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Just What is this ASUS Eee Thing Anyway?
davidmwilliams writes "ASUS have released a cheap subnotebook. It is far from state-of-the-art tech-wise, with 512Mb RAM and a Celeron processor. It has a 4Gb hard drive and no optical drive. Its screen is 7" and runs at the odd resolution of 800x480 and the operating system looks like something Fisher Price might have designed. Why would you buy it? What on earth can you do with this?" I've been wondering this myself given the huge coverage in the media of this thing.
There are at least two hardware modifications aka moddings for the ASUS Eee PC mentioned at Repair4Laptop. One explains how to add an internal USB Bluetooth port to the sub-notebook without affecting the built-in wireless or using the empty mini PCIe card slot. The other describes how to install an internal 3G Card.
It's hard to type on if you're used to regular sized keyboards, but it gets the job done. Three hours of battery life isn't that great considering the OLPC gets about 12, and better protected from the environment too. ftfa: "It's endless world of hardware modifications that smart people worldwide have embraced" Um.. what the hell is that supposed to mean?
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The Eee PC uses unionfs to merge together two partitions: sda1 (/mnt-system, 2.3GB, read-only) and sda2 (/mnt-user, 1.4GB, read-write)
There is a grub boot option "Restore Factory Settings" which wipes the user part.
Deleting installed applications doesn't free up any space - it just marks them as deleted on the user partition.
Having actually used one, I can say, it rocks. Ok so I wouldn't like to use it as a main machine (not what it was designed for) but if you are an avid note taker, or like to have internet on the run it is all you could want. It is *exceptionally* light, even compared to the JVC mini note range that I look after every day.
Also, its pretty much instant on. So your not hanging round for things to happen. It's ideal to check mail, a few letters whilst in the wifi coffee shop. Its an ideal meeting toy I suppose.
Also a massive advantage of this for linux is that a) A linux company is getting paid to put an OS on hardware and secondly, the hardware and software fit well together, they were designed too.
As for the interface, hell its good. It's simple and quick. What more could you need. If you want more advanced options, turn on the advanced options, its not hard.
The really mad thing? It's not linux peeps buying it, its average shoppers and gadget freaks. Its providing an inroad to the masses that standard linux cannot because of the variety of hardware it must work on.
Put another way, in the uk, you cannot buy one for love nor money at the moment, and probably not until mid April will there be sufficient stocks.
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
Believe it or not, the "huge media coverage" that I've noticed of this thing has only been on Slashdot. Other than that, it's a big name manufacturer, in our world it's huge news.
Really? I just saw it in one of the big Dutch newspapers Saturday:
http://www.parool.nl/media/2007/DEC/122907-eeepc.html
Looking at Google News shows it in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Independent, the New Zealand Herald, and so on. Googling for specific newspapers shows articles in the Washington Post, New York Times, the Sun, and so on. It's referenced in an article in the Wall Street Journal. This is all outside of the IT press, mind you!
Since another article claimed we had forgotten about it, Google Trends claims the eee have surpassed ThinkPad, and close to but not still on par with MacBook. If we look at Google News instead, the advantage over ThinkPad is even greater, and even "asus eee" has have more than three times the number of hits than ThinkPad, and half the hits of the MacBook.
I'd consider a position between two of the most recognized brands pretty good.
On the other hands, if we were to believe Internet statistics, Ron Paul would be elected president with the greatest margin in the history of the country.
I've had one of these for nearly two months now. It runs Ubuntu Gutsy just fine, with all your favourite apps. I'm typing this comment on it, in fact.
It has everything a laptop should (except a CDROM), and plays music, browses the web, runs OpenOffice, etc. It's not helpful to think of it as a "cut-down" or "toy" machine. It's really a pretty standard PC. It generally feels very fast and responsive, perhaps because all the storage is solid state.
It even runs Compiz-fusion flawlessly.
I've been using it over the last couple off weeks as my main machine. My only complaint is that the screen res is low and up-arrow key and right-shift key are too close together, and they have a similar symbol on them.
"Can't do a middle button emulation click with the rocker style mouse button."
Tap the touchpad with two separated fingers.