Asus Eee PC thoughts
Basics: UMPC with 7" screen. underclocked 900MHz Celeron M processor.
Price: ?220.
Connectivity: Wifi, 3xUSB2.0, MMC/SDRAM card-reader, 0.3mp webcam, microphone, headphone socket, good stereo speakers either side of the screen, VGA-out.
I bought the 4G version, which has a wired-in 4GB flash card for storage, and a slotted 512MB SODIMM chip (which I replaced with a 1GB chip for ?13).
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I bought this to replace the Nokia 770 I'd had for a little over two years, and I wasn't impressed by the new Nokia model that's slightly cheaper than the Eee - the new Nokia still cannot do smooth Flash video playback streaming.
Asus went for the cheap fully-capable UMPC form - no crippled operating systems here, it comes installed with Xandros Linux (complete with kid-friendly desktop), and you can install Windows XP over it if you fancy.
The "Easy Desktop" was a little too simple for my liking, so I installed the "Full Desktop" package which gave me something much more familiar to use.
You'll find all your standard Linux programs preinstalled - Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, etc. Firefox has the latest Flash pre-installed, so YouTube and BBC iPlayer playback is supported and playback is smooth - although I can't seem to get full-screen Flash playback working.
There's also an mplayer plugin installed in Firefox so you've got a one-touch interface to all networked media files. The standalone mplayer program is also installed, and seemed to support more file than the plugin. The plugin seemed to fill up /tmp and stall the system every now and then, so I installed mozplugger, removed the mplayer plugin, and configured Firefox using Mozplugger to use the standalone mplayer to stream online video files instead and that works perfectly.
Amarok is installed, and I use that to play back my online MP3 playlists without serious problems (a few warning windows come up which imply it's not quite properly configured for that use, but it'll do). I'm open to suggestions for alternative MP3 players which handle playlists as URLs from the command line.
So, that's all my internet and media handled. An ssh and VNC (krdc) client is pre-installed, so I can still work on my projects on my "real" machines from all over the house.
The keyboard is expectedly small, and reminds me of the Speccy+ keyboard, and the touch-slidey-mouse thing can be configured to be as sensitive as you like.
As it's a fully-featured Linux box, I also installed gcc et al and compiled up Fuse. Fuse playback is pretty damn perfect when played at 2x2 (although I'm missing a few rows of pixels at the bottom of the border area when I do that) and Fuse sound playback is perfect. Chase HQ is a great game to test that as some emulators and Linux setups can't playback the sampled speech properly, but Fuse on Eee is flawless.
As for the battery. With the screen at full brightness, wifi used constantly and sound played constantly, a full charge lasts about 2.5 hours. But as you can use it with the charger whilst charging up the battery, I usually use it with it plugged in.
All this for ?220... The MacAir looks very overpriced now - how much power do you need?
If you're OK with the UMPC form-factor, then you'll love the Eee. UMPCs are no longer a laughing matter, and you'll see many more of them during 2008.
Price: ?220.
Connectivity: Wifi, 3xUSB2.0, MMC/SDRAM card-reader, 0.3mp webcam, microphone, headphone socket, good stereo speakers either side of the screen, VGA-out.
I bought the 4G version, which has a wired-in 4GB flash card for storage, and a slotted 512MB SODIMM chip (which I replaced with a 1GB chip for ?13).
==========
I bought this to replace the Nokia 770 I'd had for a little over two years, and I wasn't impressed by the new Nokia model that's slightly cheaper than the Eee - the new Nokia still cannot do smooth Flash video playback streaming.
Asus went for the cheap fully-capable UMPC form - no crippled operating systems here, it comes installed with Xandros Linux (complete with kid-friendly desktop), and you can install Windows XP over it if you fancy.
The "Easy Desktop" was a little too simple for my liking, so I installed the "Full Desktop" package which gave me something much more familiar to use.
You'll find all your standard Linux programs preinstalled - Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, etc. Firefox has the latest Flash pre-installed, so YouTube and BBC iPlayer playback is supported and playback is smooth - although I can't seem to get full-screen Flash playback working.
There's also an mplayer plugin installed in Firefox so you've got a one-touch interface to all networked media files. The standalone mplayer program is also installed, and seemed to support more file than the plugin. The plugin seemed to fill up /tmp and stall the system every now and then, so I installed mozplugger, removed the mplayer plugin, and configured Firefox using Mozplugger to use the standalone mplayer to stream online video files instead and that works perfectly.
Amarok is installed, and I use that to play back my online MP3 playlists without serious problems (a few warning windows come up which imply it's not quite properly configured for that use, but it'll do). I'm open to suggestions for alternative MP3 players which handle playlists as URLs from the command line.
So, that's all my internet and media handled. An ssh and VNC (krdc) client is pre-installed, so I can still work on my projects on my "real" machines from all over the house.
The keyboard is expectedly small, and reminds me of the Speccy+ keyboard, and the touch-slidey-mouse thing can be configured to be as sensitive as you like.
As it's a fully-featured Linux box, I also installed gcc et al and compiled up Fuse. Fuse playback is pretty damn perfect when played at 2x2 (although I'm missing a few rows of pixels at the bottom of the border area when I do that) and Fuse sound playback is perfect. Chase HQ is a great game to test that as some emulators and Linux setups can't playback the sampled speech properly, but Fuse on Eee is flawless.
As for the battery. With the screen at full brightness, wifi used constantly and sound played constantly, a full charge lasts about 2.5 hours. But as you can use it with the charger whilst charging up the battery, I usually use it with it plugged in.
All this for ?220... The MacAir looks very overpriced now - how much power do you need?
