ASUS eee PC - Any owner?

[Mark0]

The eee PC will be available here in Italy too in the next days.
I have to admit that it sparked my interest as soon as I read about it in the first news some months ago.



Is there any eee owner here, willing to share some usage impressions?

Thanks,
Bye!

[nite_monkey]

I don't own one, but Darren from hak5 owns one, and he has had pretty good results from it. he formated it, and put windows on it, and then installed some games on it, and said they worked pretty good with the specs that the eee pc has.

[iphigenie]

one of my web designers bought it with windows on it and was quite amazed with it. I thought the active screen was quite small compared to the size of the case, but then for the price...

It seems a tad small for a screen for it, but I was pondering how it would do as a home music player (with an usb drive for the music files) and was waiting for him to bring it back so we could try

[Mark0]

Thanks for the info.
The more I read about it, the more it intrigue me!

One thing that bother me a bit is that Bluetooth isn't included by default; that would have been handy.
Off course there are lot of mod that details how to add it (along many other things; it's a very "hackable" object!), but that will certainly void the worranty...

Bye!

[Mark0]

OK, got one today! It was one of the last four they had in the store. Seems it's selling pretty fast.

Bye!

[tsaint]

Got 1 last weekend with linux installed.
Booted quickly, screen was surprisingly good to read. Changed from "easy" to "advanced" mode quickly which made it better (for me) to use.
It detected my wireless network better than my dell latitude laptop and I was onto the net quite painlessly. Took it to school and it connected there faultlessly as well.
 For laziness and compatibility reasons, Ive now installed xp pro on it. That took about 2 hours, but I was very surprised how well it's performing - as in speed on boot and generally firing up apps.
 Have installed office 2003 (not that I wanted to) and that's just fine too. Currently I'm installing portable apps onto a 1gig sd card which plugs into the eeepc.
 Today I left the dell home and only took the eeepc to school and can't say Ive missed the big un. I think I'm preferring the eee (obviously if I need to use photoshop I'll be telling a different story) in general. It's fast, screen is easy to read (one caveat in a mo) and its portability is liberating.
 The caveat is for large dialog boxes - inconvenient, but overcomable by using Winmover, which allows dragging windows with an alt arrow combo.
 2 other teachers at school saw mine and went and brought themselves ones.
 last one, the eeepc user forum at http://www.eeeuser.com/ is a huge, active repository of advice... excellent resource.
 Summary of what Ive been doing on it:
office suite (incl outlook)
internet explorer/maxthon
watched a ripped dvd via usb tethered 2.5 hd
used xnview
used ashampoo office suite
interaacted with access db over school network
streamed kcsm jazz radio whilst reading in bed (also did that with linux)
set up network printer (also did that whilst linux was on )
made a no hassle connection to a data projector - looked fine

Am looking forward to taking it on next overseas trip - I'll be smiling when I see people taking out there large heavy laptops!
Hope this helps
tony

[zridling]

I wish I had one of these. If I ever go the laptop route for travel, this is it. Seems like they combined the best of a lot of great ideas here.

[iphigenie]

My designer bought the 4gb one, got the crucial mail upgrade, and is running windows, including photoshop cs1, on it - thinks its brilliant to be able to show things and do things on site

I dont know what the graphics chip can do

My take is that they made the screen just a bit too small, who needs such large speakers?

[iphigenie]

I used to have the fujitsu p1310, just a tad bigger screen with a touchpad. It got stolen, but I really lust after one again.

Once you have a tiny computer which you can take along with you to take notes, do a lot of basic tasks, and play games on the road (I have a lot of great old games that I could revisit)

I'm sorely tempted by the eee, although it has a pad (versus point for the fujitsu) and no touch screen so I am still hesitating.

[Mark0]

I dont know what the graphics chip can do

-iphigenie (February 01, 2008, 02:25 AM)

It's a standard Intel GMA 900. Not the state of art, but quite a decent solution for such a small machine. It doesn't have hardware T&L or vertex shader but, hey, it it's good Quake 3, it's good enough! Really, lots of games run surpraising well.

My take is that they made the screen just a bit too small, who needs such large speakers?

The speakers actually are quite small too. It's only their cover that extend to enclose the display. The 7" was choose probably just as a cost compromise.

Like tsaint, I too was surpraised by how well the WiFi works. It keep the connection with my A/P from spots in my house or backyard that I had considered "dead zones", based on the experience with other devices.
The entire machine feel very snappy & responsive: at times you don't really expect such a speed for a machine so tiny, so it's a nice surprise.
It's also a very versatile & hackable (in the good way) device.

Bye!

[Mark0]

Seems that the eee PC can withstand a fair amount of tortures!

Check this french video: DailyMotion - Tests résistance (Chocs, chaleur, froid)

1 hour run at 40c, and then also outdoor at about 0c.
Drop from chair height, from 1 meter, and from a table.
On moquette and hard floor. Closed and also with the screen open!

Hard Drive? Thanks, but no thanks!

Bye!

[nudone]

anyone planning in getting the 9" screen version when it comes out. i was undecided about getting one of the current 7" screen version but i think the 9" one is a no brainer.

