PB and is positively huge compared to the EeePC. The EeePC hits a very interesting niche and it’s great to see Asus breaking new ground here. It’s much closer to what I had hoped the MacBook Air to have been.
Here are a few benchmarks comparing application launch time for the EeePC and my MacBook:
Benchmarks: http://lnxg.ca/?Hardware:Asus_Eeepc_701:Launch_Times%3A_EeePC_v…
(OT: How the heck are you supposed to do links?)
.
Edited 2008-02-10 13:53 UTC
Nice Benchmarks, thanks for these.
Impressive, but it’s also a linux vs. OS X benchmark. And it’s a Flash-Memory vs. Hard Disc Benchmark.
Anyway, it again proves that OS X is not very efficient, “Manipulation” in Open-Office is slower in OS X on that 2GHz Machine compared to the tiny EeePC?
What do you mean by “Manipulation”, the editing/using the app?
You’re welcome.
Well, in the Ars review of the MacBook Air SSD vs. standard, the SSD helped, but not all that much. On the other hand, Apple doesn’t seem to care all that much about startup time. I’ve always found startup times on OSX apps to be slower than their Linux counterparts. Also, to be fair, I’ve mostly tested against Mac ports of Linux apps.
Well, optimized differently anyway. OSX works very well with multiple apps open, and OSX ran reasonably well with several large apps open even on old G3s and G4s. My 12,000+ iTunes library is still usable on a 700MHz G3. Amarok by default certainly couldn’t handle that.
Yup, just editing a 40 page document with a couple of pictures and a few tables. Part of this is NeoOffice vs. OOo, but I’ve found that most OSX Cocoa and Java apps that use Apple’s standard text widget have problems with large text documents.
That’s sad. I would think that the more-native NeoOffice is faster than OOo. This shows that Apple should to something about it. Handling large text-documents shouldn’t be an issue anymore in the 21st century.
Plastic feels really cheap, LCD quality is even worse- those who want to kill their eyes- you are welcome…
I’d say this gizmo is overpriced crap.
Nice troll, antik. I’ve been noticing that you do that a lot.
As it happens, I went down to our local PC Club store and looked one over just yesterday. I was impressed with the LCD quality. The black units’ plastic looks great and feels perfectly fine to me. (I don’t care for the white, pink, or light blue, simply as a matter of personal taste.) I’m pretty sure it’s genuine plastic and not just some cheap imitation.
And at $299… for what amounts to a small, *very* mobile, and rather quick laptop with admirable battery life… how could any sane person consider it over-priced?
How or why is this “trolling” as he is just giving his opinion?
Well count me in then. This is a geek toy and nothing more. I highly doubt many have a true need for one of these other than the joy of owning the latest fad tech toy.
I’m sure it was trolling because:
1. The Eee PCs I have seen have looked and felt rather solid.
2. The video quality has always seemed quite good. (And the display can be made *very* bright, if desired.)
3. Antik takes a sour grapes attitude about any device that runs Linux, because Linux is getting all the attention with regards to consumer devices that his beloved *BSD is not, ecxept for maybe the toaster market. (Not that I don’t like the *BSDs, myself.)
4. Antik rags on Linux any chance he can get. This was just another opportunity for him.
As it happens, after responding to Antik, I decided to purchase an EeePC. The consumerized Xandros mutation that came on it was good for… well… consumers. But a little locked down for my tastes. So I tried eeeXubuntu, and it was better. Today, I swtiched to regular Ubuntu, and I must say, the results are very nice indeed. The unit does look and feel solid. (There’s just nothing quite like Darth Vader Black.) The video is quite nice. And I am seeing rapid progress in my getting used to the keyboard.
You are mistaken in calling this just a geek toy. Ohm, of course it *is* a very nice geek toy. But certainly not *just* a geek toy. This really could be a laptop replacement. And I have never used a device smaller than a regular laptop that I could honestly say that about.
And at this price? 2GB unit for $299, and 4GB unit for $354? His calling it overpriced would have given Antik away as a troll even if I had not already been familiar with his habits. $299-$354 would be a good price for a handheld pda, let alone a laptop replacement.
He stated an opinion to which you can agree or disagree, but to right away call it trolling does not help discussion
I’ll take your word for it, I have no clue to who he is or what he posts. Regardless though in this instance he simply stated his opinion, to which you should respect that. He did not mention Linux at all, simply the device. What I am getting at is it is much better just to respond directly to the statement instead of name calling. There was way too much of the OS zealotry before and it seems to have gotten better for some reason. Let’s keep it that way.
