Education Textbooks Reviews

Hooked On Phonics: Master Reader
My son was very excited about doing the lessons; I was a bit disappointed that the program didn't test the child's reading comprehension interactively at the end of the level (It only provides how to break the words into syllables)

Hooked on Phonics 7 years old and up Master reader
This is a great great investment. My son is doing very well with this product I've seen much inprovement in his reading and alot of focus on what he is reading. I would ask all parents to invest in this product. I went to his parent conference and his teacher and principal had alot of good things to say about his improvement in his reading and work habits.

I would order from this company again

Love it!!
It really helped. My son has ADHD and struggles with reading the system kept his attention while he was learning.

Well thought, well designed, sub-par on-line performance
As much as I regret it, I have no choice but to return this machine because of its unacceptable online performance. But, let me first provide a brief account of my experience with the EeeBox... Desktop PC.

Setup:
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Very easy. The machine comes in a nice little box that hosts its body, the USB keyboard, USB mouse, desktop stand, mounting bracket if it is to be attached to a monitor, Wi-Fi antenna, DVI to VGA adapter, power adapter, manuals, disks, etc. Everything is very tightly and securely packed.

For the physical setup you may need a flat and a Phillips screwdriver if the PC is to be mounted on the back of a monitor. I didn't even notice until the Asus came that certain monitors allow for the installation of a mounting bracket on their back - apparently this is a standard - and the little Asus can be made to sit there - 4 screws to attach the bracket to the monitor and the bracket itself has ONE thumb screw that's sufficient to attach the PC's body to it.

There is only a DVI interface for the video but the supplied DVI-VGA adapter takes care of those monitors that do not support DVI.

The Wi-Fi antenna is easily attached (screwed in) to the body. To my surprise, my white box came with a black antenna but, since I decided to keep it hanging on the back of the monitor, the color mismatch did not bother me.

Once the keyboard and mouse are plugged in and the machine is powered up Windows XP installs itself. It's as easy as providing the user's name.

The manual explains exactly how to set up the Wi-Fi and/or the wired network connection.

The entire setup, physical and software can be completed in less than one hour and it presents no major challenges.

A BIG plus about the setup is that practically there is ZERO bloatware. No AOL, Norton Whatever or software that's set to expire in 30 days appears to be running. In fact, the only thing that you see on the desktop, once the XP installs is the Explorer icon, the trash can and, I believe, the Adobe reader.

Features and performance:
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On the PC's sides there are 4 USB ports of which 2 are taken by the keyboard and the mouse, an Ethernet port, DVI port and, I believe, a media card slot - didn't check exactly which standards are supported.

The optical mouse, while small, appears to be working well. The small keyboard is not 'typist quality' but it's usable. Of course, keyboards and mice are easy to replace.

The machine, as expected, is very quiet and it stays cool while running.

There are no speakers but audio in and out ports are present to allow for headphones/speakers and a microphone or some other audio source.

There is no CD/DVD/BD drive but one could be easily attached via the USB.

As far as running installed sapplications, performance appears to be good. However, any application that involved an on-line component had trouble running. My Wi-Fi router is providing for several computers, a PS3, an online printer and a PSP prior to EeeBox's arrival and performance was always adequate for each unit. The EeeBox, while properly configured - and the Wi-Fi monitor did show near-100% signal strength - was barely communicating with the outside world. It was consistently slow while its other fellow machines on the network were as happy and as fast as ever. It took me a couple of hours and several tries simply to install Google's Chrome browser. The Asus 'upgrades' site seemed to take its time to the extent that, several hours later, a 10MB upgrade received about one third of the data over HTTP and FTP failed altogether. The Adobe Flash player installed itself in about 20 minutes that that's how long it took for a Java update. Amazon's site was slow and so were Yahoo, CNN, Google News. All of the above was within the context of other of our computers whizzing along without any problems whatsoever. I did not test a 'wired' connection.

Conclusion and recommendation:
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When ordering this machine I was aware of its lacking a CD/DVD drive and speakers and its CPU, graphics and memory limitations and I accepted those limitations. But, as I stated from the beginning, I am returning it because of its unacceptably poor online performance over Wi-Fi. It is possible that there was something not quite right with this particular box so everyone should be aware that I am evaluating ONE specific machine here, the one that I received.

It is possible that the performance is better over a wired connection but I did not test that.

Had this machine performed better online, it would have been an easy 5-stars for design, ease of setup and functionality.