Asus Eee Pc Review 2008

Overclocking the Asus Eee PC with EeeCTL

2008-08-30T00:31:00.000-07:00

Scalegamer has a straightforward piece on overclocking your Asus Eee PC with EeeCTL. EeeCTL features fan control, temperate display, CPU Clock Speed and CPU voltage adjustments.

The article, including download links, can be accessed here.

Installing unsupported applications

2008-08-30T00:19:00.000-07:00

This is actually the second part of Brad Linder's tutorial as posted in Download Squad. It is also the second tutorial on installing program in this blog. The first, Installing Programs on the Asus Eee PC, was posted earlier.

There are three ways to install applications on the Eee PC.You can use the apt-get command in a terminal window.

You can download, uncompress, and install applications manually using a terminal. But it's not user friendly at all.
You can use the Synaptic package manager which is a graphical interface for apt-get.

Brad's tutorial covers the last one, which is actually the recommended method. But before you use the Synaptic package manager you need to enable Full Desktop Mode. (See previous post, Enabling Full Desktop Mode in Asus Eee PC.)

With theSynaptic package manager will see a list of installed applications and a few uninstalled but available ones. You can also add repositories to gain access to other applications, though not all will be be compatible or may require more powerful configurations.

At any rate, just knowing and having access to more software will always come in handy, so check out the complete tutorial here.

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Additional information regarding Xandros (and Debian) repositories is available at the Eeeuser forum. It is highly recommended that readers read the entire Eeeuser article to familiarize themselves with what is compatible and what is not.

Hacking the Eee PC

2008-08-30T00:13:00.000-07:00

From Ars Technica, a good article regarding modding/hacking the Asus Eee PC. Some sample tips -

Virtual desktops

The Eee's small screen makes it difficult to see more than a few things at once, and switching between windows quickly becomes frustrating. Support for virtual desktops is one of the Eee basic model's coolest undocumented features. Out of the box, basic mode has four separate workspaces that you can switch between by holding Ctrl and Alt while pressing the left and right arrow keys. If you hold the shift key too, you can move the active window with you to a different workspace.

The Eee basic mode environment doesn't provide a graphical display of your workspaces, so it can be pretty easy to forget where you have your windows. To get a visual workspace display, you can run the kpager utility from the command line.

GVim and KPager running on the Eee.

You can also add a workspace switcher to the basic mode panel by creating an IceWM preferences file at ~/.icewm/preferences and adding the following lines:

TaskBarShowWorkspaces=1
WorkspaceNames=" 1 ", " 2 ", " 3 ", "

Installing extra IceWM themes

Alternate IceWM window themes can be downloaded from Freshmeat and installed into /usr/share/icewm/themes. Then, to switch between themes, add a theme chooser submenu to the IceWM start menu by adding the following line to ~/.icewm/preferences:

ShowThemesMenu=1

Fixing the fonts

By default, the Eee uses size 10 fonts in most of the programs, which may or may not to be your liking. Unfortunately, there is no central location where you can go to change all the font sizes. You have to configure the font sizes individually for Firefox, GTK, and KDE. To change the default KDE font size, launch the kcontrol utility from the command line, navigate to the Display/Themes/Fonts page, and change the font sizes.

The Eee doesn't come with the GNOME font configuration utility, so you will have to create a custom ~/.gtkrc file to set up a default GTK font. In my .gtkrc file, I also force GTK to omit labels from toolbar buttons in order to save more screen space. This is my ~/.gtkrc file on the Eee:

gtk-font-name = "Sans 8"
gtk-toolbar-style = GTK_TOOLBAR_ICONS

To change the default interface font size in Firefox, you will have to modify the chrome css file, which is located at ~/.mozilla/firefox/*default/chrome/userChrome.css. This is what I put in my userChrome.css file to make the interface use font size 8:

* {
font-family: sans-serif !important;
font-size: 8pt !important;
}

You could probably also customize Thunderbird's default font size with a userChrome.css modification.

You can read the complete article which lists a lot of other tips and info here.

Speeding Up OpenOffice

2008-08-30T00:08:00.000-07:00

Speeding Up OpenOffice

gHack has posted a tip from Zolved on speeding up OpenOffice simply by editing some settings -

Start OpenOffice and click on Tools > Options to go to the configuration window. Click on Memory in the left menu and change the following settings:

* Number of Steps: 30
* Use for Open Office: 128
* Memory per Object: 20
* Number of Objects: 20

Click on Java in the left menu afterwards and uncheck Use a Java Runtime Environment.

Click OK and restart Open Office. It should now run faster.

Credit: http://asuseeehacks.blogspot.com/2008/08/speeding-up-openoffice.html

Open EEE PC To Advanced Mode

2008-08-18T03:39:00.000-07:00

The first thing that should be done on the EeePc is to open Advanced mode which looks much more like a normal Linux OS with the launch button in the bottom right corner and you can change wallpaper etc etc.

Enabling to full desktop mode:
1. You need to open the console window - press ctrl-alt-T
2. Type in the console window: sudo apt-get install kicker ksmserver
3. I had to type step 2 twice
4. You will know when the process is complete because the user prompt at the console will return....

5. Restart your EeePc, it will load up in easy mode still, click the red power option button in the corner of the taskbar on the Eee and you will see a full desktop option.
6. Well done, you now have much more choice over your EeePc :D

Screenshots of the Advance Mode:

Booting In Advanced Mode:
1. Go to Settings ? Personalization
2. Click 'Full Desktop Mode' under Login Mode
3. Reboot your EeePc
4.You should now be in full desktop mode.

One possible problem is that booting directly into Advanced Mode ignores any settings requiring a password to be entered however booting into Easy Mode requires a password if you have selected there to be one.

Either way, it is highly suggested to have a go with the Advanced Mode as it gives much more function and use to the EeePc.

Credit:http://eeehacking.blogspot.com/2008/01/advanced-mode.html

Upgrading Memory on the Eee

2008-08-18T03:31:00.000-07:00

Upgrading Memory on the Eee

I upgraded the memory to 1gb today, that should be enough for the types of Applications and Operating Systems I wish to run.

To upgrade the RAM simply:
1. Take off the VOID sticker, don't worry it doesn't void warranty!
2. Unscrew the plate and take it off
3. Push the 2 hinges at the side of the RAM stick away from it and the RAM stick will pop up.
4. Remove the memory, push in the new RAM stick and then click down.
5. Put the plate and screws back in.

