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..







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*



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:

• USB flash drive (1Gb or bigger)
  
• Copy of Win XP (I used Win XP Pro SP2)
  
• Access to a Win XP PC or laptop (to prepare the USB flash drive)
  
• Tutorial: Installing Windows XP on the Asus Eee PC ~ EEEguides.com
  

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:







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.











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:

nice review! u could have spiced it up with a pic or two i guess



edit: sorry my bad! photobucket is banned in my corporate firewall list, so cant see any images. :@