Asus EEE Mini 7 inch screen laptop is a dream

[Kangum]

Grabbed asus 4g from newegg for 399. i did not keep xandros linux on it i put windows xp on it and added 2 gig of ram. the little guy flys. windows xp boots to desktop in under 11 seconds. in fact windows xp is more responsive then on my ibm.

i love the fact its so small and only 2 pounds. i toss it around like its a cup of coffee.

no complaints so far. i thought the 7 inch screen would be to small but its not bad at all. everything has been better then i expected. highly reccomended.

pics a few posts down

[JimmyU]

Have you put MAME on it yet?

[Kangum]

not yet. i did put snes9x on there and it works perfectly. playing full screen is like playing playstation portable with 6 times the screen space.

[Kangum]

ok sure. much better pics on newegg though. especially the black one. anyway here is a few pics.

free case it came with



closed



open

[shmokes]

How is the keyboard?  For me, you can skimp on just about anything on a laptop (I only use laptops for boring stuff like school), but the keyboard has to feel good.  I have to be able to type fast on it without the keys failing to register on a regular basis.  If the keyboard isn't decent, forget about it.  If it is good . . . I'm VERY interested.  My laptop is more than three years old and has been displaying signs of potential failure.  Hopefully I can squeeze a couple more years out of it, but if it goes I'm going to need something right away and I'm going to need it to be cheap.  But since I have no use for it other than school stuff I don't care for power.  Portability is king -- and this thing looks like you just might be able to consider it portable  .

[Kangum]

this laptop starts at 300.00 USD. so you have to sort of keep in mind what the goals were. i think the overall build quality is ok but the keyboard does sort of disappoint me. mainly its size. the keys are not just close they are actually smaller in size wich takes awhile to get used too.

my main concerns when i bought this was

1.weight. it weighs 2 pounds. light as a feather and small.
2.cheap. starts at 300 usd. so if i lose it no big deal.
3.functional. its a fully functional computer. i check email, surf the web, even run a few games.

here is a site dedicated to this laptop.
 http://forum.eeeuser.com/

[quarterback]

This looks really cool and it was actually this thread that got me off my butt to sell the PDA I bought in 2005 and have never used.   Even though it's not as pretty, I may buy a cloudbook when they come out later this month.  The 30-gig hard drive in those is a plus for me.  I'm not sure I'd be able to deal with just the 2gb or 4gb from the EEE.

How much did it cost to upgrade the RAM?

[Kangum]

This looks really cool and it was actually this thread that got me off my butt to sell the PDA I bought in 2005 and have never used.   Even though it's not as pretty, I may buy a cloudbook when they come out later this month.  The 30-gig hard drive in those is a plus for me.  I'm not sure I'd be able to deal with just the 2gb or 4gb from the EEE.

How much did it cost to upgrade the RAM?

ram was 45 for ddr 667 at newegg or 35 for ddr 533. you can use either.

the cloudbook looks cool but i dont care for via cpu at all. it should have decent battery life though. i heard it will be appearing in walmarts so you will be able to go check em out in store.

I used a program called nlite wich removes things like foreign language packs to shrink down the install. with all updates and service packs my install was 600 mb. overall i just install what i need and treat it like a portable not a desktop replacement. all my music and stuff like that goes on my macbook.

I like having a solid state disk its alot more durable when getting tossed around. standard hard drive shock and movement can make the arm bounce up and down on the platter and cause data loss.

[quarterback]

the cloudbook looks cool but i dont care for via cpu at all.

I've been unsuccessful in trying to find some kind of benchmark / speed test comparing these CPUs to each other, or to standard desktop or laptop CPUs.  Is there such a thing somewhere or is the CPU world just to convoluted at this point?

Also, is there something I should know about the VIA cpu that I might not know?

it should have decent battery life though. i heard it will be appearing in walmarts so you will be able to go check em out in store.

The battery life was another thing, in addition to the hard drive space, that appeals to me.  Also, SOME of the articles about the cloudbook say that it will have bluetooth built in, but according to the everex website, I don't think that's true.   I guess it's hard to tell since there are other versions of the cloudbook already released overseas under different names and in different configurations.