Farewell EeePc

2008-08-18T03:28:00.000-07:00

There has not been no active work on this blog for a few months now, mainly due to University work.

I have since sold the EeePc and brought the HP Mininote 2133, which for me has much better specs and a bigger keyboard.

If you do own a EEE, for maximum performance from the wonderful machine I would suggest:
*If using the default linux operating system, unlock the full adv mode - it is so much better.

*For Windows XP users, make sure you Nlite the install and search for the VGA scaling driver. This makes webpages inparticular look so much better. Don't forget useful applications: Firefox, VLC Player, Skype, LogMeIn to name a few!

*Anyone into computer security, hacking, network testing etc - install Backtrack 3 onto a SD card or removable media. This literally has almost every security tool you could need.

Booting OSWA on Eee PC with SD flash

2008-08-18T03:18:00.000-07:00

These are some notes for making a bootable SD flash card for my Eee PC from the "OSWA Assistant" bootable CD.

A bootable or "live" CD is a popular way of distributing hacking tools. You just put the CD into any computer and boot from it (instead of your normal hard disk). You get a Linux desktop and pointers to a list of common programs. The most famous of these is probably the "Backtrack CD.

Another one for wireless auditing is "OSWA Assistant". I've never used it before, but they were handing out CDs at BlackHat 2008 Vegas.

The computer I want to use for this Asus Eee 2G Surf", a $299 disposable laptop. Everybody should probably have a handful of these around to play with.

The problem with the Eee PC is that it doesn't have a CD-ROM drive, so I can't boot the OSWA CD. However, it does have three USB ports and one SD flash port. The SD port is especially nice for booting. You can get 2-gig SD flash cards for $7; they are hella cheap.

To make a bootable SD card from the CD, I went through the following steps.

Step 1: I copied all the files to the SD card. I first put the SD flash card into my Windows PC which became the "D:" drive. I downloaded the latest oswa-assistant.iso image from the OSWA website, opened it in WinRAR on my Windows PC, and extracted all the files to the "D:" drive. You can use pretty much any tool for extracting the files, I just happened to have WinRAR handy. I didn't even know that WinRAR could extract files from ISOs - I just assumed that is the sort of thing that WinRAR ought to be able to do.

Step 2: I needed to make the flash bootable. Most bootable CDs use a tool called "isolinux" to go through the boot process. There is a sibling tool called "syslinux" for making bootable Linux flash devices, such as USB flash or SD flash. I downloaded the syslinux archive, extracted to "C:\syslinux". I opened a command prompt, went to "C:\syslinux\win32" and ran "syslinux.exe -ma D:" to make the SD card bootable.

Step 3: I had to change the "isolinux" configuration to a "syslinux" one. I renamed the "D:\boot\isolinux" directory to a "D:\boot\syslinux" directory instead. I also had to rename the "isolinux.cfg" file in that directory to "syslinux.cfg".

Step 4: I had to configure the Eee PC to boot from SD, otherwise it will boot from its own hard disk. When the system boots, I hit "F2" to go into the BIOS configuration, and change the boot order so that Removable Devices are at the top of the list.

At this point, the system boots. However, there several problems. First, it complains "You passed an undefined mode number.", which refers to the fact that it doesn't understand something about the text mode screen. Simply hit to continue.

When it reaches "Starting udev hot-plug hardware detection...", it will hang for a while with the message "Starting udev hot-plug hardware detection… udevd-event[2706]: run_program: '/sbin/modprobe' abnormal exit". Don't worry, it will continue on with the boot process after about 5 minutes. It's a bit annoying though. I wish I knew what was failing.

Step 5: There was one fatal error. X Windows hangs looking for an AGP card. The In order to fix this, I had to edit the "D:\boot\syslinux\syslinux.cfg" file and put "noagp" on the second line:
APPEND ramdisk_size=100000 init=/etc/init lang=us apm=power-off vga=791 initrd=minirt.gz nomce loglevel=0 quiet BOOT_IMAGE=oswa noagp

Step 6: Profit!

Credit:http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2008/08/booting-oswa-on-eee-pc-with-sd-flash.html

Hack Your Eee PC Custom Laptop

2008-08-18T02:24:00.000-07:00

With three of the best Eee PC hacks on the net. Build your own custom laptop computers with these simple hacks.
Since the release of the famed Eee PC there has been ample time for enthusiasts to dig deeper inside the machine and as a result, there are a number of useful hacks emerging.

We picked out three of the best hacks that can transform your Eee PC into a top-of-the range-Laptop.
Install Ubuntu
If you’re a Linux user at heart, there is probably going to be time when you want to try out Ubuntu’s familiar desktop.

To do this you will need to download Ubuntu Eee, a community driven derivative of Ubuntu which is specifically designed for Eee Laptops; you must also configure the Eee PC to boot from flash media.
This is probably the hardest part of the process; first you will need a small application which burns ISO images to flash drives. A popular program for doing this is called UNetbootin which is available along with the latest version of Ubuntu Eee installation from the Ubuntu website.
Then you must format the Eee Pc’s SD card using a machine running Ubuntu. This is where it gets a little tricky; you can use the dd command to fix the SD card’s MBR.
dd if=/usr/lib/syslinux/mbr.bin of=[type the correct device path within these brackets]
Next you must erase the existing partitions on the SD card and create a new one that is formatted with FAT32 and set with the bootable flag. A tool called gparted can you help you complete this.
Now all that is left to do is burn the ISO image to the SD card; if you have to manually select the location do so with extreme care because the target drive can be overwritten.
Then boot from SD; hold ‘Escape’ during the startup screen and select ‘USB 2.0 Card Reader SD0’ from the menu.

Once you’re up and running follow the installation process, this may take a while but there are no special setting you must configure. Once the install is complete, your machine should be running Ubuntu with no problems.
Note: 800HighTech can not be held responsible for your actions. This process can cause serious system problems and loss of data, so please proceed with caution.
Hardwire Almost Everything To Your Eee PC
When it comes to modifying the Eee PC, this one we found over at the ivancover.com wiki, surely takes first prize. While a very small percentage of the public would be able to match such hack, it’s amazing to see how much can fit inside this neat little notebook, check out the list of components and pictures below.