In my opinion I see very few practical uses, and consider that the vast majority who will be purchasing this will do so simply because it IS a geek toy. The limitations of the technology of the device at this time does not make it a suitable laptop replacement anymore than a PDA can. Sure it is small and portable, but there are many laptops out there that are very small form but offer a much more robust device in terms of CPU, screen size, storage space, etc.
It does have cost in it’s favor. But if people would be wise consumers they would find that for not much more they can purchase refurb units and not only get a warranty but purchase an extended one for not much more. The laptops of today are becoming easy desktop replacements. That was not always true in years past, a laptop was merely just a computer that could be moved easier, but it was NOT a desktop replacement. I think the same goes for these devices. The hardware is so limiting that it really only has a few good uses.
People have the freedom to purchase whatever they want. But I really can not agree that the intended market for these units are for essential use. It reminds of all these tech guys I have met in for years that HAVE to have all the latest; PDA, Smartphone, Blackberry, etc..yet there position truly only requires them to simply just show up at the office on time. What they truly are used for is ego-building. These guys lug around their toys under the belief they are so important and essential to the company they must always have this access. I still get these requests from time to time. Employee X wants a Blackberry because he thinks believes himself so important to the business he must have the extended communication tools…he doesn’t
This is not to say there are NOT exceptions to this. I will readily admit that there are people out there that a device like this could become an extremely useful tool. What I argue is these are a small minority, and that the vast majority will simply buy these as a toy.
The main enhancements I did were getting 2GB of RAM and installing Ubuntu. I installed the BIOS that allows you to ‘overclock’ it to 900MHz, but I don’t even find I need that, and I use it now as my main machine (on a 19″ screen with USB keyboard & mouse). It ‘feels’ just as fast for most things as my former 3.2GHz P4 desktop, and starting up applications is definitely very snappy!
Nice troll, antik. I’ve been noticing that you do that a lot.
As it happens, I went down to our local PC Club store and looked one over just yesterday. I was impressed with the LCD quality. The black units’ plastic looks great and feels perfectly fine to me. (I don’t care for the white, pink, or light blue, simply as a matter of personal taste.) I’m pretty sure it’s genuine plastic and not just some cheap imitation.
And at $299… for what amounts to a small, *very* mobile, and rather quick laptop with admirable battery life… how could any sane person consider it over-priced?
I already tested this piece of… And noticed that it costs in europe whole 500$ and LCD looks like from 90s- you can’t stand it more than 15 minutes without bleeding eyes. I thought we are in 21 century already- why use yesteryear slow responce LCD (I guess it is 30ms or something). What you mean by “genuine plastic”- same shit as asus already have on their other chepass notebooks? I am sure they can do better than that.
In the time between my first response to you and now I have picked up a Galaxy Black 4GB EeePC. I’ve used it for several hours now, and the Kleenex Test reveals no traces of blood in the vicinity of my eyes. (You might want to see an ophthalmologist. You could have some sort of eye disease in progress.)
The unit is quite zippy and very usable even running a standard Linux disto not designed especially for the form factor.
The plastic is, indeed, genuine. It’s does not feel quite as industrial strength as my old HP200LX. But it is certainly smart looking and seems serviceable enough. It would probably run FreeBSD OK, if you are interested. There is nothing exotic about it. Standard award bios set up, etc. The wifi chipset is an atheros. Madwifi supports it with an easy patch. OSS fiendly Intel video. AIGLX works great. Sound “just works”.
I like it. The keyboard is a little small. But that is to be expected. I’m getting much better with it with each passing hour.
In summary, now that I have one, I really do think that Asus has a winner here.
Just to beat this dead horse a little further, I doubt they could have really used any other material and manage to keep the cost down to a manageable amount. The plastic is probably also a big factor in keeping the weight down as low as they have. And really, how many cheap and easy to use consumer devices are there these days that are built in anything but plastic?
You’ve just hit the other main factor in my desire for a Eee–the (almost) completely open hardware on the device. You can install FreeBSD on it. You can install a variety of Linux Distros on it. You can install NT5.x based Windows on it. You can even (illegally?) install MacOS X on it if you work at it. I imagine it won’t be long before we start seeing Haiku, ReactOS, or Syllable on it. …Heck, I’d not be surprised to discover SkyOS on the thing, and the reason why there hasn’t been any major SkyOS news lately is because Robert Szeleney’s been having way too much fun playing with it to code. ;p (It is nearly about time for the monthly build announcement…)
The machine is for all purposes wide open for geeks to play with. It is also very good at being what it is–a consumer device which straddles the gap between the Laptop and the Desktop for those who want such a thing. Surprisingly enough, as soon as most people hear about the Eee, the discover they want just that thing… The fact it is easy for us geeks to play with just makes it easier to say we’ll be able to maintain it to all our friends and relatives!
