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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.
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."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
They all seem to have pretty close pricing, for example the HP's 2133:
... anywhere from a $499 system running Linux to a $749 model using Microsoft's Windows Vista Business operating system. The low-end Linux version, which sports a 1GHz CPU and 512MB of RAM--is probably the closest matchup for the Eee. The Vista machine we review here today sits at the top-end with a 1.6GHz CPU and 2GB of RAM. I'm glad to see healthy competition in this market. I know some people are going to hate the non-standard stuff going on with these laptops and there's going to be some dirty tactics to 'lock-in' countries to purchase only a certain brand for schools (*cough* Intel/Microsoft *cough*) but these prices are going to continue to be driven down. Which from $400-$500 is a great price!While it may not be the year of Linux on the desktop, it's certainly the year of Linux on the super freaking tiny notebook that is difficult to type on (yes, I know what a USB keyboard is).
My work here is dung.
If you add a bigger screen, upgrade the processor, double the RAM and quadruple the drive space it cost a bit more. But definitely worth the extra money!
It's a new low for /. when "First!" appears in a story title.
The whole point is that it's so small, hence "ultraportable".
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
It's that thing sailing clear over your head
I do miss the nice tabbed interface, but most of the bundled apps were pretty worthless and those that were actually useful are free downloads anyway.
The one thing I really want is a 2nd battery pack and external charger- the battery life on an eee is pretty maarginal.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I'm 6'5" tall and have big hands. As I type this on my Asus 701 4G I can say I've had no problems with keyboard size. For what I do with the laptop it just works.
Screen isn't too big of an issue either. For sitting in meetings and taking notes it wins hands down compared to other laptops. I wish I had this when I was taking college courses and lugging around that old Dell Inspiron 8000. This thing would have blown that out of the water back then.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
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.
technical writing / development
It would be nice if the apple lawyers got all riled up about it, and it got enough attention that everyone new any company claiming sole rights to something so obvious should be slapped upside the head. Even better would be if this slapping actually took place in court so no one else would have to worry about apple bothering them over something so idiotic.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Thank you, Miss Teen South Carolina.
At 329 pounds, that's about $650.00 bucks. You can get a full-sized laptop with twice the ram, more than 10x the storage, a bigger screen, etc., for under $500.00
Smaller electronics have traditionally cost more even as they offered fewer features (think what you could get in a desktop for $500 these days). Perhaps people balk in this case because this machine has so many features that they simply don't think it is worth more? Wait. . .I personally believe that American kids in such as in Europe and South Africa don't have Linux because they don't have ISOs.
There are XP drivers available for the 2G and 4G models, and given that the hardware has not changed much I am sure they work on the 20G model. As well there is a great user forum dedicated to Xp on the eee PC
all the XP drivers are included on the DVD you get which is also the restore disk for the base linux install.
.. that was a fun chalange.. ended up sticking in an 8gb sd card and maping it to the program files folder
my boss has one of the orginal ones.. and putting xp on it was no issue driver wise.. now cramming XP and office 03 on it for him
but drivers where no issue at all
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
You can get a full-sized laptop with twice the ram, more than 10x the storage, a bigger screen, etc., for under $500.00
I dare say you have completely missed the point of this device. The whole point is that it's not "full-sized".
No, you don't have a regular laptop. At 2lbs, the Eee 700 or 900 is about 2/3 the weight of a Thinkpad X61, about 1/2 the bulk, and about 1/2 the price as well. An X61 is a very small notebook by most peoples standards to begin with. It's already half the weight of the "average" ~5lb notebook, and much smaller than 6-8lb desktop replacement monstrosities. The Eee wins, even at the ~$500 I expect the US release to be priced at, by being a notebook you can literally carry in your (man)purse. Like a lightweight messenger bag.
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.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
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.
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.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
So you bought an eeepc for $300 then spent another $200 for Windows XP?
>> there are dialog windows that run off the screen in Linux apps too.
Of course on Linux you can easily hold the ALT key and drag the window to make the buttons visible. Not possible on windows without third party hacks.
I bought an EEE PC a month ago. Just last week I enabled the expert desktop mode after some fiddling around with a stubborn synaptic(ugh just purge the finicky entries, won't you?). I find it a lot easier to use than my Ubuntu server sitting downstairs(on a 700Mhz Athlon). Is it the speed? No. Ask me where I can set the mouse wheel scroll speed on the Ubunutu machine, and I won't know. Easily found it via the large-size Control Panel equivalent on the EEE.