USB hubs - 11.20 USD
GPS module - 36.70 USD
Bluetooth - 5.65 USD
SDHC card reader - 6.45 USD
Adata SDHC 8 GB - 74.50 USD
Corsair VoyagerGT 4 GB USB drive - 90.94 USD
Switch + Prototypingboards - 2.66 + 30.10 USD
Intel Wireless adapter - 62.69 USD
Airplay FM transmitter - 14.98 USD
Conexant Modem - 11.89 USD
Crucial 2 GB DDR2 module - 106.62 USD
USB hub

USB hub disassembled and fixed to the motherboard

GPS Antenna disassembled

GPS Antenna fitted in the LED hood

GPS fitted to the motherboard

Bluetooth Adaptor

Bluetooth disassembled and fitted in the LED hood

SD Card Reader

Disassembled card reader

Card reader attached to the motherboard

Flash Drive

Flash drive disassembled

Flash drive attached to the motherboard

Wifi upgrade

New wireless Intel 4965AGN for Mini PCI-express

Wifi disassembled and attached to the motherboard

FM transmitter

FM transmitter disassembled

Antenna attached to the motherboard

Circuit board attached to the motherboard

Modem disassembled

Modem attached to the motherboard

Touch Screen

Remove the LCD and anti-glare filter

Touch screen controller board

The touch screen controller board attached to the motherboard

Overlay the touch screen

Completed touch screen mod

If this mod is way out of your league, read the next Eee PC hack that’s a little less technical but just as practical.
Mod Your Eee PC Without Solder
By fitting a pair of newly installed internal USB ports which connect to the miniPCIe adaptor, you can upgrade your system with a Bluetooth radio and a 16 GB Corsair Flash Voyager drive.

The best part about this hack is that these devices can be removed or changed at anytime because none of the components are soldered to the motherboard.
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Credit:http://blog.800hightech.com/hack-eee-pc-asus-custom-laptop/1888/

Google Reader to work on the EeePC

2008-08-18T02:06:00.000-07:00

One thing I’ve been meaning to blog about but haven’t got round to is my lovely new toy, an Asus EeePC. I bought one partly on a shiny-craving whim, partly because I wanted a genuinely portable computer, and partly because I think the anti-feature-bloat approach that they took with it is something that should be generally encouraged. So I encouraged it, with money.
It’s a really neat little machine, and I’m very, very fond of it - I’ve been using it almost to the complete exclusion of my trusty old ThinkPad, largely from the sheer pleasure of having something that starts up in 25 seconds, shuts down in 12, and doesn’t interrupt what I’m doing every half an hour to nag me about some software update or another.
It does take a little getting used to, however - the keyboard is fine, although I’m still not as quick on it as I am on a regular sized one, and I wonder how well someone who doesn’t have my tiny, childlike fingers would cope. The small screen is also a little odd at first, but by and large works with most things that you need it to - you just need to get used to CTRL-plussing and -minusing a bit more than normal to optimize the font size for the screen. The one site I regularly use that was causing me grief, however, was Google Reader.
The problem essentially is that the main menu (the bit in the upper left with the Home, All Items, etc options) takes up a fixed amount of real-estate, which squeezes the list of your subscriptions - the actual meat and potatoes of the reader - into whatever space is left. Which on the Eee, is precious little. In fact, it only manages to fit in two lines, making it all but useless for looking over your feeds to see what’s new:

Even doing the old CTRL-minus to reduce the text size doesn’t help much - by the time you’ve got a usable number of lines, the text is all but illegible:

The solution, after a bit of monkeying about, turns out to be twofold. Most obviously, F11 gets rid of the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, giving you a fair bit more to play with. The extra help comes from using Greasemonkey, by way of grabbing Lifehacker’s Better GReader extension. This lets you fiddle about with the look of Google Reader - the option you want to use is the Minimalistic skin, which lets you get rid of the top bar on Google Reader by simply tapping W. The combination of these two gives you plenty of real estate to browse your feeds in, even with the normal chunky text size:

You can, of course, give yourself even more to play with by reducing the text size a bit - it’s still legible with one, or even two, reductions. Not a terribly complex or hard-to-figure out fix, but I couldn’t see it noted down anywhere on a cursory google, so I thought I’d put it here in case anybody else was gnashing their teeth over the issue…

Credit:http://www.flashboy.org/blog/?p=295

10 Secrets To Getting Better Tech Support From Asus

2008-07-30T00:32:00.000-07:00

An Asus technician has stepped forward out the shadows to give us the 10 insider tips for getting through and getting better and faster tech support from the computer and computer parts maker. Some things just can't be fixed though, but it's at least to know the soul-crushing math they're using to destroy the customer experience. Considering how bad their tech support is, you're definitely going to need these tips...
Our tipster writes:
If you aren’t aware, Asus makes an estimated 1 in 3 computer main boards sold globally and in addition to their own brand of products also provide system boards to a number of major OEM builders such as HP/Compaq and Dell. In January, AsusTek split into three separate entities – Asus, which deals primarily with Asus-branded PCs and laptops including the wildly popular EEE PC, ‘Pegatron’, which handles the motherboard business (though we keep the Asus brand name on them), and ‘Unihan’, which handles many of the other non-PC related Asus product line. As a result, each entity was suddenly responsible for its own profitability. No biggie, right? Well, as most of your readers know, customer service and support play a key role in the buyer experience. Given that so many products are similar in specification and performance these days, often it’s the after-the-sale support that can mean the difference in long term repeat business and losing a customer.
Not long after the company split, management began obsessing over numbers, and how to make what is normally an accepted expense (customer support) profitable. It was determined that the new company, ‘Pegatron’, would charge the parent company (Asus) for each technical support phone call, email, or live chat session that was received and responded to. While I cannot attest to the actual dollar amount charged for each call, I do know that phone calls generate the most income, followed by live chats, then emails. Ok, you say, no big deal, how does that affect me? Well, that’s what I’m about to show you, with 10 steps anyone can take in an attempt to get the best possible support by circumnavigating the games played with customers to generate revenue.

1. If you need technical support for any Asus product CALL.Do NOT send an email, and use the live support feature at your own risk. A single phone call generates more revenue for the company than a couple of Live Support sessions, and more revenue than half a dozen email responses. As a result, nearly ZERO emphasis is placed on answering them, and emails are often replied to with canned ‘cut and paste’ responses which may not be relevant to your case.

