First Full Review of New Asus Eee PC 900

An anonymous reader writes "After months of rumors, the new 8.9in screen Eee PC is out in the open and the first review is online. As well as the larger screen you get 1GB RAM, 20GB Storage and a multi-touch touchpad. It costs more than the old Eee PC, but it definitely sounds like it's worth the extra cash." I always thought the appeal of the original was the ridiculously low price, coupled with the ease of hacking. Not sure if the sequel will meet that challenge.

Comments

Battery life is a major downside

[elrous0]

A less-than-2-hour battery life is a huge problem for a machine touting itself as an ultra-portable. Everything else on these new models are pretty much spot-on. But a short battery life sort of defeats the purpose, methinks, unless their slogan is "Take it anywhere, just not too far from an outlet."

Re:Battery life is a major downside

[caseih]

I figured some fanboy would scream foul and try to call me on my credentials.

Of course all evidence is anecdotal, even your acer story. I know what I'm talking about as much as you do.

So, umm, yes. I really do use Linux. I am a Linux system administrator and developer. I last touched windows on anything I owned over 10 years ago. I don't consider myself an evangelist, but I do promote linux as much as possible and our organization runs its server room 100% on linux and has for years. In short, Linux kicks butt.

Here's the deal. I've wanted to replace my PowerBook 12" for a couple of years now, so I've looked at the options. I'd prefer a Linux laptop. Every laptop I've looked at (Thinkpad X61, Dell Latitude D420, etc) all look really good in terms of specifications and do generally run Linux pretty well. But everyone that owns them and runs linux on them puts up with things like suspend to disk instead of suspend to RAM, and abysmal battery life, like 4 hours on the biggest batteries (like 8 or 9 cells). Right now I have a Windows user (XP) with a D420 and the standard battery. He gets 5 hours when aggressive management is turned on. Another user running Linux, on the other hand, hits 3 hours at most. *Every* linux laptop user I know has to fudge with ACPI scripts and things to get the various suspend and hibernate modes to work. This is partly the fault of linux distributions and partly fault of hardware manufacturers.

Running powertop on a laptop is also very revealing. Typical desktop software on linux is not very friendly to power management. Rarely does the CPU enter the lowest power mode on linux (forget the designation).

So do a bit of research and you'll see that what I'm talking about is generally true. Thinks are improving dramatically, but there's a long, long ways to go. Until then, it's really hard to leave my 5 year old PowerBook with OS X.

Phone/computer hybrid

[athloi]

What people like about the Eee is that it does 90% of what a computer does for the price and portability of a cell phone.

Toying with that formula is unwise. Instead, further pare down the bloated Xandros and XP installs so that people can use a 4-8 GB machine.

I thought they were going to install Intel's Atom in the next revision?

Regardless, the Eee is an important step for open source and Linux. See Asus Micro Laptop Brings Linux to the Desktop.

Evangelize

[PinkyDead]

I saw a post the other day pointing out that Asus were not evangelizing Linux - it just happened to be the best O/S for their needs.

Well you could've fooled me. They're doing a better job than those that are doing it deliberately. 20G vs 12G, sweet.

They Didn't get the Weighting Right

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the previous version of the eee and returned it after a few weeks. I bought it to use while traveling and it was functionally fine. But when I tried to use it in my lap (at conferences and on the bus, train, etc.), it had an annoying habit of flopping over onto its back. With the battery in the back undre the the hinge, there is not enough weight under the keyboard. When used at the slightest incline, it flops onto its back (to view the screen well you have to tilt any laptop down a bit when it is resting on your thighs). Hopefully they fixed this problem with the new version. Where did the speakers move to? if they put them up front that might help.

Re:xp?

[edremy]

Something like I have with my digital camera- you plug the battery directly into the charger. Right now the eee charges rather slowly from wall current so when the battery is dead I'm stuck for a while. It would be far easier just to pull a fresh battery from the charger and swap with the dead one.