Initially, I balked at the idea of having Linux run on such a nice piece of hardware, thinking I would switch to Xp instantly. Nope, I will keep it, even after years of frustration trying to use Linux as a workstation before. I'm not running it out of Linux advocacy, I'm running it since it actually freakin' works this time. Actively using google's apps already(gmail, etc), it was a nice little touch to have them linked already on the little frontent.
Sure, I can't quite get gcc running yet to compile downloaded apps, but I'm doing just great everywhere else. Hooking it up to a keyboard, mouse & monitor makes it a nice little workstation.
I bought a $350 laptop (Dell B150) almost three years ago.
Cheap laptops are nothing new, and anyone who bought an eeePC because it was cheap and not because it was small was probably unhappy with it, because even years ago you could get a full-size laptop for that price.
I am working on a project to "liberate" the EeePC so it runs only Free Software as defined by the Free Software Foundation.
Already, most of the bits are there, but need to be patched in to the kernel (e.g. ACPI, "eee.ko", ATL2 ethernet). There is no free wifi driver working yet, but it is actively being worked on as a part of ath5k.
The other main non-free part is the BIOS. Hopefully someday we'll be able to get coreboot running.
My notes, docs, code, etc:
http://www.blagblagblag.org/pub/BLAG/developers/jebba/eee/
git repository of patched kernel:
git://blaggit.blagblagblag.org/linux-freeeee
-Jeff
Sorry, but I've USED Windows CE before.
I know just how terribly unresponsively it performs.
I know how terribly limited the selection of available software is
I know how crippled all the "pocket" apps are.
I know just how completely lacking external hardware drivers (eg. printers) are.
If you need more than something that just barely lets you type basic documents and sync them with your desktop, WinCE is a lame duck.
The HPC form-factor is quite nice, but the realities of using one for any length of time is not so pleasant.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That sounds like and good incentive to encourage people to try out linux, but does that truly reflect the cost of XP? Is XP even worth 8GB of solid state memory?
And wait until people figure out how easy it is in a Eee PC with Linux to NFS mount a drive to their older PCs running Linux with new 500GB drives.
mount 192.168.1.10:/home/movies /movies /home/movies/hackers.mp4 /movies
cp
And if the newer 32GB USB drives are not enough as an adjunct, Seagate has even bigger portable drives. These are like portable DVD players, music juke boxes and PCs all in one.
And... is that allowed by the EULA? (No, I haven't read it)
So say we all
Set it on top of the keyboard and wait for osmosis to kick in?
The Asus Eee PC is obviously much improved, particularly in the areas of screen size and storage capacity. However, this is a very competitive space. The HP 2133 was recently introduced. It also has a 8.9 inch screen, but has the advantage of a 120 GB HDD option (although it uses a VIA CPU). Intel is begining to rollout it's Atom class CPUs for the UMPC market. Based on a 45 NM process, the Atom based devices should offer much improved battery life and better performance. Also, Dell announced that it is throwing it's hat in the ring, and will probably introduce a device in June, maybe with an Atom CPU. Bottom line: if you can sit tight for two more months you'll probably have many more options. http://backpackcomputing.com/ [backpackcomputing.com]
Of course on Linux you can easily hold the ALT key and drag the window to make the buttons visible. Not possible on windows without third party hacks.
Alt+Space,m,[arrow keys].
Simnilar;ly, Iu alseo havce lkatrfge fiungerts, amnd nop troiuyblke tuypinbg omn m,y Eere PCV!@
Not only would a 300GB hard drive make the unit larger and reduce battery time significantly, it would also double the cost of the unit.
For something like the Eee, I think flash is entirely appropriate, and 20GB is a good bunch of storage for a small machine like this.
If you need the 300GB, you could get a USB powered external disk and plug it in to watch your seasons on the go.
Not every product is going to be perfect for everyone, and your claim of trading 512MB RAM for a huge ass hard disk doesn't jive with this product.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I'm fairly fit, in summers, I cycle to work any time it doesn't rain, etc., etc.
:eek:
I hate carrying a heavy laptop around.
My old 8.1 pound monster of an Inspiron 1100?
My old 3.5 pound ThinkPad X21? Nice, very nice indeed... but it could've been lighter.
My old 5.5 pound ThinkPad R51e? Too heavy.
My 4.3 pound ThinkPad X61 Tablet? Could be lighter.
My 4.9 pound iBook G4? Again, could be lighter.
An eee (or something similar) would be GREAT for me to have at work. Something small enough to be pocketable (in a large pocket... but I have those) for running around work, for logging stuff? Perfect.