2. Best Times For Calling With Low Hold TimeWhen calling, there are times that give you the best chances to get through with a minimal hold time. Since the support center is based in the Eastern Time Zone, and the best time to call is before 12 noon EST. The very best days to call are Tuesday through Thursday. From Noon-6pm hold times can be somewhat lengthy, as by that time working hours are in play nationwide. At any given time there are only 8-10 staff to take phone calls (yes, we’re grossly understaffed), email queries and answer Live chats. The U.S. office supports all of North America including Canada as well as Western Europe. That translates into a very heavy call volume for a small amount of people.
3. We're stressed, don't take it personallyIf the representative you speak to seems curt, ill tempered, or rude, it’s not on purpose, nor personally directed toward you. All support representatives are instructed to strive for taking 70 calls per day. When you factor in a lunch hour and 2 fifteen minute breaks it leaves 450 minutes in a day. For us to reach our goal, we must be off the phone with you in 6.42 minutes. We aren’t supposed to care that it’s the tenth time you’ve called us (which isn’t toll free), or that you can’t stay on long enough to accurately even describe your issue.
4. Can I take a message?We have recently adopted ‘messaging’ in order to achieve an objective from management that all incoming calls be answered in 60 seconds or less. To that end, we have hired a few people from temp services to answer calls, and when we experience a heavy load, they take your name and number with the promise of a return call. While calls are returned, it may take hours, if not days to get a return call. This serves three hidden purposes. If we message your call, we get paid for taking it even though no support was rendered. When we call you back, we get paid again for making a call. And currently, management has contests running offering cash rewards for most calls handled by a person during the month. Guess what? If we take a message, call you back once or twice, or you yourself call back out of frustration, we may get paid 2 or 3 times before you can speak with someone, all in the name of bonus money.
5. Don't get through? Call back in 10 minutesIf you do get ‘messaged’, you’re better off calling back in 10 or 15 minutes if you have the time. While messages should be returned within 2 hours, it’s often not the case, and generally messaging is done only long enough to clear the incoming call queue, so it’s unlikely you’d be messaged twice in that amount of time. (unless someone is intentionally messaging you, then calling back to generate more revenue and a chance at a nice cash bonus)
6. Write down your case number. Really.When you FINALLY reach someone, you will likely be assigned a case number. This is a good thing, as it will document the nature of the call and enable someone qualified (hopefully, more on that later) to answer your questions. If you already have a case number, please state it when you first begin your conversation, it will give the technician more time to troubleshoot your problem.
7. It's just like in a game, except not funThere are 3 ‘levels’ of tech support. Level 1 technicians primarily answer the phones and generate case numbers. There isn’t much point in trying to go into detail about your problem, as most will have a better grasp of basket weaving than solving PC issues. They will most likely transfer you to our level 2 support, where the fun begins. Many of our representatives are competent enough to handle your questions, but if you EVER question the accuracy of the advice you are getting, you can request to be connected to the top tier of support (Level 3) at ANY time.
8. We have the long-term memory of a snailThe reason you may wish to ask for Level 2 or 3 support immediately is this: Pegatron/Asus offers zero informational training about Asus products – past, present, or future. Typically we are not aware that a new motherboard/router/PDA has hit the street until we start getting calls about it. There is no ‘informational meeting’, no product info cheat sheets, or anything of the sort offered to the support team. Normally, the more senior members are tech-oriented, and stay up to date from home, so your chances improve greatly of getting the help you need by asking for a higher tier. Sadly, even some Level 2 agents are lacking basic skills and cannot help you with BIOS settings, RAID setup, installation of an operating system and so forth, nor will they know offhand the specs of the latest and greatest boards.
9. There is no such thing as a ‘known issue’.Every company that has every produced a physical product has occasionally put out a junk product. We are under direct orders not to confirm ANY problem as a ‘known issue’, EVER. It doesn’t matter if every single model ‘X’ PDA plays ‘Jingle Bells’ every time you turn it on, it’s not a ‘known’ issue and we will not admit to one. If you happen into one of these products that turns out to have ‘known issues’, calling tech support won’t get you anywhere. We will offer to exchange it for an identical product only, which is just as likely to have the same ‘nonexistent’ issue. Since Asus does not sell direct to the public, you won’t be getting a refund either. Sad, but true, so you may wish to browse a few forums and seek outside input before considering any purchase.
10. Merchant refunds and returns are your special friendIf you do have a problem with a new Asus product and are within the return or exchange window offered by your reseller (often 14 to 30 days), don’t waste your time calling us. Simply return the defective product for an exchange or refund. Generally speaking, returning a product to Asus (motherboards in particular), can mean a 2-3 week wait before you see your board returned to you. In addition, it’s likely a refurbished motherboard which likely underwent no extensive testing before being dropped into a Fed Ex box and sent back to you. There is a separate department on the repair floor to handle 2nd and 3rd time returns, and once you’ve reached that level, you r chances of getting a tested board improve marginally. However, these boards won’t be cleaned, and may have thermal paste, grease, smudges, fingerprints, etc on them. It’s no fun to invest $300 in a new top of the line board, only to have an issue with it and get one back that looks like Timmy kicked it down the street for half a mile before putting it in your box. Not fun.
11. BONUS!!!!!If you do weave your way through the Asus maze and find a helpful soul on the other end of the phone, don’t bank on he or she being there if you need them in the future. We have experienced close to 100% turnover in the past year, and those who remain are constantly threatened, both verbally and via email (proof available upon request, Ben) that they will lose their jobs for failure to make objectives. Sad, yes, but painfully true.
Do you have any tips for dealing with Asus, or Asus tech support stories to share? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Credit:http://consumerist.com/5026046/10-secrets-to-getting-better-tech-support-from-asus

Installing Mandriva 2008.1 on the ASUS Eee PC

2008-07-30T00:25:00.000-07:00

The Xandros distribution that comes with the ASUS Eee PC 900 is very simple and a great experience for those new to Linux. For more advanced users, however, it may feel quite confining and limiting. It’s a good distribution considering the target audience of the Eee PC, but installing additional software or a different desktop environment can be quite challenging. There are many distributions that work on the Eee PC besides Xandros, and the ability to boot off of SD cards allows you to keep the default Xandros OS and also boot other distributions. This makes it quite easy to use a whole array of operating systems on the Eee PC if the idea of blowing away the default OS doesn’t sit well....

