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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)?
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?
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Not sure why you wouldn't get an Inspiron 1545.
Because it's a pain to haul around. Full-size laptops suck batteries. They're heavy and clumsy. A 15-inch laptop seems like a good idea until you lug it around for three or four hours and then sit down in seat 4B on a CRJ. You can't even get a full-size laptop open on your typical crappy airline seat these days.
Netbooks are great for portability, but their screen size is too small and the squished keyboards suck.
The advantage of the 11.6 form factor is that it gives you near-netbook portability, but it's big enough for serious work and there's enough space for normal-size keys.
I have an Acer 1410 in that size. It's great. It makes my 13-inch Macbook feel like a whale. I much prefer it for traveling. In fact, I prefer it, period.