Asus Eee Pc Review 2008

Hot on the heels of my piece about my experiences with the original 7-inch Eee PC , the cheap ultraportable laptop war has escalated. Digitimes is reporting that the Atom-based Eee PC 901 will launch on June third, complete with Bluetooth and "metal alloy" accents, for a price "below $650." Unless they mean significantly lower, that's definitely pushing the definition of cheap.

Meanwhile, Engadget dug up a hands-on Chilean review of the the Eee PC competitor, the 10-inch screen MSI Wind, expected to launch in the US next month. While Google's machine translation leaves a little to be desired, there's no doubt the reviewer was impressed, and it definitely looks good. With a larger screen, likely the same Atom processor as the newest Eee, and an 80GB hard drive, there's little wonder the Wind is considered by many to be an Eee killer. And at a reported price of $549, with XP installed, it's likely to sell for a lot less than the comparable Eee PC.

That's leaving many early Eee adopters to wave goodbye ASUS , and embrace the Wind wholeheartedly, perhaps with good reason. But, call me an Eee fanboy if you wish, I'm still planning to stick with the new Eee PC, for a number of reasons.

First off, is solid-state storage. The Eee has it, while the Wind packs a hard drive. I've dropped my current Eee a few times while it was running, including once when it hit so hard that the attached USB drive bent at a 45 degree angle, and the casing on the drive flew off in about six pieces. The Eee still works fine, as does, amazingly enough, the USB drive, which uses the same type of storage as the Eee. Try doing that with the hard-drive based Wind, and you'll likely lose your data, and have to replace the drive.

Secondly, there's size. Sure, the Wind has a bigger screen, but the same 1024 by 600 resolution as the 9-inch Eee PC. Call me crazy, but for me, a machine with a 9-inch screen has the perfect size to portability ratio. Much bigger than that, and you're running into Averatec's "Thin and Light" territory. I had one of those a few years back. It wasn't bad, but but I like my 7-inch Eee PC a lot more.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I'm likely to stick with the Eee PC because of the user community at Eeeuser.com. The people there have done wonders in overcoming the Eee PC's limitations with smart code, hardware hacking, and endless enthusiasm. I've no doubt they'll do the same with the new Atom-based Eee, and I can't wait to see what they come up with.

Still, I'm hoping the "below $650" price of the Eee PC 901 turns out to more than a few dollars below. And I'm waiting to see battery life comparisons between MSI's Wind and ASUS' darling. The lack of a hard drive, or any moving parts for that matter, should push run time quite a bit higher, as long as ASUS ships the new Eee with the same battery as its original.

My mind isn't made up yet, but lets just say I'm not ready to jump off the ASUS ship just yet, at least until I learn more about both machines. And yeah, that HP Mini-Note doesn't look half bad either.

Credit:http://www.extremetech.com By Matt Safford

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That's right, you read correctly. Skype recently released version 2.0 Beta, which adds some support for the Asus Eee PC's webcam, and it actually works. It takes a few tricks, though, so here's how to do it.

1. Download Skye Beta 2.0: Here

2. Open terminal: Tap Ctrl+Alt+T to open the terminal command prompt.
3. Give yourself root access: Type "sudo -i" and then hit Enter for root access.

4. Navigate to My Documents folder: Type cd /home/user/"My Documents"/. Be sure to keep quotes around "My Documents." This will navigate your command prompt to the My Documents folder.

5. Install Skype: Type "sudo dpkg -I skype-debian_2.0.0.27-1_i386.deb" at the terminal command prompt. If the file name has changed, be sure to adjust the file name in the terminal.


6. Turn on the webcam: Type "sudo echo 1 > /proc/acpi/asus/camera."
7. Test the webcam: Open up Skype options and click Video Devices. The webcam should turn on.

8. Turn off the webcam: After you're done, turn off the webcam. Do this by typing "sudo echo 0 > /proc/acpi/asus/camera."

Credit:http://www.laptopmag.com

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We're not huge fans of the tabs in Easy mode that say such boring things as Internet or Play. So we decided to switch them up to say Interwebs and Gaming. Feel free to go a little wilder than we did. Here's how.

Credit:http://www.laptopmag.com

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The Best Tip Yet
We have to admit, this is by far the best tip we've found. It completely switches up the Asus Eee PC into a machine that's much more familiar, with a full desktop that you can change the wallpaper in, a start menu, and all the customization options of Linux. Best of all, you can switch back to Easy Mode any time you like by selecting it from the Start menu and rebooting the computer. We absolutely love this tip and think that this is where the true potential of the Asus Eee PC comes into play. Enough of the man-on-computer loving, let's get to work.




















1. Open terminal: Tap Ctrl+Alt+T to open the terminal command prompt.


2. Give yourself root access: Type "sudo -i" in terminal, and then hit Enter.

3. Update Aptitude: Type "apt-get update" to update your software.


4. Install KSMServer and Kicker: Type "apt-get install ksmserver kicker." This will download both of the needed applications.