Out of the many distributions that work on the Eee PC, Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring (or 2008.1) is one that works exceptionally well. It can be installed to the built-in SSD or onto an external SD card. The Eee PC supports the newer SDHC cards which provide larger capacity. For example, a 4GB SDHC card is more than enough to install Mandriva 2008.1, and using the built-in SSD drive for /home, which would share it with the default Xandros install, is more than sufficient.
Because the Eee PC does not come with a built-in CD or DVD drive, you will need an external USB. To begin the install, enter the ASUS Eee PC BIOS and enable all of the hardware devices. This will allow the installer to properly detect all of the hardware. Also make sure that you don’t do the install on battery power; installing to an SDHC easily will take over four hours.
Once the changes have been saved to the BIOS, when the Eee PC boots, press the ESC key and tell it to boot from the external CD or DVD drive. Once the Mandriva installer starts, perform an install as normal. On the Eee PC 900, when you arrive at the step for formatting and partitioning drives, select the advanced options to partition yourself and select the SDHC card; it will most likely be the /dev/sdc device. There will be three devices: /dev/sda would be the first 4GB SSD while /dev/sdb would be the 16GB SSD. On a new SDHC card, you can tell the right device by it being one large FAT partition. Re-partition this to a single partition and mount it as /, or the root partition. Use a journaling filesystem like ext3 or reiserfs.
The only other thing to watch for is to make sure that you do not install GRUB to the system MBR as this would overwrite the boot sector for Xandros. Instead, make sure you install GRUB to the MBR of the media you are installing Mandriva onto, the SDHC card. This will allow you to later set up the BIOS to have the boot order look for the SDHC card first, or you can select it by pressing ESC when the system boots.
Everything else, other than wireless, will be configured correctly for hardware. Wireless will be configured on the first reboot, but you will need to have the Eee PC connected to the Internet via the wired Ethernet port in order to obtain the drivers to configure the wireless network card.
On the first reboot, you’ll note that Mandriva boots much slower than Xandros; this is normal as accessing the SDHC is much slower than the internal SSD but once the system is booted, it will run quite fast and shouldn’t be too slow.
Enter the Mandriva Control Center and be sure to be connected to the Internet to set up the software sources. Remove the original install media and set up a remote source. Next, head to the networking setup; now you can configure the wireless connection since remote sources will have been set up. This is necessary to download the appropriate madwifi packages. You may have to install the various security and bugfix updates first, which include a new kernel and new madwifi packages.
Finally, edit /etc/fstab and make a few changes to minimize the number of writes to the flash memory. Make sure that all of the mounts have the “noatime” option, and you may also use the tmpfs filesystem for things like temporary files and logs. Anything on tmpfs will not persist across reboots, but for a device like the Eee PC, it’s doubtful that you will want to keep log files anyway, so add the following to the end of /etc/fstab:tmpfs /tmp tmpfs noatime 0 0tmpfs /var/log tmpfs noatime 0 0tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs noatime 0 0
One final point to note: Regardless of what distribution you install to an SD or SDHC card, you will not be able to suspend/resume, so ensure you do proper shutdowns. Due to the card reader being on the USB bus, suspend/resume does not, as of yet, work properly because of how the kernel interacts with USB devices. Other than that, everything should work as if you installed to the internal SSD.
Cerdit:http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/wp-trackback.php?p=243

Install extra packages on the ASUS Eee PC

2008-07-30T00:23:00.000-07:00

Installing extra packages on the Asus Eee PC is possible if you want more software than the average user. Vincent Danen explains how to set up Xandros repositories to make it easier to add packages.
————————————————————————————————————–
While the ASUS Eee PC and the Xandros distribution it ships with come with enough software for the average person, some users will eventually want to install other software. The Eee PC does not make this particularly easy, but because it comes with a light Xandros install, it is simple to set up Xandros repositories to provide extra packages to install.
To begin with, open a terminal by pressing CTRL-ALT-t; there is no shortcut icon for the terminal. Once the terminal is open, edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file by executing sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list; vim is also available if you prefer.
When the file is open, navigate to the end of the file and add the following lines to it:deb http://xnv4.xandros.com/xs2.0/upkg-srv2 etch main contrib non-freedeb http://dccamirror.xandros.com/dccri/ dccri-3.0 maindeb http://www.geekconnection.org/ xandros4 maindeb http://download.tuxfamily.org/eeepcrepos/ p701 main etch
Save the file and exit. Next, create the /etc/apt/preferences file and edit it. Because multiple extra repositories have been added, care must be taken that if there are any duplicate versions of the same software, the Xandros-supplied ones will always come first. This is accomplished by using “pinning”, which will indicate to apt which repositories take higher preference than others. Add the following to /etc/apt/preferences:Package: *Pin: origin update.eeepc.asus.comPin-Priority: 950Package: *Pin: originPin-Priority: 925Package: *Pin: origin xnv4.xandros.comPin-Priority: 900Package: *Pin: origin dccamirror.xandros.comPin-Priority: 850Package: *Pin: origin www.geekconnection.orgPin-Priority: 750Package: *Pin: release a=stablePin-Priority: 700Package: *Pin: release a=testingPin-Priority: 650Package: *Pin: release a=unstablePin-Priority: 600
Now use apt to update the repository metadata:$ sudo apt-get update
Once this is done you can use apt to install software that does not come with the default Xandros OS. For instance, to install the text editor joe, use:$ sudo apt-get install joe
Apt also allows you to see what dependencies may be pulled in when you attempt to install packages by performing a dry-run install transaction. This is very good idea to keep from getting a system full of dependencies you did not expect. This can be done by adding the -s argument to the apt-get command:$ sudo apt-get -s install joe
Getting new packages installed onto the ASUS Eee PC is not difficult, and the setup is required only once. From this point forward, any application built for Xandros or third-party applications compiled specifically for the Eee PC are now available. You can also use this to upgrade packages that were previously installed on the Eee PC, by doing:$ sudo apt-get -s dist-upgrade
This will provide a list of available packages to upgrade. Omit the -s option to perform the actual package upgrades.
Credit:http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/opensource/wp-trackback.php?p=244

Eee PC Tips: A crash course in Linux

2008-05-28T23:55:00.000-07:00

So you're an early adopter and you've run out to buy yourself Asus's $400 Eee PC because it seemed like a great price for a fully functional 2 pound computer that's about the size of a typical hardcover book (and far smaller than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows).

But the innovative easy to use interface might get old pretty quickly if you want to do more than surf the web and create letters, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint style presentations for your friends telling them how cool you are because you have an Eee PC while they don't.

Asus includes instructions for loading Windows XP onto the Eee PC, but it requires an external DVD drive, some drive compression, and you know, a copy of Windows XP. Curiously, Asus does not include any instructions for unlocking the built-in potential of Xandros Linux, the operating system that ships with the Eee PC. But as we mentioned in this week's Squadcast, it just takes a little bit of work to unlock this machine's potential.

