# Asus Eeepc



## James (Jul 17, 2006)

Well said I would get back with thoughts on the little Asus tablet launched fall of 07. I got mine on special less than 300CDN dollars

Carry it everywhere, damn tiny, don't carry it n a case so it gets abused. Above average wireless distance. I do find myself bouncing back and forth between 800x600 to 800x480, the screen is actually 800x480, at 600 I scroll the whole desktop, not an issue though quick click on the tray icon.

I have the black Surf 4GB. You may thin k 4GB is small but not really. I opted for without web cam in favor of the 3rd speaker.

Its fast. I liked the Asus modified Linux, looked pretty worked well for basic stuff. I found video sync to its audio not up to par and missed my fav appz. So after 2 weeks XP was installed, XPSP2 with Nov 2007 update slipstreamed into the install DVD. Oh yes, It has no DVD drive, no room, but can boot from USB etc so not a big deal. I picked up an external IDE case then used my home units DVD drive to install Windows, everything else I copied to USB and installed from there.

Slightly modified. Changed about 100 Windows settings, location of folders etc. Picked up a Crucial 1GB memory chip vs the 500MB. Picked up a Sandisk Extreme 3 2GB for the slot in the side of the case. have the worlds fastest USB drive at 8GB you will see it.

Make sure if you do look at one of these that the ram is not hard soldered some are.

So a small solid state drive. Its said they will outlast a spinning HD, will see. Expensive little things.

Now with XP I have a real strong media machine that rocks and connects anywhere. nothing has blown apart yet in a few months despite it being tossed about.

Now for some pics. Any questions just ask.

The unit. Along side a regular size mouse










A screenie of the desktop










The 3 drives.

E is the Sandisk Extreme 3 card 2GB, all appz get installed to it along with some videos and music, you will see how many appz it actually holds.

D is the USB drive worlds fastest 8GB, will show you in a bit what I have on it, games and all

Local disk is well, C drive at 4GB and has Windows and some appz, drivers codecs etc installed.

Lots of room left on all really


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## James (Jul 17, 2006)

Lets have a peak at whats nstalled mostly on the Sandisk not on C drive............well actually this is everything on both drives I guess


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## James (Jul 17, 2006)

and one more..............

As you see it holds a lot all thats needed. Plus I have e-mails, music and my documents on the unit










And a few more appz. I keep the icons in a separate folder vs. the start menu or on the desktop










Here is the Corsair USB drive. I only use it to transfer files. I do have an assortment of emergency appz that run off USB drives as portable appz. I have some games installed and they run well off the USB playing them on this little laptop. Have 3 times this amount of portable appz stored on the home unit


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## James (Jul 17, 2006)

Now I mentioned it will game. And game fine at it stock clock. The CPU is really a 900 but Asus released it running at 633. Below is a shot running an older FPS, UT. Runs very well, have tried the first Call of Duty also with no probs. game is running at stock clock. Not a very good screenie but gives you the idea!










More about clocking. Using a simple tool to clock you can start it up and control fan speed and clock. Below is clocked stock and then clocked at its full 900. I run the unit all the time at 633 no need to clock. The temp/CPU speed display is again a separate app you can start up. I opened the .ini file just to show you the 3 clock speeds can be customized. If you want to run clocked from startup simply drop the icons into the startup folder! Temps are a bit high was just gamimg


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## James (Jul 17, 2006)

So thats the little Asus write leveling solid state unit that was selling 1 every 6 seconds in Nov 07. From its linux stock to a fairly modified unit now with XP. People seemed concerned XP may tax the solid state drive with too many writes. Even at the max writes in testing it will outlast spinning hard drives. I say lets see if we can break it! Part of tweaking the unit is to ensure least possible writes, so moving certain folders, turning off system restore, setting paging file to zero fo more room, turning off indexing and other stuff mae it quick with little writes to disk other than what you intend.


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## NickD (Sep 6, 2007)

James, in a word 'wow'.

Is it just me or is everyone else bamboozled by that review?!









Off to ask my eldest what it all meant. Nick


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## mjolnir (Jan 3, 2006)

That's pretty cool. They are almost pocket sized aren't they (if you have big pockets).

Thanks for the run through James. I think I'd like one but I already have a Laptop and a pocket PC that I don't use much









Glad to see you got the priorities sorted out though. Unreal Tournament would have been the fisrt thing I installed


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## Stan (Aug 7, 2003)

Looks like there's an Atheros wireless card in there James? I'm not surprised the wireless performance is good in that case, Atheros are brilliant cards. I was lucky enough to get one in my ThinkPad.