5. Restart Eee.
Battery ASUS Eee PC <<

Credit:http://www.laptopmag.com

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Just gave the Eee PC a few testing runs with backtrack booting from a usb pen drive. Just download the full usb version and follow the installation instructions to create a bootable distro.

The backtrack distro scales pretty fine to the Eee PC resolution but requires a manual interface reset so the monitoring works correctly.

Simply associate the wireless devices by using the following commands:

airmon-ng stop ath0
airmon-ng start wifi0

Note that i will not post any instructions on how to crack encrypted wireless networks or such. If network administration is your profession then take the time to learn and explore with bt3 on your own equiptment and use your knowledge to block off script kiddie pranksters or use up-to-date encryption.

My next goal is to boot bt3 from a 1GB sd card and store it with my Eee PC in case i need it. The current bootable version should fit but regarding prices for flash memory, a 2 GB SD card surely wont hurt your wallet.

Btw. the Eee PC boot menu can be accessed by pressing Escape during the POST screen.

UPDATE:

Backtrack 3 will boot from an SD card as well, installation procedure is the same .

Buy ASUS Eee PC Accessories <<

Credit:blog.robinward.com

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Last week i took some time to add mobile 3G internet connectivity to my Epc using my Nokia e61 as a 3G modem.

My phone supports modem support using the USB data cable, bluetooth or the integrated WI-FI.

I plan to go for the cable first since i always carry one around and being mobile often means draining as less power as possible from both my Epc and my mobile phone.

First of all you need to make sure you have the Debian repositories in your /etc/apt/sources.lst and theninstall wvdial by using the install command apt-get install wvdial

After the installation you will need to modify your /etc/wvdial.conf in order to build up the internet connection.

This is just a basic example but it should work with the current Nokia phones:

[Dialer Defaults]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Modem Type = USB Modem
Baud = 460800·
New PPPD = yes
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
ISDN = 0
Phone = *99#
Password = blank
Username =blank

Select the Suite connection type on your phone when you connect it via the USB cable and then fire up wvdial.

Credit:http://blog.robinward.com

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I love gadgets. I am addicted to them and if I see something I like then I feel a massive urge to immediately go and buy it.

Looking in a recent PC magazine I came across the EeePC by Asus – looking at the pictures I saw something that I had longed for, for some time. A small portable PC, a cheap price tag, seemingly specifically geared up for Internet on the move.

The EeePC is pronounced e-pc – it is meant to stand for three easy points – easy to learn, easy to work and easy to play. I think the original idea was to make something affordable to the many including students and families.

What attracted me to the device was it’s apparent portability. Measuring 225 x 165 x 21 mm this is tiny in comparison to any other laptop. It has a solid state hard drive so pretty rugged in the fact you can knock it and bang it about without damage occurring. With three hours of battery life and a mobile phone sized charger makes it all pretty portable.

Of course as with any relatively new gadget the demand is great and getting hold of one was pretty tough. They come in different colours. My preference was the black one and I guess this was the same for most people as it was completely out of stock. In the end I settled for the blue.

After pressing the power button the wait is minimal. I would say about 20 – 30 seconds. It’s strange as the machine is silent when booting. You kind of expect to hear the hard disks spin and the fan going. Peering into the 7 inch screen is surprisingly easy although I guess it could get annoying depending on what you are trying to achieve. However, so far, for just MSN, email and web browsing it is absolutely fine.

More surprisingly is the keyboard. It is obviously relatively small but it is quite easy to type on. I think after a small amount of adjusting typing should be relatively easy. Ok you would not want to type a full novel on it but for emails, blogging short articles etc – absolutely fine.

Even though it is hard to think of this little gadget like this, this machine is a fully functional PC. This means you can pretty much do anything on it that you could a normal PC. It comes with a Linux based system on it. This is open source and subsequently, with a couple of minor modification, there are literally thousands of free applications that can be run on it. The main screen is easy to navigate round giving you obvious icons such as ‘Internet’ or ‘email’ or ‘messenger’ so you really do not have to be a techie to work your way around. Having said that, if you wanted to, the machine is powerful enough to run XP on it should you require.

With wi-fi built in, connecting to the Internet is easy. A webcam, microphone and speakers allow for easy communication. You also have USB ports as well as a flash memory slot allowing for an addition 32gb of storage on top of the 4gb included within the machine. For me, this means I can take this machine and take it anywhere and where there is not a wireless network to connect to, I can connect via 3G from my data card. This means that I can be in the Internet anywhere without taking, what I now consider, a bulky item such as a laptop. This will even fit in the glove box of your car or in a handbag!

Whilst opening the EeePC will void your warranty – this system is upgradable. There are countless modifications or upgrades that can be done to make your Eeepc unique and super quick. As the software is open source, it can be modified to do pretty much anything you require.

I think this machine is going to be a huge success and pave the way for truly mobile computing. I have just paid £250 ($500 approx) for the 4GB model. There was a 2GB model for £200 and I have heard rumours that Asus have managed to relocate the speakers allowing for a greater screen size on a soon to be released model.
http://www.articlesbase.com/hardware-articles/the-eeepc-mobile-computing-at-a-new-level-393235.html

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