I like having a solid state disk its alot more durable when getting tossed around. standard hard drive shock and movement can make the arm bounce up and down on the platter and cause data loss.

I'm basically looking for a lite version of a laptop to travel with.  I bought a PDA with wireless keyboard and mouse (and built in wireless and BT) to try and fill that ticket, but it never really did it for me.   When I travel I HAVE to have access to my email and apps like word etc.   I don't need a duo-core whatever to do that, so this kind of thing looks like it really fits the bill.  My current laptop weighs a TON (7 and a half pounds, I beleive) and is bulky as hell and fills up my carryon.  I would basically treat the cloudbook like my laptop, but not have to deal with all the weignt and space issues, so the standard hard drive would be no different than me having the laptop I currently own.
Thanks for the info, Kangum.

[NiN^_^NiN]

Nice EEE PC Kangum

I got some pics of mine which should help with the size wise

I got the black model but they charged it as $499 down here in australia for the $399 model go figure 







I havent tried mame yet but i'll try tonight if kungum doesn't

[Kangum]

arrgh NiN you got the black one. i should have got the black one. oh well.

[NiN^_^NiN]

Ahh u lucky bugger nice mac

I got the black cause its all they had lol i got it a week after it came out (i totally forgot about it and happened to stumble upon a pic on a website saying it was out in australia)

The guy told me that they ran out of stock so quick that that they just got new stock in the day before and they where all black

Still annoyed they made it $100 more than the US price bloody wanting more money from the AUS side Grrrr

Still it's a fantastic and damn fast PC too i've been surfing the net and playing GTA VC on it

I quite liked the linux on it but i put XP on so i can use all the emulators and a few windows programs

I Still didn't try mame out on it lastnight doh but it is the perfect size for a nice mini desktop arcade cab

i don't know if i could bring myself to wrecking one of them tho 

[Kangum]

it sucks you had to pay a little more for it then normal but black really does look awesome. so it was worth it. your idea of using a dvd to compare its size was brilliant. much better then the dollar bill i used. the dvd really shows how small and portable it is.

my reason for xp was the same. emulators plus alot of windows programs i wanted to use. plus xp is so fast on it why not.

did you do the external monitor trick to get GTA to work? i know ever since i did it all games hop right into 640x480x32 with no troubles. or did it support the resolution stock.

ive been meaning to try fable on it forever. maybe i will tomorrow.

[NiN^_^NiN]

Yeah i thought DVD case was almost the same size so i used that to compare cause everyone has at least 1 dvd case around 

For GTA to work i am using a hacked video driver that allows it to go to 640 x 480 to work it works well but the downfall is if you standby or hibernate the video comes up garbled and also i can't do external monitor mirroring the eee pc monitor i can only expand my desktop to that monitor but that worked fine for video aswell

I just tried mame out and it was great altho the keyboard is alil small you have to know where ur pressing but it worked great

I used Street fighter Zero 3 im guessing thats a semi gpu instensive game to show how well it works altho i dont know if its quite simple to run.

I ran mame and the roms off my main pc through wifi and never had any problems what so ever no slowdown or studder it worked fantastic

I've been using it to watch some HD video and all that and it's worked great but i never tried running emulators and roms from the wifi and that works great

Here are some pics of it running mame











Verticle games look great on it aswell i really would love to make a mini cocktail cab using a eeepc but as i said i don't think i can bring myself to take it apart

[Kangum]

ohhhh mame looks really great. I have no clue how to run it from a network like you did. In fact thats why I hadnt tested mame yet because of the space requirements. i dont want to put to much stuf on it because i think i may try some mods.

Have you seen the touchscreen mode from the asus eee website.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3VaerIGpO5Q

that touchscreen modification only cost him 60 bucks. this is something I may look into after watching his install video. there is almost no soldering at all and it goes into the internal usb port.

