Michael Anti is an engineer and journalist whose career whose work at The New York Times, Huaxia Times, 21st Century World Herald, The Washington Post, the Southern Metropolis Daily, and the Far and Wide Journal. He has been a researcher, a columnist, a reporter, a war correspondent Baghdad, in 2003) and more -- and who achieved notoriety in 2005 when Microsoft deleted his blog. Today he is best known for his landmark work on press freedom in China -- efforts that have earned him a Wolfson press fellowship at Cambridge University and Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University.
It was at a Harvard meeting that I noticed that Michael using an Asus Eee PC, with exceptional ease and enthusiasm. Turns out it's one he bought from Amazon. It came new with Knoppix, but that he "cracked" it to do more than Asus expects of ordinary users (for example, expanding windows to a full screen). I was impressed at how rapidly he typed on the keyboard. Later I found that he was actually typing in Chinese. I hadn't realized, until he explained it, that it's actually possible to type Chinese at the speed of speech on a qwerty keyboard. "I type in Chinese about five times faster than I write", he says. "Harvard", for example, is four keystrokes rather than seven. So, if you know Chinese, you can use it as a kind of shorthand. Impressive. (As you see from the photo, he was using Smart Pinyin.)
In sum, Michael said he has found the Eee PC ideal for three things: 1) hacking; 2) doing journalistic work; and 3) watching TV. (In fact, he believes it is "the future of the TV".)
Ethan Zuckerman, who was at the same meeting, added "I've seen these all over the place. I ran into (some) Asian businessmen in Amsterdam last week. And they were all carrying them. It's caught on really, really fast."
His one caution is adaptation. It took him a week to get used to the smaller-sized keyboard. Plus, "You should have some five minutes to get used to it" when you're coming from a normal-sized keyboard. Seems like time he's willing to invest.