Eeeks!! My first mini-review of the Asus Eee PC 4G

Status
Not open for further replies.
Introduction

As many of you have requested for, it's my pleasure to write a mini-review of the Asus Eee PC 4G, after having played around with it for a week now. Bought it (on impulse!) from the Singapore airport duty free while waiting for my flight to Mumbai, for a cool price of S$595 or approx Rs 16k. Thought that I might actually be able to use it as an ultra portable replacement for my "bulky" Thinkpad T42 whenever I travel for business. All I needed was something that runs Win XP and Office, web browser, has wifi and good battery life. Is the Eee PC up to the task then? Or would the Eee end up being a white elephant and I'd have to dispose of it in the Classifieds section at a cheap bargain? Read on.. ;)

EeeandThinkpad.jpg


Tech Specs
  • CPU: 900 MHz Intel Celeron M ULV 353 @ 630 MHz
  • Video: Intel GMA 900
  • Display: 7" LCD widescreen at 800x480
  • Storage: 4GB internal SSD
  • OS: Custom Xandros-based Linux
  • RAM: 512MB
  • Optical drive: None
  • Networking: Atheros AR5007EG wireless, 10/100 ethernet
  • Webcam: VGA (640×480) @ 30 fps
  • Battery: 4 Cells (5200 mAh), 3~3.5hrs
  • Dimensions/Weight: 8.9" x 6.5" x 1.4", approximately 2.03lb

Initial Impressions

The Eee PC comes pre-installed with Xandros-based Linux, though Asus has been actively promoting the Eee PC as a WinXP capable machine. Obviously, the decision to leave out XP is entirely to keep costs down, without bundling in an expensive Windows license. Of course, that's hardly an issue since most PC users have easy access to a copy of Win XP, be it legit or *ahem* :bleh:

I shall not cover too much detail of the Xandros OS, especially since I'm a noob as far as Linux is concerned. Nonetheless, in the few days that I've had Linux on it and played around with the Eee PC, I found the Linux OS to be relatively zippy and well equipped to perform most basic tasks like web browsing, editing office documents (comes installed with Open Office), play multimedia files (pics, basic mpegs, mp3s). I really wanted to give Linux a chance, but the moment I found myself having to figure out what repositories, terminal console blah blah blah.. Anyway, you get the idea. I knew I had to get XP on it, and luckily for me, it's a road already well travelled by many and all I needed to do was to google for one of many Eee XP installation tutorials and I was raring to go.

The Journey to Win XP

One of the things that bothered me was how a relatively resource hungry OS like Win XP would perform on a 630mhz proccy equipped with just 512mb ram. I've read many user feedbacks about how well XP runs on the Eee PC, but I had to see it and do it myself to believe it. There are basically 2 ways to install Win XP onto the Eee PC, either (1) USB optical drive or (2) USB flash drive. I didn't have any external USB optical drives or one of those USB-to-IDE/SATA connectors to use my internal optical drive, so USB flashdrive was the only way to go. So a list of what's needed to do a XP installation via USB flash:


I know a number of Eee PC users have used nLite to slim down their XP OS installation iso so that they can maximise the available space on the small 4Gb SSD after installing XP. Some have reportedly managed to get XP footprint on their hard drives to around 600mb. I didn't wanna mess with nLite, plus I figured I can always use a usb drive or get a 16Gb SDHC card for additional storage. So I went with a full blown XP installation. So finally after slightly over an hour of preparing the usb flash drive and finishing the XP installation process without any major hitches, I am one happy camper! :hap2:

XPinstalled.jpg


Impressions of Running XP

Bootup was fast! From the point of pressing the on/off button to Windows desktop screen, must not have taken more than 30 secs. A quick check on the available disk space showed that the Eee PC still had 1.5Gb of free space left (out of total 3.71Gb) after installing a full blown Win XP with SP2. Did a couple of tweaks (turning off System Restore and removing Pagefile) and I now had 2.1Gb of free space on the internal SSD. Not too shabby!! The 512mb ram didn't appear to be too much of an issue, but since ram is so cheap these days, I'm going to pick up a 2Gb sodimm stick soon and replace that 512mb module.

