The Asus Eee PC - Is this the real cloud computing client?
While it’s been out for awhile now, and I’ve read a quite a bit on it - only last night did it really hit me how useful this device may be. The little device with an instant-on capability that can be had for as little as $300 is getting rave reviews by just about everyone. Especially those that have been using one.
I’m thinking this is the perfect device to provide the grab-and-go needs that I have nearly daily. My laptop is great, but it’s always set up and running either at home or work. With a second device, I could simply grab it and head off to anywhere and still be able to take notes, read feeds, blog, write manuals, perform remote-control support as needed all in a 2 pound package.
Guess we’ll find out more about it this week. While mentioning it to Amy, she pointed out how nice it’d be to have a smaller device for herself to be able to use around the house and such. The interesting part was that after pointing out all the “deficiencies” in the device, like no storage space, slower processor, Linux instead of Windows, small screen resolution, etc… she was still really interested in the device. We’ll be off later today to try a hands-on with one to see what she and our daughter think of them.
At any rate, using nLite, I’ve built a small Windows XP build (533MB installed)that may fit nicely even on the extremely storage challenged Eee PC 2GB Surf model. Personally though, I’m interested in looking at getting Ubuntu loaded on it.
Anyone else have one, or thinking about getting one? I’d love to know your thoughts on this super-inexpensive and uber- portable device.
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Comments
Comment by Rick Mahn Thomas, I had forgot about gOS, so I D/L’d it and loaded it up in VMware. Interesting… I’ll have to give it some serious testing and compare to Ubuntu and Fedora. Thanks for the tip!
Rick
Comment by Eric I’ve had the 4G EEE PC since it was released in early November of last year and we’ve been inseparable since 
I did use the customized Xandros on my EEE PC for awhile but I decided to put a customized Nlited XP onto my EEE PC. It works marvelously and it’s great that Asus included a DVD with the EEE PC that’s not only a Xandros recovery disk but also contains XP drivers.
The EEE PC really does deserve the good reviews its getting and I applaud Asus on blowing the cheap UMPC market wide open.
You really should check out the forum at http://www.eeeuser.com it’s the largest EEE PC community on the web.
Comment by Rick Mahn Eric,
Thanks for the link - I’ve been reading up on the Eee PC for a bit now and will probably leverage some of my new learnings. 
Truly a real portable that I can take with during lunch and other “quick” outings that still allow me to connect and work.
Regards,
Rick
Comment by Daniel I have to run Rosetta Stone (foreign language program) which only works for Windows and Mac. Wine does not support Rosetta Stone nor is there a way to run it in Linux. (Please prove me wrong if you know otherwise).
I also read that people have been easily installing Windows XP on the Eee but I have only experienced brutal defeats. I have the correct hardware setup and believe everything is good to go. I am using an external USB DVD-ROM to install Windows. The problem comes when when the file copy is complete, Setup initialize and saves the XP configuration. When the Eee reboots I receive the following error everytime.”NTLDR is missing please restart”.
I would love to run Xandros natively with Rosetta Stone but it seems my only hope is XP and I can not get it installed.
Any ideas or experiences such as this will help.
Thanks
Comment by Free DVD I’m running XP on the machine and keeping most of my day-to day files on a 1GB flash drive so I can swop them back to my desktop back in th e office. It certainly opens up useful patches in the day like short train rides
Comment by Req
forget all that other stuff… put g-os.org on it!