Asus seems to have put some good components in that little box.


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## James (Jul 17, 2006)

Nick, lol I did not go into the tweaks I installed and made to get it where it is. Not to mention once I used Internet Explorer at a crack site by accident and sure enough had to reinstall windows in short, thank the lord for FireFox

Almost pocket sized lol. fits i n one inner pocket of one jacket I have real big pocket. My version of the original UT is highly modified with maybe 500 maps, Maybe 50 voice packs, mods, skins, models, mutators and much stuff. If you want it can send it too you as a real big zip file runs fine off a USB drive.

And yep Atheros. At the buddies shop at the moment. If I wanted I can connect to the wireless at Starbucks, about 2 blocks away but that is just plain unusual for sure rare instance.

And excuse the spelling errors keyboarding in the dark almost, next thing to install is keyboard backlighting


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## Robert (Jul 26, 2006)

Interesting James. At work we use laptops to connect to a VPN. These might be just the job instead, bearing in mind the size and price.

Only downside I can see is that the screen could be bigger compared to the size of the lid


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## JTW (Jun 14, 2007)

Hi James, great overview.

I've been considering one of these but one of the plusses (for me) had been freedom from microsoft. You moved to XP fairly quickly, was this just the audio / video sync issue and your favourite apps or is there some basic problem with the Linux setup?

i.e. could you have lived with linux had XP not been an option?

BTW I'm amazed that it runs as well as you imply with so little in the way of memory and storage. And do you really have Norton on there, surprised there's any memory left for anything else!

Ian


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## James (Jul 17, 2006)

Agreed the screen could be larger in comparison to the lid. It may though take away strength. Asus seems to intend to release a version with a bit larger screen, at a larger cost I assume, taking away from the idea of price point and simplicity bringing it closer to that of a full blown laptop which is only a couple hundred away, in my opinion. For me its the portability.

I agree with the comment of availability of appz for MS op sys's.

The Linux install had all you need and could have lived with it. The sync issue showed when playing some DVD's from USB and very large AVI's such as TV shows. For the basic user playing music, the odd video, writing files in openoffice and connecting to the net the Linux install is very fine, yet limited since I like to play and have my appz as you see. Biggest issue was not having my movie collector app on it since I have about 550 DVD's in my library, that and my fav appz

And no Norton only as portable appz now I removed the main appz! Although I see something left in the add/remove windows

Yea memory is not a problem, got running processes down from 48 to 33 now. Physical memory available is 670 to 700MB with virtual memory set to zero as it take disc space and not needed, would rather everything run in physical ram anyway. Biggest thing is knowing windows and what to shut off and tweak


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## JonW (Mar 23, 2005)

Wow! What a superb review! NCON and I were discussing these the other week and I went right one and looked at one. It seems to have a small dull screen... yours doesnt look like that.. so whats different... hmmm.... maybe we get a lesser version here?


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## James (Jul 17, 2006)

Hi. No there should not be a lesser version screen wise, I find it pretty sharp and good for TV episodes and DVD's quite watchable off the USB drive if needed. I find it pretty sharp and have enlarged some text, clear type etc. the screenies are as they were captured except the gaming one I had to brighten it up some. You will find quite a few versions of hardware changes including soldered in ram on the other case colors, soldered in ram on the same unit but with web cam, some really weird things. The eeepc does have a user forum where I got my start on it with opening up the linux system. Such things as installing the "start" button, enabling the advanced desktop all kinds of goodies that are there in linux but Asus chose not to turn them on


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## ncon (Sep 14, 2005)

Excellent review of a machine I was going to ask about on the forum to see if anyone had any experience of! As JonW says, we were chatting about them last week and it certainly piques my interest.

I do have a question though.

1 - How difficult is it to install XP? (Novice here) or is it easier to simply wait for the 8GB version that will come installed with XP as standard?

Is it actually worth having XP anyway? Either way, I would want a minimum of programs to keep it quick, and would primarily use it for net access and working on files while away from my home based systems.

Excellent review, thanks again!


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## strange_too (Feb 19, 2007)

Good job James









I had thought about getting one of those to keep in the boot of the car for the moments I just need to quickly something for my job. Much easier then trying to type something on a handheld device.

The screen size would bug me, but I do like the form factor. I think I'll wait until the 2nd Gen turns up and I'll just carry my Sony SZ around.


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## James (Jul 17, 2006)

Installing XP is pretty simple, has to be SP2, the Asus manual walks you through it so its meant to be installed then you just run the divers disc from Asus it installs everything driver related. Its stated MS is working on an XP for it most likely tweaked the way most install it on the unit anyway. Coming with XP the cost will be higher for sure.

