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Asus Budget Ultraportable Notebook Sold Sans OS
EconolineCrush writes "Tired of paying the Windows tax on notebooks? Asus's Eee PC 1201T budget ultraportable comes without a traditional operating system and sells for only $380. The 12-inch system has promising specifications, sporting an Athlon Neo processor, Radeon HD 3200 graphics, Bluetooth, and 802.11n Wi-Fi. It weighs just 3.2lbs with a 6-cell battery and can even handle light gaming duties. However, battery life in Ubuntu is considerably shorter than it is under Windows. Are there any better options for would-be laptop Linux users?"
Didn't they sell for less than that WITH an OS a year ago? Does "netbook" not mean what I think it means (cheap, low power, long battery life, not a desktop replacement)?
It Also Comes Sans Serif.
How well does that built in micro OS really work? Seems like for a lot of folks that might be all the "OS" they really need.
Fuck you for even bringing up the fucking iPad.
Netbooks are passe now that we have iPads. PCs are passe now that we have iPads.
Actually creating something is passe now that we have iPad. Go and consume, consume, consume.
Hi, you must be new. Welcome to the interweb! When you see underlined text on a "web site" you can "click" on the words to get more information. In this case if you clicked on "comes without a traditional operating system" you would have learned that "Asus ships the Eee PC 1201T with only its ExpressGate instant-on OS". Isn't that neat? Have fun!
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
One that's old, stupid, popular and yet used by millions of people.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It means Windows. That's the main headline without saying it outright: this notebook is being sold without Windows.
Any other questions?
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Debian Eee
Gentoo Eee
EasyPeasy
Ubuntu Of course Ubuntu has a Eee flavor of the kernel, I chose to go a full blown Hardy Heron install on my netbook. I was given mine by a friend who was gonna throw it away. I removed the Xandros that was on it and installed Ubuntu and other than a bit of fun hacking around with it, it's quite useless other than using the terminal. Firefox on the web with it is crap, no memory whatsoever so if you have more than 1 tab open it takes forever to do anything. Forget about compiling something while websurfing cause that won't happen. My advice to people thinking about getting these, for the price if you double it, you get a pretty kick ass laptop these days. Go for the laptop, more power, more space, more ram, more CPU, more functional!
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I don't understand why there are no laptops with a small power supply and (barely..) no battery.
95% of my laptop work is close to a socket and to a wifi internet connection. The trouble is that most laptops i used until now do not have a small power adapter. You still have to lug a considerabele power supply.
Battery is useful, but i could live without, and it would shave a small amount of the price and weight. And with a modularised design it could just be an other option.
Expressgate is to traditional OS as Knara is to traditional human being. Expressgate can do simple things, like browse the web, but is incapable of more advanced tasks, similar to how Knara can (apparently) browse the web, but fails at more complex tasks like thinking.
It's a limit imposed by Microsoft. Or at least that was the case when netbooks came with Windows XP, now that they use Windows 7 I don't know if it's still the same. Basically there was a list of specifications the netbook should not exceed if the manufacturer wanted to get Windows at a reduced price. The ones I remember are 1 GB of RAM max and no more than a single CPU core. I think the hard disk capacity and the screen size were limited too.
Mada mada dane.
If lack of RAM is the problem, then install more RAM. I upgraded my Eee 901 to 2GB of RAM and that brought total cost up to $300. It allows me to use RAM for /tmp which makes it not nearly so sluggish. Firefox is still problematic. I think it does a lot of disk writes and that causes unacceptably long freezes on the Eee so I use Chromium (on Ubuntu.)
I don't do compiles and I certainly would not recommend it for a desktop or laptop replacement, but when I travel it meets my needs for browsing, email, loading podasts on my Sansa and occasional word processing and presentations.
On a traditional operating system, you can run a compiler.
Here in Thailand, or at least in Chiang Mai, most of the computers and laptops I've seen come with FreeDOS preinstalled. If you don't want to install an OS yourself (and don''t prefer Freedos ;) you can just leave the new computer to the shop and pick it up with a OS of your choice a few hours later for a dollar or two extra install fee + price of the OS.
. . . is not having to support an OS. I bet they start losing money as soon as the phone rings.
95% of my laptop work is close to a socket and to a wifi internet connection.
A lot of restaurants provide free Wi-Fi but don't have any customer-accessible power outlets. And not everybody requires the Internet all the time; some laptop users (such as myself) can get work done while commuting on a bus, train, or carpool.
Even Asus' Splashtop would have been good.
From the article:
The impression that I get from this Wikipedia article is that Splashtop and ExpressGate are one and the same.
My Eee PC 1005HA has a very small brick. It's a little wider and taller bigger than a Zone candy bar and about as long. It also has very long battery life. The only problem (as mentioned below) is that it gets really hot (~7 Amps), probably because of the small surface area.
The government can't save you.
But the fact that this is rarely the case for any Linux-based desktop system tells me why power-saving and other (usually audio) features don't work well.
Its interesting that most of the (few) brands that work well with a distro like Ubuntu off the shelf also tend to be companies that offer certain models with Linux pre-installed. They're not like Dell, who will design a prototype from available components, then go to the component OEMs and say "We're making 2 million of this new system, but some of your chips come with standard features we'd rather leave out or fudge in software... chop that stuff off your chips and drop your price if you want our business".