[NiN^_^NiN]

Playing mame or any emulator on a network is easy

Im guessing your using wifi to access the net? if so on ur main pc where the wifi is just right click on the mame folder and click properties then the sharing tab and share the folder

all you do is access the share through the network icon in windows explorer and run the mame.exe

it runs mame on the eee pc but accesses all the roms and settings from the main pc and streams it

I have a 802.11g wireless router i dont know if a 802.11b router will have enough bandwidth you can only try

[quarterback]

the cloudbook looks cool but i dont care for via cpu at all.

I've been unsuccessful in trying to find some kind of benchmark / speed test comparing these CPUs to each other, or to standard desktop or laptop CPUs.  Is there such a thing somewhere or is the CPU world just to convoluted at this point?

Also, is there something I should know about the VIA cpu that I might not know?

Still curious about these questions in case anybody's got any info for me.
Thanks

[NiN^_^NiN]

The VIA cpu is a great low powered cpu i run one in my car on a miniitx board the only problem with VIA cpu is the mhz doesnt seem to match the same from a intel chip

The 1.5ghz cpu is good if it has all the other great chips for video and audio but i dont know what the cloud book is running with via have been a great manufacture for low powered systems i wouldnt worry but id say wait till there are user reviews on youtube before u buy

[Howard_Casto]

Hey sicne you've got xp on it could you check the direct-x support for me?  I know it isn't gonna fly or anything, I just wondered if the video card is Dx compatable.  I could see putting these in arcade conversions, particularly cocktails.  The cheaper model is 300 bucks and you can't even buy junk parts for that. 

[ark_ader]

The graphics card is a GMA 900 so at least DirectX 8 should be functional on it.

[NiN^_^NiN]

It runs DX great ive been playing GTA VC for awhile on it the card does quite well it is even good on WoW untill you get to an outside area with alot of movement.

If you have anything specific you want me to try i'll give it a go but it runs all DX games that have been released in the past few years half life ran great too so whatever your wanting to run its probably gonna run fine

[Howard_Casto]

It runs DX great ive been playing GTA VC for awhile on it the card does quite well it is even good on WoW untill you get to an outside area with alot of movement.

If you have anything specific you want me to try i'll give it a go but it runs all DX games that have been released in the past few years half life ran great too so whatever your wanting to run its probably gonna run fine

That's all I wanted to know, thanks!  I was thinking of buying one for my gorf machine and installing a stripped down version of xp and a custom build of dragon king.  Dk doesn't need to be running on a fast pc, but it does need a video card that is fully dx8 complaint.  If it'll run gta then it'll run dk no problem. 

[Howard_Casto]

Oh btw... if you want to benchmark the processor, fire up mame and run 1944 or metal slug 5 on it.  Those particular games are about the maximum that a 900mhz pc can handle in mame. 

[NiN^_^NiN]

I'll try 1944 tonight for you just to see how it's running

Only bad thing about the EEE PC is it doesn't support 640 x 480 in Dx games (GTA VC) i had to use a hacked video driver to make it work.

Its ok but the hacked video driver doesn't allow you to use the external monitor as a mirror only as another monitor with the desktop extended and it also doesn't allow you to use sleep or hibernate the driver gets messed up when you wake up but otherwise it's fine

As mentioned in this thread 640 x 480 might work ok on a eternal monitor on stock drivers

Only problem i see in using it as a mame machine is the external monitor you might have to enable it each time the machine boots up (altho if u use stock driver and use hibernate that might solve the problem)

As for getting hot or battery life the battery life is around 2 to 3 hours it depends how bright the screen is and if the wifi is turned off it would be fine for watching maybe 2 standard movies

I've only used it for watching family guy around the house from the main pc and playing MAME off the main pc too and never had any problems i finished Dinosaurs and Caddalics (sp?) with heaps of battery time left.

The hotness of the laptop is pretty good it has a fan on the side that blows hot air out but also has 3 vents on the bottom of the unit

I have spent a full sick day in bed using the laptop on my chest and it got warm but it didn't get so hot as to burn but it was high up on the warm scale.

