Asus Eee PC

[Neutron]

Does anyone here use the Asus Eee PC?

I'm thinking of getting one (For $350 with 1GB RAM and 16GB of SSD you can't go wrong) with Linux. Is it good?

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I have two of them.

I have the 7 inch with 8GB SSD which I paid $199 for, and a 10 inch which I got from Best Buy and it has a 120 GB Hard drive. I paid $349 for it, but its back up to $379

Asus - Netbook with Intel® Celeron® Processor 353 - Black - 1000HD-BKBB1

The 7 inch is good for browsing the internet but not much else, it is very slow.

The 10 inch however while it has the same processor is SPEEDY and I love it. I think the 7 inch with the SSD is slow because of the SSD. I have a Sprint Broadband card and it took 45 minutes to install on the 7 inch model and only seconds to install on the 10 inch version.

I purchased them for CES, as its a lot of walking and full size laptops get heavy quick, so I got them to cover the press events.

I would get the one from Best Buy, its a worthwile purchase.

 

[Neutron]

Is it possible to upgrade the internal SSD drive?

 

[snathanb]

Does anyone here use the Asus Eee PC?

I'm thinking of getting one (For $350 with 1GB RAM and 16GB of SSD you can't go wrong) with Linux. Is it good?

I've got one. I bought one of the original 7 inch models.

It had 1 GB of RAM, which I promptly upgraded to 2.

It has a 4GB SSD, which I've used about a quarter of.

I installed TinyXp, which has an incredible small footprint and runs extremely fast. I had a provisioning application for configuring my company's SONET and DWDM equipment that I needed XP for.

I've overclocked it to 1 Ghz.

I also installed a touch screen.

Touchscreen kit for Eee PC - Hack a Day

It's a great little PC. I wouldn't use one for my everyday computer, but for portable browsing, email, etc. It's great. I fly regularly, and I can't hardly open my "work" laptop on a plane, its just too dang big. But I can pop this one open and work on power point, excel, word, easily.

 

[snathanb]

Is it possible to upgrade the internal SSD drive?

On mine, no. The flash chips are physically soldered to the motherboard.

 

[snathanb]

I have two of them.

I have the 7 inch with 8GB SSD which I paid $199 for, and a 10 inch which I got from Best Buy and it has a 120 GB Hard drive. I paid $349 for it, but its back up to $379

The 7 inch is good for browsing the internet but not much else, it is very slow.

Very easy to bump the processor speed on the 7 inch models.

 

[Neutron]

I've been looking at the one at Best Buy, the 900A.

It's Asus - Netbook with Intel® Atom? Processor N270 - White - 900A-WFBB01

For $300 the price doesn't seem bad at all. I'd promptly upgrade it to Ubuntu Linux though. There's an EEE version out there.

If I insert a 16GB SD card, will it combine with the 4GB or will it show up as a second drive?

 

[snathanb]

I've been looking at the one at Best Buy, the 900A.

It's Asus - Netbook with Intel® Atom™ Processor N270 - White - 900A-WFBB01

For $300 the price doesn't seem bad at all. I'd promptly upgrade it to Ubuntu Linux though. There's an EEE version out there.

If I insert a 16GB SD card, will it combine with the 4GB or will it show up as a second drive?

I've only been using my with XP, dumped the linux that was on it straight away. It shows up in XP as a second drive.

There is a pretty good user forum over at...

EeeUser ASUS Eee PC Forum

You'll find the people there very helpful.


The ubuntu discussions are at:

http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewforum.php?id=43

 

[mikew]

BestBuy.com - Search Results

Bummer that the one I want is sold out. It came with Bluetooth and a GIGABIT NIC. The "newer" model that is in stock comes with a 10/100 NIC and no Bluetooth. They are both listed for $399.

 

[Neutron]

Just picked up the white one I linked from Best Buy. I upgraded the RAM to 2GB, and added a 16GB SDHC card.

I'm about to install Ubuntu EEE 8.04 on it.

 

[Neutron]

Installing Ubuntu 8.04 EEE was a pain, only because the automated installer kept putting the boot partition on the USB stick I was installing with. An edit of menu.lst fixed that.