Of course, the Linux drivers tend to be written for the OEM originals with their standard features intact, not the funky special-request variations made by Dell, Acer, etc. for their budget models.
What this translates into is that Johnny is perplexed as to why Linux has poor "PC compatibility".
Someone (that means us) needs to start insisting on systems that were designed with Linux or preferably a popular landmark distro like Ubuntu in mind. And we need to stop setting our friends and colleagues up for failed experiments when handing them discs expecting they can just run it on their PCs; It reflects badly on our judgment as individuals and on free open source software in general.
Instead of big Linux e.g Ubuntu etc, try a smaller Linux such as Puppy, http://www.puppylinux.com/ Approximately 100MB and fast.
It unfortunately tries (unsuccessfully) to perform throttling based upon load rather than having discrete under/overclocking modes as the proprietary Catalyst driver does. The result of which is that the GPU always draws excessive amounts of power even when running off the battery. The only real solution at this point is to swap out the open source driver for the ATI proprietary one and then use the "aticonfig" utility to set the power state according to your need at the time. Other non-GPU optimizations can be done as well, however, the power wasting the GPU is doing with the xf86 drivers is an order of magnitude greater.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I may have something similar, an eee 900a with 1Mb RAM and 4Gb ssd. The problem is that not only is 4Gb too small, but it's a very slow ssd, worse than any hard drive. I spend about $50 to replace it with a much faster 16Gb, and installed Ubuntu NBR. It's now quite reasonable for web surfing. Flash movies are slow, but watching video with mplayer or vlc, even full-screen, is fine. It's great for traveling, as it fits in a small shoe bag and gets 3-4 hours battery life.
if it doesn't have an OS, how do I denigrate its existence?
signed, /.
cheap cellular access
I happen not to live in such a country. Instead, I live in the United States, where "3G" is how much one would have to spend over the course of four years for mobile broadband service at $60 per month, capped at 5 GB per month. (Right now, my Virgin Mobile phone bill is $80 per year.) Business managers can justify the expense, but I can't, especially when I have to pay another $60 per month for cable Internet at home.
http://www1.ca.dell.com/ca/en/home/Laptops/laptop-inspiron-1545/pd.aspx?refid=laptop-inspiron-1545&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1&ref=lthp
Not sure why you wouldn't get an Inspiron 1545. Full XP Driver support, runs Ubuntu or Fedora, or heaven forbid, comes with Windows 7.
4GB ram, 2.2Ghz dual core, and a 320GB drive for $500, and the 15.6" screen is a WHITE LED backlight.
The features and prices of that model have been increasing since January 2009, while the price has been the same or lower. Go Dell!
The article linked showed battery life using different models of the Eee. Maybe I'm blind, but I did not see ANY listings of battery life under different OS. I know that UNR 9.10 does not get the battery life of ASUS' remix of Gentoo that came with my Eee 901, but the added functionality is more than worth it. I would assume the bloat of Windows 7 would also eat more juice -- or be handicapped, the way the version of XP that came with some 701 and 901s was. I will be upgrading my Eee soon to UNE 10.04 (Ubuntu changed the name, from Remix to Edition).
It's actually both:
http://www.itexaminer.com/microsoft-adds-to-atoms-restrictions.aspx
Mada mada dane.
But you fail to see the point. The phrase "without a traditional operating system" is very different than "without the traditional operating system."
You seem to have a problem with understanding that I can see your point, understand your logic, and yet still disagree. If I'm in a one-car-family and I get ready to go to the store and someone calls after me "are you taking a bus to the store?" I could answer "No, I'm taking a car." This word usage distinguishes one method of transport from another without regard to whether there is "a" car or "the" car. The same is happening here. For whatever reason, they decided to distinguish between "traditional OS" and "non traditional OS" without regard to the fact that there's really only one "traditional OS." Apparently, you disagree with that choice. And, for whatever reason, you have determined that your opinion as to their construct being incorrect is not an opinion, but fact, such that anyone not agreeing with you must be because they "just don't understand." I understand and disagree. From the other responses, they understand and disagree as well. Your personal opinion on their wording is not fact. Even if technically incorrect, it is not ambiguous to most people. And, you've had it explicitly explained to you and you state you understand what they meant (thus it was not ambiguous to you either) but that you disagreed with their wording.
I'm curious as to why they even bothered to say anything but "without Windows" when they clearly meant "without Windows".
I'm curious whether you realize you are a troll. You posted a question that you obviously thought would gather responses, then disagreed with all those who responded. You didn't ask a question to get an answer, but instead asked a question to get responses and attack those who do respond. That meets the definition of a troll. Perhaps, next time you could just state your opinion, rather than questions that look contrived to convince people that your opinion is a correct fact. "I think their wording is bad." There, was that so hard?
Learn to love Alaska
That's true, especially in this economy. Find the company that gets all the now-useless hardware from companies that have outsourced their IT. Hardware up to three years old, but still good by today's standards.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Readyboost helps but is not a pancea. It certainly helps with smaller accesses (low latency) but fails at larger ones (low bandwidth.) That said, I run Readyboost on all my Vista machines and it definately helps, even on the machines with 4GB. But it's not a full-fledged substitute for more RAM.