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Portable Speeding up an EEE 900

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by CrapBag, 5 Feb 2014.

  1. CrapBag

    CrapBag Multimodder

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    Hi I have an Asus EEE (believe it's a 900) and it's sooo slow.

    Now I'm not expecting to start folding on it or encoding videos but I'd at least like it to be able to play you tube videos with out it missing 10 frames out of 11.

    Is there a really basic OS I could stick on it that would work better.

    It came with Linux which I didn't get on with and I now have a stripped out version of XP on it but it's still pretty unusable.

    I also have 4gb of ram in it.
     
  2. docodine

    docodine killed a guy once

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    gooooood luck with that. youtube has gotten a lot fatter over the years and does not play well with ultra slow PCs

    i'm surprised you'd call the stripped out (nlited i'm guessing?) version of XP unusable though. i used to use mine for diablo II and starcraft, plus quite a lot of bit-tech browsing and it was pretty much dandy

    when my eeepc 701 was new, the only way i could get get it to play youtube videos smoothly at 480p was to overclock the CPU to 900mhz. the stock 633 mhz barely managed 360p

    one thing i did which improved youtube playback was to force all flash to render at low quality. there was an extension for firefox which did exactly that, since youtube doesn't have the usual flash high medium low render quality settings

    maybe try this: http://lifehacker.com/5577212/play-youtube-videos-directly-in-vlc-media-player

    or better yet, install android X86 onto it if all you want is the ability to play youtube videos. there's a version made to work with old eeepcs somewhere on the web
     
    Last edited: 6 Feb 2014
  3. PauloWhysalli

    PauloWhysalli Confused.com

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    Thanks for this, I've been looking for something to speed up my old eeepc! Linky here for the download which I will be trying later tonight!
     
  4. goldstar0011

    goldstar0011 Multimodder

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    If you must stick with windows 7, I've used "Windows 7 Tiny", it's really stripped down for basic systems
     
  5. IvanIvanovich

    IvanIvanovich будет глотать вашу душу.

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    To get better video performance perhaps grab a broadcom crystal HD mini pci-e card? You will have to sacrifice the wifi card to fit it, but you can always pick up one of the tiny usb wifi n. At least with the broadcom card you can offload the video decoding to dedicated hardware from the basically incapable gma/cpu that it comes with.
     
  6. sandys

    sandys Multimodder

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    This should make it go pretty fast clicky

    Linux is probably your only option for reliable playback and flash, that machine just doesn't have the grunt for windows. I used an old version of Ubuntu on my 1000H though to be honest it would run Vista OK.

    Are you actually using this as a laptop or just using it as a base unit, as I have a few screenless laptops cluttering up my cupboards that I am going to junk, if you are more motivated than me and fancy fixing it up you can have one.

    In fact my 1000H is in there fully functional but a bit grubby.
     
  7. CrapBag

    CrapBag Multimodder

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    Well the idea is that my son was going to use it.

    He has a pc and a 360 in his room but only 1 screen and he wanted to be able to access online walk throughs while on his 360.

    My sister in law is looking for a laptop though as she can't get on surfing the net on her phone.
     
  8. docodine

    docodine killed a guy once

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    wouldn't recommend one of those original eeepcs for a casual user. they're just too slow unless if you really know how to deal with them

    an android tablet would be better suited, and you can get usable ones for pretty cheap nowadays
     
  9. CrapBag

    CrapBag Multimodder

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    He's got a Samsung tablet but for some reason he wanted to use the EEE.

    I got the model wrong too its a 4G.
     
  10. docodine

    docodine killed a guy once

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    with the 800x480 screen? i have a 4G surf, the model without the webcam
     
  11. Pookie

    Pookie Illegitimi non carborundum

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    Does that model use the really slow SSD? I tried playing with XP on one of those and had to use a program called flash fire. This creates a small RAM drive buffer and improves performance.
     
  12. docodine

    docodine killed a guy once

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    if i remember correctly, the 16GB model had the very slow SSD
     
  13. MSHunter

    MSHunter Minimodder

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    A thin Linux distro like mint would work well, just make sure the distro support hardware acceleration. There are a few EEE specific distros as well.
     
  14. ShakeyJake

    ShakeyJake My name is actually 'Jack'.

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    I used Crunchbang on my Eee, highly recommend.

    Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
     
  15. wolfticket

    wolfticket Downwind from the bloodhounds

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    I have an eee pc 701 (the first, slowest one) that until recently I still used as a little portable system for media and browsing. I run a stripped down (nlite) version of Windows XP with only MS Security Essentials, Media Player Classic and Firefox on it.


    The experience was okay. Slow, but usable if you don't expect too much. My advice would be:

    - For Youtube, install a browser extension or userscript that forces Youtube to run at 360 (or 480 at a push) and use flash by default. Anything greater than that (or HTML5 video) and things will grind to a halt.

    - If you want/need to watch higher res videos that won't stream smoothly (remembering anything above the screen resolution is a waste) then the best bet is to download them and play them back locally.
    Use something like DownloadHelper in Firefox to download flash videos to your computer and play them back using a standalone media player. I've even managed to play back low bitrate 720 video smoothly on my 600mhz eee pc like this.

    - Make sure you have adblock installed to kill bulky video/flash adverts that will slow browsing down to a crawl.

    - And make sure you don't have anything other than what is absolutely necessary installed/running it the background.


    It's difficult not to recommend getting a cheap tablet that will give a better experience for not a lot of money these days, but if you want to soldier on regardless for a while like I did then it is possible with a bit of tweaking and knowing the limitations of the system.
     
  16. CrapBag

    CrapBag Multimodder

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    Thanks for all the advice.

    We have 4 tablets in the house, two 5.0 Samsung's, a 7" Tab 2 and a hudl so we are good for tablets.

    Using the EEE was more of a case of making use of something we have lying around.
     
  17. Jaybles

    Jaybles Minimodder

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    Haha Mint thin. Elementary or Xubuntu if you want shinyness or crunchbang or Debian with a lightweight WM for proper speed.

    Oh and tiny 7 if you want Win.
     

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