ASUS Eee PC vs HCL MiLeap Y

I’m in the market for an ultralight laptop to serve half-way between my cell phone (Nokia E61i; very portable and always on me, but painful for anything more than a few hundred words) and regular laptop (Apple MacBook Pro; all round performer but not a joy to lug around). The primary use will be for email and extended note taking. There appear to be only two suitable candidates available for purchase in Bangalore today.

The MiLeap Y or Eee PC, oh which one will it be?

Feature	ASUS Eee PC	HCL MiLeap Y	Advantage
Size	7"	7"	Match
Display	800×480. Painfully inadequate. The dialog boxes of several apps are too large to fit on screen.	1024×600. Feels comfortable when apps are maximised.	MiLeap Y
Build	Traditional laptop design. Feels solid.	Tablet PC design. Feels like an accidental drop could break it.	Eee PC
Finish	Matte. Leaves no smudges.	Glossy. Fingerprint magnet.	Eee PC
Weight	920 grams	980 grams. The 60 gram difference may seem paltry but is noticeable.	Eee PC
Battery Life	2.5 hours as per reviews. This is pretty much what makes or breaks a device’s usability. ASUS has announced plans for higher capacity batteries.	2 hours as per reviews. Poor show. (I wouldn’t go with manufacturers’ claims of battery life in idle mode.) No news on better battery availability.	Eee PC
Startup Time	15-22 seconds cold, lesser from suspension	1:30 minutes cold, 45 seconds from hibernate	Eee PC
Power Adapter	Feels like a large cell phone charger. You could tuck it into a pocket and carry the Eee PC like a notebook when moving around.	Brick with cables both ends. Major fashion faux pas to be seen toting one, besides being unwieldy.	Eee PC
Storage	4-8 GB. The 8 GB versions don’t appear to be available in India.	80 GB. Serious advantage here. Solid state storage’s perceived reliability isn’t so much of a plus point for me as disk crashes aren’t all that common, replacement disks are easy to obtain, and disruptions can be minimised with regular backups.	MiLeap Y
Trackpad	Relatively large. Single button with separate left and right sensors. Not possible to press both together.	Relatively small, but with separate left and right buttons. Separate scroll buttons on screen.	MiLeap Y
Touch Screen	No	Yes. The touch screen is pressure-based however, and unusable for actually writing on unless you don’t mind scratches. In my testing, it failed to recognise writing unless I pressed hard. High quality write-on screens use a special pen with a conductive coil that requires a very light touch.	MiLeap Y
Alternate Form Factor	None	The MiLeap Y in tablet form factor makes a great ebook reader / web browser. The screen’s sides have a fairly usable button mouse, arrow direction pad, scroll buttons and a few extra (hopefully) reprogrammable buttons.	MiLeap Y
OS	Linux. You can choose your own distro and UI. Dedicated community providing customisations tailored for the Eee PC.	Windows Vista Home Premium. The UI is still toyish (WinXP’s UI was like a candy factory meltdown) and switching is not an option, as parts of the hardware are unsupported on Linux.	Eee PC
Pedigree	ASUS, which is committed to first class Linux support. Everything just works.	Also available as the Kohjinsha SH-series. HCL is a licensee. I wouldn’t expect HCL to build high quality hardware given they have neither the track record nor market presence, so this is good news. The upstream manufacturer, however, appears uninterested in Linux support and HCL’s voice will remain unheard unless they have enough demanding customers.	Eee PC
Processing Power	900 MHz, but underclocked to 630 MHz.	800 MHz, but Vista’s sluggishness makes it feel slower.	Match
Cost	Rs 16-20,000	Rs 35,000	Eee PC
Obsolescence	Given the rapid pace of improvements in small form factor computers, the Eee PC will be very obsolete in a year. It will, however, have a second life as that little network file server tucked away under the desk. It is also cheap enough to give away.	The MiLeap’s spotty Linux support makes it a less likely server, and far higher cost makes it harder to give away. The touch screen could however mean it’ll turn into some kind of a wall mounted device, although its hard disk won’t survive on a treadmill (which is where I’d want a touch screen).	Eee PC
Final Tally	10	5	Eee PC

What would you pick and why?

tags: eeepc, windows, laptop, writing, umpc, linux, asus, mileap, hcl

+1 for Asus eee pc

appughar at 2008-03-24 02:11

My vote for Asus eee pc. I am assuming you will be using the tablet to give presentation, take notes, personal organiser and check emails rather than serious computing. The lack of linux support in HP model + almost double the cost is a show stopper for me. Besides touch screen in a laptop (unless character recognition enabled) is a senseless gimmick for me, besides I type faster than I write. Only aspect I am worried about is 4GB hard-disk, however, with the external storage options very cheap now a days, I won't let it bother me so much.

ravi at 2008-03-24 03:28

Mileaps also have this issue of getting heated up very quickly, look into that.

Jinesh at 2008-03-24 03:50

Jace,

It appears EEE PC is little bit better if you have one or two USB ports. Is there any?

cheers

Kiran Jonnalagadda at 2008-03-24 05:37

The Eee PC has 3 USB ports, while the MiLeap Y has 2. Advantage Eee PC. I don't use USB attachments that often though, so didn't include it in the chart.

eee-pc

Kartik Mistry at 2008-03-24 04:29

Go for eee. Debian can be install smoothly on it ;)

ASUS Eee PC

Debarshi Ray at 2008-03-24 10:53

Personally I would prefer the Eee PC because:
+ Comes with GNU/Linux (Xandros -- a Debian derivative) preloaded. There is a Fedora derivative, named Eeedora too.
+ Wonderful Wifi support. It detected my office Wifi network from nooks and cranies from where normal laptops usually fail to connect.
+ Configuring Airtel GPRS was a breeze. No mucking around with wvdial, etc.. The GUI utility detected the phone (and even its make -- "Sony Ericsson").
+ I notice that you have not mentioned the camera in the comparison. Needless to say it works.
+ Restricted multimedia formats are support. Whether this is a plus or minus would depend on how you look at it, but its definitely worth mentioning. Given players are SMPlayer and Amarok.
+ OpenOffice.org seemed reasonably quick for a 512MB machine.

Caveats:
+ The stock filesystem is UnionFS and it has its own issues: http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2008/02/14/fedora-eee-pc-eeedora/
+ Getting to the terminal is difficult. Only way I know is to open the file manager and then use one of its menus (probably Tools).
+ They have changed the names of the applications from the upstream KDE names. So you will see something else in place of Konqueror, Amarok, etc..

Kingsly John at 2008-03-24 11:21

Ctrl+Alt+T for Terminal

Sumeet at 2008-03-24 11:24

Very well written.
so are you placing your order online or buying it through a shop? I have not been able to find a dealer in Delhi
i heard Wipro has some 12" laptop that they are selling for 22K.

Anonymous User at 2008-03-24 13:37

I picked it up from Spin Telematics in Bangalore. Was a bit cheaper than retail stores like Croma. Spin is the official distributor for Karnataka.

Got an Eee PC

Anonymous User at 2008-03-24 13:39

Thanks for the comments, guys. I picked up a black Eee PC 4G this evening. Rs 16990 including taxes (+2% extra for credit cards). While I'd have preferred the 8 GB version, my friend Pradeep Banavara pointed out that a 4 gig SD card comes cheaper than the $100 extra for the 8G.