If you're OK with the UMPC form-factor, then you'll love the Eee. UMPCs are no longer a laughing matter, and you'll see many more of them during 2008.
Post edited by NickH on
Comments
I think the black one is not too bad looking However, I dont like all that black surrounding the screen on either of them but especialy the white one. It makes it too obvious that they have cut back on the screen.
My only complaint with it would have to bee the screen size. For 10" Screen version would worth paying a little extra. I think those extra 3 inches would make all the difference.
That's what Miles' girlfriend said too.
What ?? Does Miles know your sleeping with her? or does he join in too.
Always wanted a mini PC !!
What are the dimensions, out of interest?
Necros.
Just VGA, but if you can find something USB-ish you might be in luck.
Ish. The black bits left and right of the screen are the stereo speakers, and the top bit houses the webcam.
Yep, hence my note about form-factor desirability.
Read it on her blog.
But I'm sorely tempted nevertheless. Is anyone flogging the 8G in the UK yet? What's he best price?
Would it be possible to mod fuse to fit the full 192 pixels in, seems to me you have 16 pixels to spare?
I know that Fuse can do fullscreen when using SDL - ideally this would also support bog-standard X11 which is what the Eee default desktops use.
What version of Fuse did you install? if it was the latest 0.9.0 version how did you install it?
The instructions on the eee wiki site only cover an older version of Fuse and require alterations to the source code (eeeeeek! from this linux noob).
http://www.umpcportal.com/products/product.php?id=122
Pricey but very happy with it. At the moment it reminds me of PC's back in the mid 90's, wait a few months and the prices come down big time but you have to get one at some point
It comes with a slipon cover to protect it getting scuffed, should be ok unless you stick it between heavy hardbacks.
0.8.0.1 - although the instructions on the Eee website missed out the zlib install, so right now I can't playback RZX files. Will recompile it again soon.
fuse --graphics-filter 2x Chase\ HQ.tap
...presumably because the Fuse window in 2x mode is higher than the 800x480 screen the Eee uses, and Fuse checks against that maybe? Manually doubling the size works, though.
You've just summed up one of the biggest reasons why people don't take up Linux.
Thanks for the info, but I have some more questions:
Can the "hard drive" be compressed, as Win XP allows, to give potentially more storage space? I'd imagine that something like this for Linux would exist, although you'd probably have to partition the drive first so that the boot "drive" (partition) was uncompressed, for safety's sake. Even if you didn;t hav to, I still would leave the boot partition uncompressed, for peace of mind.
Can the USB port work like a Windows PC port? Probably a stupid question, as no doubt they do, but I want to make sure that I can use my pen drive (well, SD card and connector) to transfer stuff from my PC to the Eee PC if I get one, and vice versa.
What's the screens quality like regarding ghosting (moving characters and the mouse pointer) and for viewing photos?
What's it like moving the mouse pointer?
Does it have a sleep mode? Although since this would probably need x amount of space on the hard drive (x - memory space + misc space for registers etc) it's probably not too practical.
Can you augment the hard drive size with SD cards or anything? Are there ports for storage add on?
Have you tried any games on it, like Duke Nukem (the Linux build, from http://www.jonof.id.au/index.php?p=downloads&cat=1 ), or Unreal Tournament, or anything?
Can you post up some pictures of the Eee PC, please? Preferably also showing the dimensions of it by placing it next to a ruler, to show how large it is (cue Mel's first post in this topic).
Psj3809, that is really nice. Does it really have 30GB of solid state (not a conventional hard drive) storage?
Ah! That would be bad in my case, as my ruck sack (I used to be a student...) is always half full.
I'd like to know the answer to these two, too. Although that WinXP does look very tempting, except for the price :evil: Why aren't agency workers paid (much much) better?
Is it difficult to compile stuff for use under Linux? Do you need knowledge of the actual language, or can you just download the source file(s) and compile them by clicking on the same few compiler options?
And damn! I thought you'd died horribly ( http://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/showthread.php?t=18828 ). Oh well, next time.
I have no problems with the screen - no pics available as I've recently moved house and my camera is in a box "somewhere".
You can reformat the flash card any way you like - It's just a computer after all. Moving the mouse pointer is easy - you just need to configure the touchpad sensitivity to your taste and you're away.
Thx, so how would you install zlib?
Standard Linux install:
* Download *.tar.gz file from Zlib website (found via Google)
* Uncompress using "tar zxvf <filename>" - this will create a subdirectory in most cases, so change directory to that.
* Run "./configure"
* "make"
* "sudo make install"
...assuming it compiles OK.
And now the 2x graphics filter works, too!
Do you still need to make the same alteration to the source code for Fuse 0.9.0?
Nope, just compile'n'go.
Or would you need version to run with Linux.
Thanks
Managed to get Fuse up and running on my eee pc, Manic Miner playing in the back ground...cool!
I've configured Firefox to launch Fuse double-screen whenever it download a *.rzx file from the RZX Archive - that really is quite cool to have going in the background whilst watching TV.
The Eee's VGA-out produces a 1280x1024 desktop :-O It's so responsive
that with a plugged in USB keyboard and mouse and ethernet it's very
usable as a work machine - using Firefox (2 windows, 6 active tabs),
Thunderbird, Realplayer streaming MP3s and a few console windows, CPU
usage tops out at 15%, and memory usage at ~440MB.
The Eee is surprisingly powerful...
I'm now trying to get the company to buy me another one of these to
use as a thin client to my work machine so the work machine can be
moved into another room as it's so noisy.
And so want a GP2X
Sigh...
Do you get sound glitches when the emulator speed drops from a 100%?
I wonder if I fucked up when installing the developing tools so I could compile FUSE.
Doesn't seems to effect music playback or videos tough.