Eee PC

Posted by George Wright Mon, 26 May 2008 21:26:00 GMT

With my parents going on holiday to Taiwan last month I asked them to pick me up an Eee PC to play with. It’s a really nice little machine; I got the 8GB flash/1GB RAM model, and I’m very impressed with how responsive it is. Even Open Office is fairly nippy…

The keyboard is a little small and takes a bit of getting used to, but I can just about touch type on it now. The machine as a whole is very sturdy and seems solidly built, and the touch pad is just about usable (the mouse button isn’t too great though). The screen is a little grainy but very crisp - it seems better than the screen on my X40 (albeit at a lower resolution) - and the default Xandros distribution is quite nice.

Anyway, I’ve built qtnx debs for the Xandros that is on there (I added the Debian Etch repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list to complement the default Eee repositories) and uploaded them to my server if anyone wishes to use them (hit ctrl-alt-T to bring up a terminal, then use dpkg -i to install them). The configuration dialogue doesn’t quite fit on the screen but you can use the alt+mouse button trick to drag the window around.

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  1. Ben Arnold said about 13 hours later:

    Hey - I’m hoping to get a Eee myself but have only found the 4GB 701 around for a decent price.

    Just wondering where you got your 8GB from and how much it was, if it was in the UK?

    I’ve had a play with it and feel the keyboard to be very usable, just a little getting used to, as with the resolution. What do people expect from a 7 machine though?!

    Thanks :)

  2. George Wright said 1 day later:

    I think the 8GB model isn’t available in the UK; I got mine from Taiwan for about 200 pounds.

  3. charlie said 2 days later:

    I have been working on a 8G trying to get a verizon usb727 aircard working. Had to dump Xandros (highly modified). I talked to a guy at asus who recommended installing a different distro because taiwan home office is not supporting newer kernels. All attention is going to the 900. I got kubuntu running today and it is a pleasure. Working with Xandros on this machine was a nightmare.

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