If you've got a bit of Linux experience under your belt, it's pretty simple to add some programs, enable an advanced desktop, and tweak the Eee PC to your heart's content. But it turns out that even if you're a Linux noob, the learning curve isn't that steep. Here are some of the most useful Eee hacks/tweaks we've discovered in our first half week of playing with it. Thanks to the Eee User community for helping inspire our hacking.

Enabling Full Desktop Mode

Earlier this year, we heard that Asus would be releasing a Linux-based desktop that would compete with the OLPC XO computer. But the Eee PC would look like a computer for grownups, not a Fisher Price toy. And it would be available in both developed and developing nations. Oh yeah, and while Asus was slapping a new super-easy to use interface on the PC, there would also be a "Full Desktop" mode that would look more like Windows/your typical Linux distribution with the KDE desktop installed.

As it turns out, when we got our hands on the Eee PC, there was no full desktop mode enabled. Asus probably wanted to cut down on the customer service calls it would be getting if people could easily install and remove unsupported applications. So the Eee PC ships with "Easy Mode" enabled, and no clear way to set up the full desktop. The problem is that in Easy Mode, you have access to just a handful of software updates from Asus's server. There's no simple way to install GIMP, Audacity, or any other open source application you may have your heart set on.

We say no, easy way, because it turns out you can pull up a terminal in easy mode and use apt-get. And that's exactly what we're going to do in order to enable the full desktop. You could just use apt-get to install all the software your heart desires without ever enabling full desktop mode. It would certainly save you a few MB of precious memory (while the Eee PC has 4GB of solid state storage, only about 1.3GB is available, since the OS eats up a large chunk). But it's also more of a headache to do everything from the command line if you're used to graphical user interfaces.

Open up a terminal buy pressing Ctrl+Alt+T
Type "sudo bash" to gain root access (Be careful what you do with root access. The only reason we're using it now is so that you don't have to type sudo before each command. But you could easily mess up your machine if you perform every command as an administrator)
Type "apt-get update" to make sure you have access to the most up to date packages
Type "apt-get install kicker" and answer "y" when asked if you want to install
Type "apt-get install ksmserver" and answer "y" when asked if you want to install
Type exit to leave the root account
Type exit to close your terminal window

Now when you press the power button to turn off your computer, a new option will show up on the left that says "Full Desktop."

Press it and your Eee PC will reboot into Full Desktop mode, which should look something like this:

Now you have access to a full start menu, program launcher, taskbar, and several applications that were hidden in easy mode, including an RSS reader, remote desktop client, and the Synaptic Package Manager, which makes installing new programs a whole lot easier.

When you shut down and restart your Eee PC, you will continue to boot into easy mode. But if you want to boot into full desktop mode every time, just select the Settings tab in easy mode, click on Personalization, and then select the check box next to Full Desktop Mode.

Update: While the method above shows the easiest way to enable full desktop mode, be forewarned that you will not be able to save anything to your desktop. Files saved to your desktop will disappear each time you reboot your PC. You can either save files and icons to other folders, or you can edit your simplestart.sh file according to the instructions at EeeUser. If you follow that link you'll note that a new method for enabling the advanced desktop has been devised since this article was originally published, but you'll have to rely on downloading files from an unofficial repository created by Eee users.

Installing unsupported applications

There are three ways to install applications on the Eee PC.

You can use the apt-get command in a terminal window like we just did to install the full desktop.
You can download, uncompress, and install applications manually using a terminal. We really don't recommend this method, as it's not user friendly at all. But if you want to install, say, the latest version of the Opera web browser for Linux, this method might work best.
You can use the Synaptic package manager which is a graphical interface for apt-get. This is the method we recommend.

First thing you need to do to to use the Synaptic package manager working is enable full desktop. Theoretically, you could load it in easy mode by typing "sudo synaptic" into a terminal, or even "sudo konqueror" which will bring up a web browser/desktop browser that lets you peruse applications that you can't get to from the easy mode desktop. But in full desktop mode, you just fire up the start menu and select Applications\System\Synaptic Package Manager.

Great. Now you can see a list of installed applications and a tiny tiny number of uninstalled, but available apps. There are thousands of other programs out there that will run perfectly on your Eee PC, but right now it's only set up to access files available from Asus's server. So the next thing we need to do is add some repositories. This will give you access to other applications that run on Xandros or other Debian-based Linux distributions.

Keep in mind, these other applications might not fit well on the Eee PC's 800 x 480 pixel screen. And they might not like its hardware configurations either. If you want the least possible risk of messing up your new toy, only install applications from Asus's server. But if you're willing to take a few risks, read on.

Open Synaptic
Select the Settings Tab
Select the Repositories option
You should see two entries. Select New to add some more.
Enter the URL on the first line and the distribution and extra information on the following lines. For example, if you read somewhere that you can install "deb http://www.archlug.org/apt/ xandros4 xorid/uploads" you would enter "http://www.archlug.org/apt/" (without quotes) on the first line, "xorid" on the second, and "uploads" on the third.

Although you can add Debian repositories and access a huge library of applications, we recommend sticking with Xandros repositories as those applications are designed to run on the variant of Linux the Eee PC uses. If you can't find what you're looking for in the Xandros repositories, you might want to try "deb http://http.us/debian.org/debian/ stable main."

Eee User has posted a list of relatively safe repositories to their wiki.

Now it's time to install something. Let's try Audacity, an open-source audio editor that runs on Windows, OS X, and Linux. First up, let's make sure the Debian repository is added. And then we have to hit the Reload button at the top left of Synaptic in order to refresh the list of available programs.

Click the search button and enter Audacity (you could also enter GIMP, or any other program you're looking for).
Right click the checkbox next to Audacity and select Mark for installation.
Click Apply and Synaptic will download and install the application.

Now you should be able to launch Audacity from the start menu. You'll notice if you go back to the easy mode interface there's no new icon for Audacity. This is why it's easier to install programs using the full desktop. You can still load Audacity in easy mode by typing "Audacity" into a terminal window. But seriously, how is that "easy?"

Once you have you repositories installed, you can also add and remove programs from the terminal by typing "sudo apt-get install" and "sudo apt-get remove." For example, "sudo apt-get remove Audacity." This could come in handy if Synaptic doesn't want to remove an application once you've installed it, which has happened to us a few times so far.

Adding a start menu in easy mode

If you expect to switch back and forth between full desktop and easy mode occasionally, you might want to add a start menu to easy mode. It won't be as attractive or full featured as the start menu in full desktop mode, but you can customize the start menu and add applications that don't show up in the tabbed interface. Somewhat ironically, this process is a bit more involved than enabling the full desktop mode.