In after thought there was another reason to install XP, so I could use MS office, openoffice under l linux is real close and compatible but not close enough despite having Powerpoint, Excel, Word and so on.

Here is a site wth a short review.

/http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/eee-pc-review.ars/1

The standard Asus screens are shown I used the brown one. As you can see its a tabbed desktop with icons, thats the way it comes and for most users is perfect and actually looks good and is simple.

Recommend updating the bios through this before removing and putting XP on. Asus controls the software updates you get and this is a good thing. Adding repositories will end up you reinstalling Linux real quick trust me.

Under linux there is a hidden partition containing the software for a 2 minute reinstall, you can find this on the DVD also. Prob with that is you have only 1.3GB under Linux, over 2GB on XP if done right.

Two must have tweaks are adding the start button to its standard desktop, like Windows and a simple matter of a bunch of commands to turn it on. Then you add a couple repositories which you download and install 2 real small things, this adds the ability to switch to an advanced mode. Under advanced its more like windows and I had a real cool customization with hiding tool bars, icon launchers etc. and yes then was able to have my own desktops. You can switch easily between advanced and simple, using simple to download its updates. Only other app I would download under Linux would be Gimp, a real nice photo editor, install nothing else you have a machine that is great for traveling with etc.

I got bored ran out of tweaks to play with so on came XP. It seems Asus intended this machine to work well on XP and it opens it up to a bit higher user level, again it would have hurt the price point.

Linux is geeky if you like working with commands for some things its great and comes to you real quick I liked it actually was pretty happy. the one forum out there for the eeepc seems to have high geek ratio and hence a love of Linux right off the bat. hey at least its not as crashable as Windows!



ncon said:


> Excellent review of a machine I was going to ask about on the forum to see if anyone had any experience of! As JonW says, we were chatting about them last week and it certainly piques my interest.
> 
> I do have a question though.
> 
> ...


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## clarence (Nov 9, 2007)

Great review! I've got a spare black Asus 4gb EEE non-surf (the one that's upgradeable) for sale right now, actually. Had to choose between it and my Toshiba U-100 and the latter stole my heart!

Any takers?

Clarence


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## JTW (Jun 14, 2007)

clarence said:


> Great review! I've got a spare black Asus 4gb EEE non-surf (the one that's upgradeable) for sale right now, actually. Had to choose between it and my Toshiba U-100 and the latter stole my heart!
> 
> Any takers?
> 
> Clarence


How much?


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## James (Jul 17, 2006)

Well. Thought I would follow up on this.

Almost 2 years ago the operating system failed on my main comp. I could show you pics was state of the art. Had it stored. So the eeepc has been my main comp, fast, instant, took many mods and adjustments. It still works fine I leave it on all day, have it hooked to two monitors now. Never broke although did a fresh install 4 weeks ago. I guess the electronic hard drives do work well.

On Monday I dismantled my old unit. Good buy UV everything, goodbye Zalman cooler, goodbye see through uv power supply etc. Still use my lil eeepc daily

I pulled its 5 hard drives. I have a lot of stuff and now access to all my pictures again that I was missing, boobies.....

but..........


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## Stan (Aug 7, 2003)

I picked up a refurbished 701SD about a year ago, it came with XP (and a restore disk) but I found it a bit slow to load. I maxed out the RAM and eventually got a Kingspec 16Gb replacement SSD. The new SSD made a big difference in speed and I got very comfortable with the 701SD, I use it when I canâ€™t comfortably sit and get consigned to bed rest.

I decided to go back to Linux, just to see what was current for the Eee PC and decided to give an old favourite a try, Puppy Linux, specifically Puppeee.

I loaded the files onto an SD card and followed the instructions to make it bootable, fired up the 701 and hit escape and took the SD card boot option. Within 20 seconds I had the Puppeee desktop showing and soon afterwards a wireless connection.

Puppeee is very fast booting from SD and would be faster if installed to the SSD drive, Iâ€™ll bet. Once you get used to Puppeee, it will do most things you need but with a massive speed advantage over XP. I use it much of the time but run WinXP if I feel the need for total Windows â€œcompatibilityâ€.

I criticised the Asus Eee PC when it first came out on the grounds of cost, not its usefulness, itâ€™s a good computer and quite well made.

I've grown to like this little machine a lot, at the moment I realise the best upgrade to it (and me) would be a new pair of glasses. Like most screens, the 7â€ one on the 701SD works better when you can see it properly.:wink1:

Edit for illiteracy, if that's how you spell it.


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