–bornagainpenguin
I was very surprised as I read this:
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/fulldisclosure/2008-02/0119….
The installed Xandros Linux is responsible for this because Xandros included a very old version of the samba daemon: smbd 3.0.24.
This security hole is nine months old and fixed in every major distribution:
http://news.samba.org/releases/samba_3_0_25_release/
So, ask Asus or Xandros for an update.
Or uninstall samba as root: apt-get remove samba
I still can’t believe it.
another option is to install eeexubuntu
As someone saving up his pennies to finally be able to get one, when I saw this article my hear plummeted. Was this the damning indictment I’d feared was coming? Was there an unknown battery issue or a newly discovered problem with the screens or some such thing?
No. All the writer does is rehash the same old arguments against the Eee.
Yes the screen and the keyboard are small–this is a feature not a bug. Do I wish they’d managed to somehow stick with a more standard display? Sure, but given the price range ASUS was initially shooting for the choice was understandable.
The version of Xandros that comes with the system isn’t perfect. No kidding? You mean Linux is a piece of software like any other and thus can have issues at time? Say it isn’t so…
Sarcasm aside, did anyone here not realize the Xandros distro is a little out of date and thus might have some issues at times? The article writer mentions he is aware of alternatives to install (Ubuntu, Eeenix, gOS, etc) so I really have a hard time finding any sympathy for him. He’s choosing to stick with what he’s got.
Really the whole article sounds to me like he’s liking the device in spite of himself. As if he were Balaam, doing his best to curse the Eee but blessing the device instead. The title ‘Reality Sets In’ just doesn’t seem to fit the article…
–bornagainpenguin (shaking his head in amusement at the way he’d been flamebaited…)
“Sarcasm aside, did anyone here not realize the Xandros distro is a little out of date and thus might have some issues at times?”
Xandros is based on Debian Sarge (oldstable), thus Debian Etch should work fine. Heck, even Lenny should be OK, I find it quite stable now.
> Xandros is based on Debian Sarge (oldstable),
> thus Debian Etch should work fine.
Just for the record: In opposite to all other Xandros Desktop versions <= 4.2 the Xandros version shipped with the Asus EeePC is based on Debian Etch.
Edited 2008-02-11 00:51 UTC
It’s possible my information is out of date. The last time I gave Xandros a whirl was with one of its Xandros Open Circulation Edition ISOs and I was admittedly less than impressed with it. I also gave it a whirl with version 2.0 before that on a friend’s desktop and found it less than satisfactory for me. Too much knowledge was needed to “pin” the repositories if you needed or wanted something not already in their universe and I managed to bork it twice in short order while trying to add applications.
All I meant was Xandros has its way of doing things and the only good way to my knowledge of avoiding that is to use a different distro. I also meant that to anyone who knows a bit about the distro this is a known issue. It can be worked around like you said but it might just be easier to use something else IMHO.
–bornagainpenguin
It would seem, as our fellow user Torsten Rahn said, that “the Xandros version shipped with the Asus EeePC is based on Debian Etch”
I have checked it and it is true.
The biggest problem I’ve had with the eeepc is the wireless, as with all Linux distros. It steadfastly refuses to connect to my Ruckus AP at home with a hidden SSID and WPA, and quite frankly, I’m done with faffing around with that stuff – especially when I’ve bought something with Linux pre-installed. I did get OpenSuse to connect to it fine with NetworkManager, but I’ve never been able to reproduce it. Windows has never had a problem. I doubt whether many people who are getting wireless working with it are even using encryption.
The Xandros OS definitely needs patching, and the wireless issues need some sorting, as I’m pretty sure that the WPA supplicant file being generated for the interface is corrupt in some way. Haven’t had time to check it. I haven’t had it freezing though.
I don’t find the battery life too limiting. If the author of the article wants limited battery life then I’ll give him my HP notebook, or just about any other notebook you can buy. Mind you, Linux does tend to eat more battery power. A new kernel might help there.
I do understand his gripe about the screen. Way too much space is taken up by the speakers when the screen could have been made bigger. Mind you, having said that, the screen is beautiful and it has excellent clarity and colours.
I also sometimes use a Nokia N73 as a 3G modem, and I’ve been able to use that for hours without any trouble whatsoever.
Tried not hiding the SSID? It’s not like there’s any actual security being in hiding it.