All the hardware drivers were working fine after running the included Asus DVD, which contains a suite of software drivers for XP. If you recall, I don't have an external optical drive, so I merely copied contents of the DVD onto a usb flashdrive and ran the drivers installation straight off it. A quick check of the Device Manager, and everything looks to be in place. Sound was working fine, got WiFi connected to my wireless networks without a hitch.

Next I installed some of my commonly used applications. Firefox, Office 2007, VLC, Foobar2k, utorrent, Pidgin. Everything ran silky smooth. Standard Dvix/Xvid videos ran smooth as a baby's butt cheeks, and mp3/flac playback was equally fine. My powerpoint slides, word documents and excel sheets opened without much lag. Even ran utorrent to download a 10mb from one of my private trackers and I had no problems maxing out my 2mbps connection speed over a wifi connection. Web browsing on it was fine, except the fact that a little more scrolling than usual is required, due to the LCD's screen resolution of 800x480.

WindowsDesktop.jpg


Powerpt.jpg


Conclusion

Needless to say, I'm impressed by this little toy! Asus did an awesome job designing this new product. At a MRP of US$400, you get an ultra portable machine that is truly capable of running Win XP and other common tasks like playing multimedia, editing office documents, web browsing, torrenting etc. Plus the build quality is solid, it definitely does not feel like a cheap piece of plastic and credit to Asus for not stinging on materials despite the cost pressures. I have not had time to really test out the battery life, but it's definitely way better than my Thinkpad. The Eee PC has been on for the last hr and a half, and the battery indicator shows 50% is left.

What more can I say?? Looks like I found myself a new travel companion on my upcoming business trips. Only thing I need now is a 2Gb ram upgrade and a 16Gb SDHC card for more storage.

Hope y'all have found my first ever review to be useful and relatively informative, especially if you are planning to buy yourself a Eee PC anytime soon. Happy Eee-ing!! :hap2:
 
  • Like
Reactions: 6 people
Sourav said:
Awesome machine there mate :D great review too :) Repped ya. Is this thing available in India as of now? and if so, then for how much? looks like a great ultra-ultra portable :ohyeah:

i haven't seen the EeePC selling in india yet, at least not through official distros. you might want to try emailing Asus India to see if they have plans to bring it in. else i dun mind helping to buy 1 unit for someone here in Singapore airport again since i'm going back again end of this month.

@Anish, the native res of the 7" LCD on the Eee is 800x480. the hacked video drivers that allow the screen to display 800x600 is not native, and you can see some panning. though at 800x600 res, the text is still quite readable. but Cleartype must be disabled. if you are outputting to an external LCD or CRT display, it would also work fine at higher res like 1024x768
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 person
pathik said:
@Anish it is not 800x600 it is 800x480. WS. BTW it ll be launched at 29th Jan in India. Hopefully should be cheap.

i suspect the price in India will be higher than 16k once it's officially launched here.. as is the case with most electronics items due to import duties and stuff.. expect it to be around 18k or so for the 4G model.. note that there're several different models of the Eee.. 2G, 2G Surf, 4G, 4G Surf and the latest 8G..
ASUS Eee PC - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

mine is the 4G, which has additional built-in webcam and higher capacity battery, compared to the 4G Surf.
 
sydras said:
Don't the speakers at the sides irritate you?