(those touch screen mods look pretty tempting also.)

[johnk]

anyone planning in getting the 9" screen version when it comes out. i was undecided about getting one of the current 7" screen version but i think the 9" one is a no brainer.

(those touch screen mods look pretty tempting also.)

-nudone (March 07, 2008, 01:17 PM)

Yes -- I've been waiting for "version 2" ever since the first eee was released.  At the time I thought "all this needs is a slightly bigger screen and XP installed and I have my perfect portable".  And it looks as if I'll get my wish in a few months...

However the first eee has been such a success that the market should be overflowing with me-too products any day now, so there's always the outside chance that someone else will come up with something better. Otherwise I'll be first in the queue for the new eee.

[Dormouse]

Yes -- I've been waiting for "version 2" ever since the first eee was released. 

 the market should be overflowing with me-too products any day now, so there's always the outside chance that someone else will come up with something better.

-johnk (March 13, 2008, 06:37 PM)

Eee 901 about to be on sale. And lots of me-too products announced.

I'm really tempted by the idea (in my mind), but I'm not so sure about the actual products. If I am out and about, I'm not likely to want to use it for a long time on any one occasion, but will want to check things and write things quickly. This means that I want:-

• Instant startup (rather like the old Amiga/Atari ST)
  
• Reasonable size screen (ie quite a bit bigger than a PDA) - all these seem to have a big enough screen
  
• Ability to read common document and image formats
  
• A text editor/WP
  
• A keyboard where proper typing is possible
  
• Reasonable communications (ability to network + usb port quite sufficient)
• Cheap (announced price ranges OK)
  

Lots of other stuff would be nice but not essential. Touch screen would be good. I don't care about the OS. It seems to me that the things mostly sell on the form factor and the price and otherwise are just the same as other computers. Its the bootup and load times that are critical for me. I suppose I could cope with 15 seconds; I suppose I could find a small fast loading Linux distro and tweak it for the Eee (though maybe not), but it seems to me that this should really be a simple consumer product that just works - like a mobile phone.

[lanux128]

one year on with more manufacturers throwing their hat in the ring, is there any outstanding models? i know lenovo's ideapad is getting rave reviews. just wondering, how many in the DC community have adopted netbooks?

[4wd]

one year on with more manufacturers throwing their hat in the ring, is there any outstanding models? i know lenovo's ideapad is getting rave reviews. just wondering, how many in the DC community have adopted netbooks?

-lanux128 (January 07, 2009, 08:34 PM)

I picked up an Acer Aspire One, (AOA110 8GB SSD Linpus), for AU$320 after a AU$60 MIR - it will go on my forthcoming Sth America/Antarctic/Turkey/Hong Kong jaunt and keep me sane.

Added 1GB for a total of 1.5GB and installed a much nlitened XP Pro, installed EWF to speed it up, (the supplied SSD is rather shockingly slow), and I have to say I'm rather impressed.  Runs Delta Force Land Warrior and Task Force Dagger rather well.  I think I'll do it a favour and pick up a 1.8" HDD in Hong Kong while I'm there

It won't replace the P4 laptop I drag over to the UK for 3 months every 2-3 years, (mainly because I record a lot of TV shows on it), but for 'throw in the car' use in conjunction with my GPS it'll be good - lots better than a PDA.

[TucknDar]

I've got one. An Eee 901 with Linux, although I replaced the default Xandros distro with Crunchbang Linux. Very happy with it. Battery time is great, even if not as great as with Windows, unfortunately. Still, I'm getting about 5-6 hours out of it.

[cranioscopical]

Just bought someone an ASUS 1000HA
It has XP on it, 1GB RAM, 160GB HD, 10" Screen
3 USB ports and external monitor support.
I expected it to be rather slow and under-performing (but okay for the recipient who is an XP user).

I'm impressed. It's snappy.  XP runs on it just fine, thank you.
Plenty of free HD space.  Runs 'grown-up', graphical office software.
I might not want to try too many games on it

It's a whole lot closer to a real laptop that I'd expected.
FWIW, the recipient is a world-class typist and hit 140+ wpm on the cut-down keyboard within half an hour of setting up the machine. I mention this because so many other, smaller devices seem to be a triumph of form over function.

I'm perversely tempted to buy another for myself, just because it's a neat little machine.
Were I to do so, I'd probably wait for the new tablet version(s) to appear in local stores.

[4wd]

I'm perversely tempted to buy another for myself, just because it's a neat little machine.
Were I to do so, I'd probably wait for the new tablet version(s) to appear in local stores.

-cranioscopical (January 08, 2009, 01:14 PM)

If I were going to buy one again I would wait to see what the new Intel chipset designed to compliment the Atom is capable of, (since the current 9xx based solutions aren't optimised for it), if it had a X3100 or X4500 based GPU I'd be sorely tempted.

nVidia are bringing out a chipset for netbooks, (even though I wouldn't buy another desktop nVidia chipset based PC).

Also, AMD are bringing out the "Athlon" again, revamped for low power devices but true dual core, maybe with integrated GPU ala the Geode.