Thanks to Notebook Review for the tips on enabling the start menu.

Open a terminal in easy mode by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T
Type "sudo bash" to gain root access
Create a hidden folder by typing "mkdir /home/user/.icewm"
Copy a config file to your new directory by typing "cp /etc/X11/icewm/preferences /home/user/.icewm/"
Copy your menu editing file by typing "cp /etc/X11/icewm/menu /home/user/.icewm/"
Type "nano /home/user/.icewm/preferences" to open an editor
Scroll down until you find "TaskBarShowStartMenu," and change the 0 to 1
Hit Ctrl+x to exit

Now when you reboot your PC or restart the X server by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, you'll notice a start menu on the bottom left side of your screen.

Unfortunately, there's pretty much nothing useful in your start menu. You're going to want to edit the menu file in order to populate the menu with programs.

Type "nano /home/user/.icewm/menu" to open up your menu file in an editor.
Create new entries under the appropriate sections following the format "prog 'title' icon_name program_options." In other words, adding prog Audacity Audacity will add a shortcut to bring up Audacity.

Eee User also has a set of instructions for installing and using IceMC, a graphical application for editing the IceWM start menu.

Conclusion

Whew. That might be a lot to take in all at once if you've never used Linux before. But once you've enabled your full desktop and figured out how to use Synaptic, we suspect you'll never look at easy mode again. The Eee PC really is a full fledged laptop computer, with a 900MHz processor, 512MB of RAM, and 4GB of internal memory, plus an MMC/SD/SDHC card slot for extra storage. It also does a pretty good job of supporting external hardware like monitors, USB hard drives or CD/DVD drives, mice and keyboards. So if you can get used to typing on a teeny weeny keyboard, you could almost replace your 6 pound laptop with this 2 pound puppy.

Credit:Brad Linder

MSI Wind Versus ASUS Eee PC 901

2008-05-28T01:29:00.000-07:00

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

How to read e-books on the Asus Eee PC or other subnotes with small screens

2008-05-25T23:37:00.000-07:00

How to live with Adobe PDF on small-screen devices like the Asus Eee PC?
Can you tweak the software so the view is more booklike—using the portrait mode—hen you hold the Eee as shown in the photo below?
And what about the far-more usable, as I see it, FBReader?
Geeks.com has come up with a handy little guide with tips, including how to rote and adjust the margins in FBReader. Would that the DMCA not exist—so people in the States could convert files from DRMed formats to enjoy with FBReader!

In fairness to Adobe, it would have been nice if Geek.com had mentioned Digital Editions, which, like FBReader, can handle the IDPF’s ePub standard (and do so with better image support).
Bottom line: For adequate e-reading, you don’t need a Kindle, especially if you want to read e-books on more than one device.
Related: FBReader: Ten easy tips for e-book users who want to switch to a Linux handheld, which I wrote about the Nokia 770, but which would overwhelmingly entirely apply to the Asus machine as well. Check out the customization tips, including key assignments.
Also of interest: Asus reviews from Ficbot and Paul Biba.

Skype with Your Webcam on the Eee PC

2008-05-15T04:24:00.000-07:00

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

Edit Tabs in Easy Mode on the Eee PC

2008-05-15T04:17:00.000-07:00

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.

1. Open terminal: Hold down Ctrl+Alt+T to open the terminal command prompt.*

2. Back up simpleui.rc: Type "/opt/xandros/share/AsusLauncher/simpleui.rc /home/location_of_your_choice" and then hit Enter. This will save a backup copy of simpleui.rc just in case you mess something up.

3. Launch Konqueror File Management System: Type "conqueror" into terminal, and then hit Enter.

4. Navigate to All File Systems: Click Applications, then System, Administrator Tools, and finally, File Manager.

5. Open simpleui.rc: Open Opt, Xandros, Share, and finally, AsusLauncher. Search for simpleui.rc, then double-click it.

6. Edit simpleui.rc. Find the simplecat tags, and edit the line NewTabName.

Credit:http://www.laptopmag.com

Boot the Eee PC's Xandros Desktop in Full-KDE Mode

2008-05-15T03:42:00.000-07:00

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

Backtrack 3 on the Eee PC

2008-05-15T02:34:00.000-07:00

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

Asus eee pc and 3G internet via USB phone connection

2008-05-15T02:32:00.000-07:00

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

The Eee pc - Mobile Computing at a New Level

2008-05-13T08:01:00.000-07:00

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

How to Buy a HDD Media Player Online

2008-05-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

With so many information and entertainment now available online, it's quite hard to delete those information in our hard drives once we reach their maximum capacity. We used to be content with 20GB of hard disk capacity and we even used to brag that we have a 40GB hard disk capacity. But now, 40GB is almost nothing if you're a movie, music or TV fan. Although you can burn all your favorite shows on your CDs, it's still better to have them all in your computer.

If you're still clinging to your 20GB laptop or have just bought that cool ASUS EEE PC with less than 10GB hard disk capacity, you might need to purchase a HDD Player and a hard disk drive to upgrade the storage capacity.

HDD Players are small boxes big enough for one hard disk. Sitting outside the computer or a laptop, it has the capacity to read the hard disk in your computer. Connecting this gadget to the computer or laptop is really easy since it uses USB 2.0. Depending on your budget there are different types of players to choose from. The only common thing about these gadgets is that it connects to computers via USB and it can store files.

The basic form of HDD Players allows you to store files only. That's the most bareback of all products. Although some may come in fancy design, it's just another storage device. But there are those models that upgrade a hard disk to the next level. Instead of reading the contents of the hard disk, the player comes with complete connectors to your television. The result is, you have a media player that reads hard disks. Last but not the least is your ultimate mobile hard disk players. This type of player comes with a screen that lets you watch movies and even listen to music. Some sell this as a photobank, but it is much, much more.

With hundreds of HDD players on the market, finding the one that meets your needs can be a confusing and daunting experience. So we're here to help you simplify the process. Here are 5 tips for your buying a HDD Player:

1. Check the capacity of the player. Unfortunately, a HDD Media Player will always have a limit. Don't just buy something online if they do not indicate its capacity. Usually their capacity could be from 80GB up to 600GB or even more. The higher the price, the bigger its capacity.

2. Check the file format that the player support. Usually, a HDD Player can support VCD, DVD, MPEG1/2/4, DIVX3.X-5.X, AVI, ASF, VOB, DAT, MP4, MPG, PEG, BMP, GIF and MP3.

