Goodbye-eee!

I bought a netbook recently, an Asus Eee PC 900 running Linux. It’s got no hard drive and no Windows software, yet right out of the box you can surf the web and do everything that normally requires Microsoft Office – plus a few things besides.

I took it to Spain and watched a movie on it during the flight (saved to an SD card). I sat in a cafe wirelessly checking my emails. I can also listen to internet radio from around the world and use Skype with the built in webcam. All this from a device which is about the size of an A5 sheet of paper.

I was delighted with it until one day it refused to connect to my home WiFi. There then began a long, frustrating and time consuming struggle to diagnose and rectify the problem. I even resorted to a complete Restore back to the factory settings (twice) and painstakingly worked my way through a list of remedies supplied by Asus Support.

All without success. So I packed it all up ready to be collected for repair. Judging by the forums, the ‘wifi pending’ problem is widespread and not easily fixed. Some speculate that it is a hardware fault with the wifi card or its antennae. Others blame the Linux software. I just hope they fix mine quickly so that I can get back to enjoying my new miniature marvel.