On a related note, I’ve never had any problems with Linux wireless and WPA. I connect to a WPA-Enterprise wireless every day without any problems. In fact, it works better than with Windows.
I hear that argument a lot, but it doesn’t help. Some people hide their SSID to avoid casual browsing by people when they scan for networks. Having to manually put in your SSID on your client also ensures that people connect to the right network.
Hiding a SSID should cause no issues for a client at all.
I’m not asking if it should, I’m asking if it does.
The problem isn’t so much the size of the screen but the resolution. Far too many websites are made for 1024×768 minimum so you end up doing a lot of scrolling and this is compounded by the poor quality touchpad*.
It isn’t just websites that have problems with the screen. But many apps and games that would run just fine end up being unusable do to not being able to fit.
The use of a 720p type screen even at the same 7″ would work so much better
*The touchpad is my second major gripe with my eee. It’s horrible, it’s very innaccurate, constantly hitting the scroll part when you don’t want to, and when you do want to scroll the scroll part only end up working 1/2 the time. Then there is the buttons they require so much force to push down that I have to support the eee with my other had to prevent the unit from flipping over. This isn’t so much of a problem with left clicking as double taping the pad to left click works ok, however right clicking sucks a lot.
sometimes i wish that in this day and age people would learn to make pages that adapt gracefully to the size of the screen. hell, they even had a issue at times if you add a toolbar or two to the browser, resulting in some element or other at the bottom going out of view…
On small resolution screens “fit to width” checkbox in Opera preferences (section dealing with look of webpages) works generally ok…besides I find Opera especially fitting on small ram/slow CPU machines…
@touchpad – I wish somebody (well…Lenovo?) would do Eee style machine without it, incorporating Trackpoint only.
The main reason I didn’t get one (I was very tempted to!) aside from not exactly having much spare cash lying around, was the screen. I wasn’t planning on using the EEE for anything elaborate, but I knew that such a tiny amount of screen real estate would make me feel quite claustrophobic regardless of what I was doing with it.
I might consider buying the EEE when the price gets smaller or the screen gets bigger.
I’d still get one if they were $200 like it was suppose to be.
Like the look of the Everex CloudBook (real hdd wooohoo)but still a bit pricey for something to mess around on.
I’ve seen a lot of people guessing at what it would be like to use it but guessing isn’t really the best way to find out.
Yes, the Xandros OS is somewhat annoying. Download and install eeeXubuntu OS, problem solved. The keyboard does take some getting used to. The screen is very small. But, ever since I have taken it into work everyone wants to use it. I check gmail using firefox, chat with Pidgin, write up meeting summaries using open office. When my home computer died I just plugged in my LCD screen and keyboard, closed the lid, and used it to power my printer, scanner, external USB drives. So, in summary the screen size is annoying at times and I am not a fan of the keyboard but it is still very powerful for its size and incredibly useful due to its small size and weight. It doesn’t quite fit the bill as a laptop replacement but it is a very reliable machine. I dropped mine once so far in the foam case it comes with and there was no damage. I paid 350 USD for it and added a 1 Gig RAM chip and a 8 Gig SD card for mp3 storage. One other benefit is that girls think it is hot. I was listening to mp3s in the school library and a woman came over to ask me if it was a laptop. We exchanged emails. It is almost like having a puppy — it is too cute for people to resist. 😉
Edited 2008-02-10 18:46 UTC
Hey buff,
In the intervening time between my response to Antik’s predictable troll and now, I’ve become the owner of a shiny new Black 4Gb eee pc, too. (I figured if Antik felt threatened enough about the eee pc to troll about it then it must be pretty good.)
But like you, I find that the Xandros based distro doesn’t suit my taste, and an *buntu does seem like it might be a good match for this machine. You are recommending Xubuntu, which I’ve used and like. But have you run the Gnome-based Ubuntu, as well? And if so, would you care to comment on the pros and cons for this device? I’m still at the default 512MB ram and still looking over the eee Ubuntu wiki.
Thanks for any input.
-Steve
Steve, I thought of using regular Gnome Ubuntu but Xubuntu saved on the memory requirements so I used it. I don’t think you will miss too much over regular Gnome. EeeXubuntu had been tweeked to run on the eee so I thought it would be a good match. I am using all my regular Gnome apps. and they work well. In general Ubuntu works well on the eee. The wireless networking actually seems to work better without Xandros, go figure. The eee forum also has scripts for VGA output you can use to bind to the Function keys. I haven’t bothered getting the video camera up and running.