3. Format your hard disk – visit a computer technician so that he/she could format your hard disk as a storage device. If they are not properly formatted, computer will have trouble reading or transferring the information to your hard disk.

4. If possible, purchase an player with a built-in hard disk - although this is rare, it certainly beats the trouble of inserting the hard disk inside your player. You don't even have to worry about format since usually they are already formatted to be read.

5. Compare the prices of different suppliers' offer, then get the HDD Player with multifunction but the lowest price.
http://www.articlesbase.com/hardware-articles/how-to-buy-a-hdd-media-player-online-353720.html

Rocket Powered Linux Laptop

2008-05-13T07:56:00.000-07:00

The original gPC was released in early November 2007, and it brought us the innovative gOS Operating system. gOS is based on Ubuntu + Enlightenment and offers Google integration with many of the desktop applications. Direct access to Youtube, Google Docs, Meebo, Blogger, and more comes from a collection of icons residing on the Ibar at the bottom of the gOS desktop. Another feature that is unique to gOS is the shelf storage a functional organization system.

When the $199 gPCs hit the Walmart shelves, they didn't stay there long. High demand same can be said for online environment where ordering methods still seem to be exhausted from the surprising demand for this inexpensive but functional desktop unit. The Everex TC2502 Green gPC comes with 1.5 GHz Via Technologies C7-D processor, pre-installed office software from OpenOffice.org, DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive, 512 MB of DDR2 system memory, 10/100 Mbps Ethernet, and a 80 GB hard drive.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Everex announces the CloudBook Ultra-Mobile PC. The Cloud is 9 inches long, weighs in at 2 pounds, boasts a 1.2GHz VIA C7-M ULV mobile processor and it provides your with five hours of use with a single battery charge due to the the 4-cell, lithium-ion battery. Also the Cloud sports a 7 inch wide screen LCD and the pre-installed and linked software includes Mozilla FireFox, gMail, Meebo, Skype, Google Documents & Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, Google News, Google Maps, Wikipedia, Google Product Search, GIMP, Blogger, YouTube, Xine Movie Player, RhythmBox, Faqly, Facebook and OpenOffice.org 2.3 which includes Writer, Calc, Draw, and Impress for all of your office needs.

Due to the lack of a gOS compatible webcam, gOS and meebooth partnered with Ezonics, a leader in web cam developement, and created the gCam. It looks as if more accessories are to come for the Cloud too. Ezonics CEO Liu Ping commented "We are excited to work with gOS to launch the gCam as a first of many Linux friendly, cloud devices."

One major enhancement of the Everex Cloud over it's predecessor is the new Rocket 2.0 gOS operating system. The existing gOS 1.0 desktop has been enhanced adding features like gbooth, a web browser-based application that makes capturing photos and movies a snap. Other improvements include pre-installed Flash plugin for online movie viewing, improved reliability for Exalt Wi-Fi manager, virtual desktops for easy grouping of applications across multiple desktop spaces, and easy online storage, backup, and file sharing at box.net.

Other small, inexpensive, Linux powered PCs are popping up everywhere after the Asus Eee PC sold 40,000 copies right out of the gate and the original gPC still show sold out almost everywhere. At ZaReason.com they sold out of their pre-order alotment of the Cloudbook right away. Besides the positive response from consumers the future of Everex and others looks even brighter when taking into consideration their future plans. Everex plans on releasing a developer version 60 days after the initial cloud release which will include a touch screen, also 9 inch versions are on the way soon and possibly a wide selection of light skins.
http://www.articlesbase.com/laptops-articles/rocket-powered-linux-laptop-329009.html

Eeempressive!

2008-05-11T22:27:00.000-07:00

Do the words ultra-light, ultra-compact, ultra-thin when used for laptops send your wallet scurrying for cover? Sweat no more, Asus came up with the perfect solution for you. Its small, its light and it just works. It's called the Eee PC!
When Asus announced the Eee PC in 2007, people were highly skeptical of its performance and quality considering the low price tag. "Easy to learn, Easy to work, Easy to play" but didn't seem to be easy to pull off. The first Eee PC 4G was released on October 16, 2007. Needless to say it was a major success and sold 300,000 units by the end of the year.
So what was it that made this laptop, if we can call it that, such a huge success? Let's take a closer look. It sports a 7 inch WXGA (800 x 480) screen flanked by stereo speakers on either side and a VGA webcam on the top. Its actual dimensions are 225 × 165 × 21-35 mm and it weighs a shade over 2 lbs. Add to it the usual gamut of onboard audio ports, standard VGA out connector, Ethernet Jack, 3 USB 2.0 ports, one MMC/SD Card holder, built in Wi-Fi and a Kensington Lock slot, one PCI-e mini slot and that's pretty much everything crammed in to the package. There is a microphone too that sits, surprisingly, on the underside.
On the inside it is powered by a 900 Mhz Celeron UMV Processor, already under clocked to 630 Mhz by Asus, whose focus is more on lowering power consumption than number crunching to try and get as much battery life out of its 4 cell Li-Ion battery. Depending up on the usage it can last anywhere from 2 to 3.5 hours. A 910 chipset based motherboard keeps things tidy with all the onboard devices. Memory ranges from 512 MB to 1 GB depending upon the model, which is more than enough to run Xandros, the linux distro shipped with it or Windows XP which will soon be available as an option. But here comes the best part, its shipped with SSD instead of HDD. The result: Lower power consumption, faster performance, and more durability and so on. On the flip side it means they are able to ship it with only 2 GB, 4 GB and 8GB models. And thanks to the preinstalled programs the actual user usable storage space is limited to 400 MB, 1.6 GB and 5.1 GB respectively. Well to wipe that look of disappointment off your face, the SD slot supports SDHC so you can chuck in a 32 GB card in there to take care of your storage needs.
It comes with 40 preinstalled applications including Flash games, Firefox, Open Office, SMPlayer and Skype to take care of most of your productivity and entertainment needs. Ok, so you cannot play Crysis on it, but you can do the basic things like create and use documents, surf the net, chat, play movies and music and so on. It's not a desktop replacement, it's for those who need a laptop but cannot afford one or do not want to lug around a 5-6 pound notebook. It's meant for young kids, senior citizens, students. It's meant for writers like me who would love to be able to travel around with my office restricted to a notepad sized device that weighs less than the Physics book in my college! Asus plans to sell few millions of these this year and with the next generation 9 inch model just announced I don't see anyone stopping them from doing it.