Nice photography on the close up shots btw :cool2: . Making the screen appear like a regular one by keeping the border out.

yeah, the speakers are a little annoying, but i figured that's the only place they can place the speakers on such a compact device.. the plus side is these speakers are surprisingly clear and pump out a good amount of volume.. but dun expect much bass from it ;)

actually thought my photography is a little off.. couldnt use flash since it'll overexpose the screen pics, so had to use high ISO settings instead :P
 
@burnz i was expecting the 8g to be around 18k and the 4g surf ($350) to be around 12-14k. as asus is officially launching it in india. if they price it correctly then it ll be a super hit. BTW which BIOS version are u using?
 
burnz said:
if you are outputting to an external LCD or CRT display, it would also work fine at higher res like 1024x768
I'd be glad if you could try this and confirm once. Finalising my order pretty soon!
 
pathik said:
@burnz i was expecting the 8g to be around 18k and the 4g surf ($350) to be around 12-14k. as asus is officially launching it in india. if they price it correctly then it ll be a super hit. BTW which BIOS version are u using?

considering the 8G's MRP on newegg is US$499, i highly doubt 18k to be a realistic price in india. if anything, indian prices of electronics are almost always more expensive due to customs duties etc. if i were to make a guess, i'll say around 15k for 4G Surf, 18k for 4G, and 22-24k for 8G (if they are even bringing 8G to the Indian market).

currently still using stock 0401 bios.. prob going to upgrade to 0703 bios soon..
 
Anish said:
I'd be glad if you could try this and confirm once. Finalising my order pretty soon!

no problems with 1024x768.. just tried it with my office projector and displaying powerpt slides.. can't confirm yet on other common widescreen LCD resolutions like 1440x900, 1680x1050 etc..
 
I guess ppl overlooked this but how did you get XP to run on an SSD? Any special drivers?

Or is the apprehension that XP can't run on an SSD a myth?

Some interesting comments I've been reading abt this PC(I've copy-pasted them below).
Just FYI :

Boot up, standby, and resume: here's where SSD really shines. Without any BIOS or registry optimizations, the XP boots up around 35 seconds after pressing the power button. When I again press the power button, which is configured to put the Eee in standby mode, the machine is idle in about 3 seconds. Pressing the power button again to wake it up: under 5 seconds.

The most surprising part is the huge success DESPITE a HUGE hardware bug - in case you don’t know the 900 MHz Celeron inside is not actually running at its standard 100 MHz bus (and 900 MHz CPU speed) but instead at around 63 MHz bus (about 599 MHz CPU speed) - and that was NOT done to protect it from overheating but instead to cover for some massive internal component instability !!!
 
^^ didn't do anything special to run XP on an SSD. just installed as per normal. appears to run just fine. have not encountered any instability issues.

i don't think the downclocked 900mhz celeron is meant to cover some component instability. merely to increase battery performance. i'm currently running it "overclocked" @ 900mhz though, using the eeeclock utility. so far so good, except for slightly lower battery life ;)
 
Hey man uv put up a brilliant review here on te. Well done bro. Putting windows xp on a thumb drive and installing xp from the thumb drive is killah, you just cant ask for more can ya ? Now no more burning cds simply buy a 1 gb pen drive, dump windows xp onto it and ur all set!! It seems that the old dog has taught the new dog some new tricks :rofl:. BTW You guys have any idea on how much the asus 2 GB pearl black finish would cost here in india ?
 
Oh..overlooked that it was avbl in 2 colours. Dude..you should've got white. It looks so cool...and given the black wave in India, it would really stand out as something cool.
 
With the no.of tutorials avbl for the eee PC, I used one to create a Win XP installer USB stick. About 30 mins later, I've got a USB bootable stick and It's working like a charm.

Here's the link.

Installing Windows XP on the Asus Eee PC ~ EEEguides.com

Pity it did not allow Win XP with SP2 integrated or my nLited versions of Win XP as a source. I had to use the original Win XP boot CD as the source for XP install files.
 
I wonder what would happen if you tried running Defrag...or any other disk defragmenter for that matter :detect:
 
Questions (better to ask than google ;)):

1. Any issues runnin @ 900Mhz?

2. I think i read somewhere that the max RAM possible is 1Gb? Is that wrong info?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.