I live in Japan and have been thinking on getting one of these cool UMPCs. I have been considering a Kohjinsha and the eee, but unfortunately they have serious drawbacks.
The eee is shipped here only with Windows XP, which increases the price enough to no longer be attractive.
On the other hand, the kohjinsha UMPCs are damn sleek pieces of hardware, double as tablets and have a very cool mouse-replacement similar to the Thinkpads (this and the touch screen being the best things of this machine). Unfortunately, the Windows XP model only has 512mb of ram and the mouse-replacement thingy is not as cool as the one in the Vista model, which has the 1gb and Intel A110. But come on, Vista? even if I can replace it on my own with XP, I feel kind of dirty paying for that costly Vista license.
Nope, it's a full on SSD.
Screen: 640 x 240 ... try to run Firefox or Netbeans on that. Something I do with EeePC without problems.
I'd rather not lug an 8lb 17" laptop around with me on the tube everyday. Luckily I have a computer at work, so I don't need to do this. Maybe if you are a salesman, or a consultant that works on client premises, a large screen laptop is good.
But for other uses, casual uses especially, a small, light, chuck-it-in-the-bag device is far more appealing. Oh, it's cheap as well, so it won't be too precious.
Different people have different needs. You clearly need that 17" laptop on the train (if you get a seat, or have the space to open the lid because the seat in front is too close). My 12" iBook is a good size for my mobile needs, but most of what I use a 7" or 9" device would suffice.
I've been reading up a lot on flash drive technology recently, and it's seems that Xandros on the eee has been tuned somewhat to run well on flash (unionfs, run mostly in RAM, etc) to ensure that not to many writes are made to the flash drive. Generally most flash today is NAND based and has 100K write/erase cycles - some embedded-quality industrial flash drives have better ECC, wear levelling and bad block management to go somewhat higher (but you then pay more for the CF or SD card) - so it's important to do this to extend flash drive's lifetime. However the trend is for low-end flash to use MLCs (>1 bit per cell, vs SLCs which have 1 bit per cell) - drives using MLCs typically have even lower flash lifetime (10K write cycles), and the flash drive manufacturers are usually vague on this, particularly the cheaper ones.
The write cycles are across each individual erase block (something like 32 to 128 Kbyte), not per sector/page. Bad block management is critical to 'wear levelling' - as one erase block gets worn out (flagged by ECC) the data is moved across to a new erase block. As long as there are enough good erase blocks and you aren't doing a lot of writes to every part of the drive, there should be enough good blocks around to substitute for bad blocks. There's also work to ensure that if power is lost while multiple pages are written to an erase block, the drive can detect which were written OK - it then reads these and writes them to a new erase block, marking the old erase block as bad. The flash drive has a software Flash Translation Layer (FTL) that hides all this complexity, and the better vendors put more effort into good FTLs.
So... Some care is needed to install another Linux distro, or standard XP, onto the eee - not to get it installed, but to avoid wearing out the eee's flash drives too quickly. There are various flash-optimised Linux distros including Damn Small Linux (DSL, http://damnsmalllinux.org/ Puppy, SLAX, Debian Live (http://debian-live.alioth.debian.org/), etc, which manage to write infrequently to flash by running from a RAM disk (with no swap on flash, or at least reduced 'swappiness' parameter) and using unionfs or aufs to map a RAM drive 'over' the flash drive, allowing writes to be delayed until much later, and thereby minimising number of flash writes. DSL writes only when you shut down, or on demand, and Puppy writes every 30 minutes or so. Generally, Live CD distros are quite easily adapted to run well with flash, whereas hard disk distros do not run well on flash.
Ubuntu for eee looks very nice if you like Ubuntu, but doesn't do any flash optimisation that I could see from its wiki (apart from recommending use of noatime in fstab which is quite basic) - perhaps someone has done this as an add-on though. XP embedded apparently has some tweaks to do the same thing as Linux, but you need to be quite a techie to find and apply the flash optimisations, compared to simply installing Damn Small Linux which is already flash optimised.
There seems to be a lot of confusion on this - a good summary of this from eee perspective is http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=297632. However, some people actually advocate removing unionfs from the eee Xandros setup in order to gain some flexibility, without even mentioning the issue of increased flash wear - see http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:removeunionfs which also suggests use of ext3 which will further increase flash writes (default is to write to log every 5 seconds typically). This is a really bad idea... I would really suggest reading up on this before changing the default setup, which uses unionfs in a similar way to DSL and Puppy Linux to minimise flash writes.
Does anyone know a major distro that runs on the eee and is already flash optimised to minimise writes?