Although I don’t know whether eeeXubuntu works the same way like the installed Xandros, there could be a problem with your “hard drive” (which is a solid state disk as you surely know) in the near future when installing “alien” distributions:
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=890
Citation:
“The EEE-PC has a Asus designed and implemented solid state disk, not an industry standard plug-in unit. It uses flash ram and has a finite number of write cycles. Even with the SSD controller’s inbuilt wear levelling, an incorrect Linux installation will drastically reduce the life of the drive. (or even cause the SSD to reduce in usable size very quickly). The flash I.C’s are permanently soldered in and are not user replaceable.
To maximise the life of this disk, the following points should be followed when installing an alternative distribution:-
1. Never choose to use a journaling file system on the SSD partitions
2. Never use a swap partition on the SSD
3. Always edit your new installation fstab to mount the SSD partitions “noatime”
4. Never log messages or error log to the SSD
Do NOT assume that an automatic install of any distro will perform the above features. The solid state disk looks like an ATA drive to the installer sniffer, it knows nothing about SSD’s!”
So it could be very reasonable to stay with the originally installed and eeePC-adapted Xandros Linux despite of a few shortcomings.
ALL the eee-distributions take the SSD into account. I don’t use/need swap (enough memory, and don’t hibernate), but with 0 swappiness, swap should be OK. It’s mainly the things that write to the same place many times a minute that make the memory wear faster than you’d want. Yes, noatime is a must for file systems that support it. There is something to be said for running more in memory, and having parts of the common datastructures on tmpfs. My SD storage I still have on ext3, because I’m not writing to it all the time.
I think in theory, when bad cells/sectors start appearing, the hardware should no longer use that. A lot depends on the mechanisms that are used, I couldn’t get easy answers here. You’d expect the amount of memory available to diminish(?).
The only thing that has prevented me from buying one is the small screen and resolution.
Give me 9″ at 1024×768 ( can be a bit more expensive ) and I am sold.
i’ve been considering getting one too, to replace my aging 12in. powerbook. There are times when I find the screen of the powerbook too small, but I think with linux it won’t be a problem, because I would install a wm like wmii.
And for most people that’s all that matters.
Eee PC role as an internet access device is hard to beat. If you use it as a general purpose PC, you might be disappointed
Having Windows compatibility does widens it’s functionalities. Using the built in rdesktop software and MS Terminal services or ThinServer accomplish that
http://www.aikotech.com/thinserver.htm
Day 3 removed Linux installed XP
Day 5 upgraded ram to 1 GB
Day 7 really started regreted buying the 4 GB Surf Model
Its a cool device but the screen isnt the greatest and I keep wanting it to do more. I am sure I will mod it out at a later date (was thinking about soldering a 8gb usb flash drive inside but I am still trying to find a use for it.
Sounds like a good use to me!
Has anyone tried running Eclipse on this thing? I’m assuming there might be a little melting around the edges if it doesn’t burst into flame.
Gonna get one when I get my Macbook Pro sold.
I own a 4G eeepc, though I will qualify that I bought it as a gadget and use it as such. It is a nice simple system i can let my niece play with.
I have installed Kubuntu and 1GB of RAM with no swap. I mounted my normal /home and /opt using USB2 and kicked up eclipse 3.3. It took approximately 45-50 seconds to load and another 30-40 seconds or so to build the desktop. I have a somewhat hefty workspace and use a fair number of plugins (j2ee base install plus DLTK, CDE, subversion, Quantum, LDAP, and Spring off the top of my head) so with a more stripped down install it might fare a little better. By comparison the same drive hooked up to my 2.66ghz C2Duo using SATA takes around 10 seconds, maybe a little under. I have never timed it.
Once loaded eclipse was reasonably responsive and definitely usable with one major qualification. The screen size makes the use of views pretty much impossible, you have to maximize the editor to do any real work. Hooked up to an external monitor it should be possible to do work from an eee, though I would not call it fast. Personally for light development on an eee I would go with vi or kate depending on my mood/what I was doing. Eclipse will work but it is hard to use at that screen size.
EDIT: Posted from my eeepc by the way. I like to use it for browsing at night.
Edited 2008-02-12 04:06 UTC
The EEE PC looks interesting but I think I am going to wait until at least sometime the later half of this year to buy something like this. I’m personally waiting to see what will come out of Pixel Qi (the company commercializing the technologies used in the OLPC Project). I know that the EEE PC compares to it but I would love to have an XO-1 that is basically designed for adults in the Western World. You know a larger keyboard plus hopefully a larger screen and of course a larger battery.