Bits Getting the most out of your Eee PC

[Tim S]

http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2008/01..._your_eee_pc/1

Asus' Eee PC has taken the world by surprise - its combination of form factor, feature set and price point made it one of the hottest products of last year, but it's not without its problems. We take a look at how to improve the Eee PC experience with some simple OS tweaking.

[steveo_mcg]

I don't know if its install but if your struggling with synaptic you could try aptitude, it gives a curses ui for finding packages. use / to search.

[iwog]

The keyboard is a little tricky to get used to, and even now I constantly find myself pressing “up” instead of “shift”,

You know there's a script on the eeePC user forum that switches the position of these two keys.

[Jamie]

I never noticed that the keyboard layout is a bit retarded until I read this article. I still can't get over how small the screen is though, bring on version 2.

[Spode]

Yeah, I realise you can switch the keys around, but you do eventually get used to it, or at least coping with it.

The screen size really isn't as bad as you think. 800x600 used to be prime real estate a few moons ago :P

[iwog]

Originally Posted by Spode

Yeah, I realise you can switch the keys around, but you do eventually get used to it, or at least coping with it.

But i have giant man hands, so i think i'll be using the switch key hack no matter what, even a standard laptop keyboard is too small sometimes

[Hamish]

Originally Posted by Jamie

I still can't get over how small the screen is though, bring on version 2.

yea thats the deal breaker for me tbh, its just daft with this tiny screen set in a giant bezel

[centy]

Love articles like this and http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2007/09/12/pc_audio_101/1

[Sparrowhawk]

Originally Posted by Hamish

yea thats the deal breaker for me tbh, its just daft with this tiny screen set in a giant bezel

I'm surprised no one has tried to hack a larger laptop screen into this. Anyone know if a 10" screen would fit, and does the Eee use the same laptop screen connector thing?

[C-Sniper]

i know someone on one of the forums i go to put slackware on the 4gb version and used the 16gb USB addon he did for his /usr partition.

[Fozzy]

Can Itunes be installed on the stock OS? If so you can use your IPOD as a Media Storage device which an 80gb version is as cheap as a 32gb flash drive. Or you could go with a 160gb just because. Then you can use your main PC for storage, rip all of the videos and music onto your ipod, and just plug your Ipod in as a portable media drive.

[Jamie]

Originally Posted by Fozzy

Can Itunes be installed on the stock OS? If so you can use your IPOD as a Media Storage device which an 80gb version is as cheap as a 32gb flash drive. Or you could go with a 160gb just because. Then you can use your main PC for storage, rip all of the videos and music onto your ipod, and just plug your Ipod in as a portable media drive.

If you can get Wine onto it you might stand a chance of installing iTunes.

[proxess]

why not just use gtkpod? or the optimized ubuntu which has perfect ipod support. also, if the Eee PC can boot from external drives, why not partition an ipod? 20gb of my ipod for an OS to run on a snazzy little portable like Eee PC, i honestly wouldn't mind.

[Spode]

why not just use gtkpod? or the optimized ubuntu which has perfect ipod support. also, if the Eee PC can boot from external drives, why not partition an ipod? 20gb of my ipod for an OS to run on a snazzy little portable like Eee PC, i honestly wouldn't mind.

There are entire guides on there getting Ubuntu running of a USB drive. I'd sooner do this (and probably will be) than ruin the internal OS. You can always restore from the DVD, but the less writes to the SSD the better

[Juppun]

Sweet. Bookmarking this for reading later. Now if I could just find one of these damn things that'd be nice as well

[cpemma]

On price & features it's got some stiff competition from the non-toys;

VostroTM 1000
AMD® Sempron Mobile Technology 3600+
1024 MB 667MHz Dual-Channel DDR2 SDRAM (2x 512 MB)
80 GB Harddrive
Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive including Software
ATI Radeon® Xpress 1150 HyperMemory (integrated graphics)
Dell™ Wireless 1390 802.11b/g Mini-Card
15.4" Widescreen Display
Full-sized keyboard
Windows Vista® Home Premium
Preliminary starting weight at just 6.26 lbs (2.84 kg)

Price: £189 (ex vat & del)

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/pr...687&lid=530197

[iwog]

Originally Posted by cpemma

On price & features it's got some stiff competition from the non-toys;

http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/pr...687&lid=530197

So its £222 plus delivery and twice the size and weight. But people buy the eeePC because its so small and light and to get a comparible system ie one of a similar size and performance you end at the £1000 mark. The sony UMPC is £2000.
http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,...9291646,00.htm

So there really isn't any competition to the eeePC atm which is why its selling like hotcakes and has about the same online availability as the Wii.