Asus Bamboo Laptop is cool

A few days ago I happened to find myself in one of those bigname Electronic stores (BestBuy) looking for new laptop. My 3 year old Dell was showing signs of senility. So after afew rounds around the laptops they had on their display, I narrowed down to two. One being the Toshiba Protege R705 and the other being the Asus Bamboo. Both are priced around 850 bucks. While I like the Toshiba for its slim design and lightweight, I am really impressed with the look and feel of the Bamboo laptop from Asus. The Bamboo cover and palm rest is really cool. It is chocolaty and smooth and really looks different from all the plastic metal hybrids out there. I dont know if using Bamboo is truly beneficial to the Environment as they claim but boy does it look cool and different at the same time. Only downside. I'm not very sure if Asus is my next brand name computer. I have never used them in the past, although I must admit, I have heard a lot about them since the netbook advent. So anyway after a lot of dithering, I think I have made a decision -- Asus Bamboo it is this time.

Then comes the next peeve. Not from the Computer but from the store itself. Their trade in policy is cryptic and cumbersome. I was hoping I could trade-in my old Dell for the new laptop. But they want me to first fill the form online on their website, then print it, then return to the store again and hope that they have some of them in stock. or they will back order me. Huh. Why would BestBuy make it so difficult to buy from them. Forget it, I will go elsewhere.

Then I'm back home and on Amazon's website. And there is a pleasant surprise waiting for me. They have a better, more jazzy Asus Bamboo available (than on Bestbuy.com) and they will even give me a $150 gift card. Go Amazon. You just got a sale.

And 3 days later, here is the new Asus Bamboo U43J sitting on my lap. It looks beautiful. It is lighter than my previous laptops. The Bamboo trackpad, palmrest and cover all look and feel great. The keyboard is well designed, the ports and controls are well placed, even the packaging is very nice. Its got that new computer smell that is an added bonus. Within minutes I'm all about it, I have repartitioned the hard disk to install Ubuntu 10 Linux along with the default factory installed Windows 7 (I'm not a Windows person). The Ubuntu install was easy. The folks at Canonical have done a good job of making the install quick. So now I have a dual booting Asus Bamboo U43J running Ubuntu 10!
More about the Ubuntu 10 install process and driver support later.