[NiN^_^NiN]

Ok cause im such a nice guy i installed the original video drivers and set the intel software to use monitor and the LCD on the eee pc

This worked out great you can start up the EEE PC and it will run on the external monitor perfectly

I did try out 1944 and that ran as smooth as silk and thats streaming over wifi for it aswell

I didn't try 1944 out on the external monitor sorry but i don't see any problem with that

I should remind u that altho the 900mhz celeron cpu is 900mhz on all the games that people have tested it ran at around min 1.5ghz on alot of games they played with no problem

Do you have a more intensive mame game i can try out on the eee pc to benchmark it abit better?

Only downside to installing this into a cabinet is that you need to remove a magnet out of the case so the eee pc can start while the lid is closed.

as for starting the eee pc without wiring in a cable internally inside id use a small solonoid that can just push the button on and off it would be very simple

Another option is to wire in a hall effect switch so you just have to swipe you hand under the lip of the lid to start the pc aswell 

If there is anything else u want tested just ask im happy too

[Howard_Casto]

Well area 51 (if you've got the chds handy) would be chugging.  The problem with mame is there is a huge jump in performance.... a 1 gig processor will handle 90% of the games and the one's it won't handle, for the most part need a 4+gig intel processor.

[Howard_Casto]

About the magnet, couldn't you just put a stiff piece of plastic over it?

[NiN^_^NiN]

I'll try to get the area 51 files soon to test

And no the magnet is used to turn a reed switch off so the pc can't be turned on while the pc is closed its just using the magnetism so you would need to somehow block that and i have no idea how to do that one really

[Samstag]

And no the magnet is used to turn a reed switch off so the pc can't be turned on while the pc is closed its just using the magnetism so you would need to somehow block that and i have no idea how to do that one really

Wouldn't it be easier to change the power options to allow it to run while closed?

[abrannan]

Not to interrupt the performance questions about the EEE, but I saw this site today:

http://beta.ivancover.com/wiki/index.php/Eee_PC_Internal_Upgrades

Where they effectively add on to the EEE using extra available space in the case (yes, there actually is enough space left inside to add components). 

[polaris]

couple of questions

how is surfing the web on it, comfortable enough?

is it the solid state hard drive that makes this so fast to boot an windows run so fast? ive seen something similar but it has a regular hard drive.

[NiN^_^NiN]

And no the magnet is used to turn a reed switch off so the pc can't be turned on while the pc is closed its just using the magnetism so you would need to somehow block that and i have no idea how to do that one really

Wouldn't it be easier to change the power options to allow it to run while closed?

It's a hardware feature not a software feature

It can run closed mine runs closed all the time but the reed switch actually disables the power switch when the lid is closed its a hardware measure to make sure it wont turn on with the lid closed its not a software problem the pc can be on but i can't shut it down even tho i can push the power button while the lid is closed the power switch isn't connected when the magnet is in range. The only way is to take the magnet out or counteract the magnetism with a piece of material but i don't know how to stop magnetism

As for the sufring its great the screen size isnt a problem at all and the screen size is 800 x 480 altho u can make it bigger i leave it at this size it works on all the websites i got to and yahoo and any other flash video site works to and fits in the firefox window if its set to fullscreen

I've been using it for surfing around the net and downloading podcasts etc. the great thing is that i have a G wireless router and the eee pc supports G so i can stream movies games and even mame over the wifi without any problems what so ever and without being limited to the 4 gig space of the HDD

The hdd is quite fast and the pc is quite fast in xp or any os it even runs vista pretty well aswell if u ever wanted to run that os.

As for the upgrades yeah there have been quite a few cool ones a guy has stuck 2 16gb flash drives inside the unit to give him more space aswell quite cool but that one is the most involved so far

[Howard_Casto]

is it the solid state hard drive that makes this so fast to boot an windows run so fast? ive seen something similar but it has a regular hard drive.

Yes, that's the reason.  Solid state hd's are superior to regular hds in every way.  The only reason we don't have them in our pcs now is the high cost.  I think the largest you can get atm is around 16 gigs and you'll pay a fortune for that.