Going to see if I can get LVM to work so that I can combine my internal 4GB with my 16GB SDHC.

 

[John Kotches]

My wife and I are interested in these as potentials for short travel etc.

I typed for a little while on the HP netbook and the only issue I had was with the short vertical throw.

This is probably the big growth market in PCs over the next few years.

 

[mikew]

BestBuy.com - Search Results

Bummer that the one I want is sold out. It came with Bluetooth and a GIGABIT NIC. The "newer" model that is in stock comes with a 10/100 NIC and no Bluetooth. They are both listed for $399.

I have never, in over 4 years of posting to these forums, ever quoted myself, but I feel the need to do so. I'm keeping track of these prices because, ultimately, I want one of these with built in BlueTooth and under $400. I started with the Dell for $529 which has been delayed twice, so I canceled. I found the above two for $399 and now, today, I see the one without Bluetooth has dropped to $349. I wonder what the true bottom is on these things. I saw the ASUS at Office Depot for $329, but it was sold out and has no Bluetooth.

 

[John Kotches]

Asus has said their target is $200 for the 10 inch models.

 

[Neutron]

Mine does not have bluetooth but my iPhone will not allow tethering anyway. Plus, I can always add bluetooth later on. I found a step-by-step guide on the web on how to add it.

 

[mikew]

I finally decided on my purchase. I am grateful to Dell for delaying my order to a point that I finally gave up. I had a $500 unit and cancelled my order yesterday. I am paying $100 less and getting the following improvements:

Replace the 16GB HD Card with a real 160 GB HD
Replace the 8.9" screen with a 10" screen
Replace the 3 cell battery with 6 cell
Wireless b/g with Wireless b/g/n

Had Dell shipped my order within a couple of weeks, I would have been stuck with their product. So, once again Dell...thanks for making me wait!

 

[mikew]

Mine does not have bluetooth but my iPhone will not allow tethering anyway. Plus, I can always add bluetooth later on. I found a step-by-step guide on the web on how to add it.

Is it a software solution? My driving desire behind bluetooth was to prevent me from hooking any wires or usb devices to the unit. This will allow me to click a button on my phone to tether with BlueTooth, then surf away.

 

[Neutron]

Nope, the steps involve wiring a bluetooth chip inside the laptop.

 

[John Kotches]

I finally decided on my purchase. I am grateful to Dell for delaying my order to a point that I finally gave up. I had a $500 unit and cancelled my order yesterday. I am paying $100 less and getting the following improvements:

Replace the 16GB HD Card with a real 160 GB HD
Replace the 8.9" screen with a 10" screen
Replace the 3 cell battery with 6 cell
Wireless b/g with Wireless b/g/n

Had Dell shipped my order within a couple of weeks, I would have been stuck with their product. So, once again Dell...thanks for making me wait!

I think that the hard drive sort of defeats the purpose of the machine. IMO it's not going to get treated as gently as a traditional laptop and that makes the drive susceptible to failure.

I will likely upgrade to a 64GB SSD on whatever netbook we end up with.

 

[mikew]

I think that the hard drive sort of defeats the purpose of the machine. IMO it's not going to get treated as gently as a traditional laptop and that makes the drive susceptible to failure.

I will likely upgrade to a 64GB SSD on whatever netbook we end up with.

Well, here's to hoping the HD can handle the abuse. It'll probably take the same beating my Vaio has endured. It's been around for three years and is still ticking away.

Just recieved the unit today and love it. The only issue I have with it is that they made the comma, period and forward slash each a little less than 3/4 sized keys. It's taking some "getting used to" on the period as I find myself hitting the slash key 40% of the time. The 6 cell battery endured the afternoon of downloads/installs (about 4.5 hours). This was utilizing the wireless-n card and sharing the CD rom of my PC. The bluetooth tethering works as I expected and the 1.3 Megapixel camera demonstrated that I either need to re-think my hairstyle or just wear a baseball hat I really feel this unit is worth more than the $400 I paid, so I am quite happy.

Scott's comment about speed with his SSD card had me a bit concerned about going with an SSD driven device. Do you think his experience was abnormal? I read that users were able to disable compression on the SSD and this helped improve performance. Would this be the difference between the time it took to install his Sprint software?