Asus Eee PC 8G -- Opinions please!

Is yours the 7-inch one? Or the 8.9-inch one?

I prefer not to have a hard drive. It's a question of ruggedness. And I don't watch movies while I travel. On the plane I listen to audio books or music on my iPod, and in the hotel I read a book.

Target lists their 8.9-inch one as 2.13 lbs, so that may be the way to go, but there are so many 8.9-inch versions listed on the Asus web site that it's nearly impossible to tell what's what. The one at Target costs the same as the 7-inch one, but has only 4 GB of memory instead of 8.

Multiple versions, with sometimes minor differences, makes choosing difficult.

 

Okay, so I'm writing this on my new 9-inch (actually 8.9) Asus Eee computer. This is actually the first thing I'm writing on it. It works out of the box, running Linux. More later, after I've done some other stuff. Based on what I'd read, I decided the 7-inch would be too small for comfortable typing. This weighs 2 lb 3 oz, and is not bad for typing on.

 

No modding for me. I just want to try to get a chess game onto it. Sadly, you still can't just put a program on Linux. You have to find the repository, and make sure it's not the wrong repository which would trash the system, then you have to figure out the dependencies, and make sure none of them conflict with what's already on your system, and then you can run aptitude or synaptic and hope you can figure out the correct answer to all the "Do you really want to continue?" prompts, and then maybe the program will run.

So that's probably a pipe dream, but it does email and web browsing and I can send faxes via eFax, and that's what I really needed.

As for battery life, it's not really an issue. Anywhere I have an internet connection there's probably an electrical outlet.

I still wish it weighed half of what it does, though.

 

#1: "Building from source." This is all well and good if you have some idea how to build from source, you know where to find the source, and you are confident that you have the right source for your system.

#2: "Is this not true for other OSs?" No. With the Macintosh you find a web site by googling the name of the program you want, you click on "download," you save the file you get and click on it, it opens a window with a "package," you click on that and you're done.

#3 "Advanced desktop mode." Asus does not provide a switch between Easy and Advanced desktop modes. There are threads on the Asus chat boards, and articles in the wiki. The instructions are full of digressions such as "If you are running the 900 you must do THIS first." where "THIS" is a link to a thread written in ambiguous language, and full of warnings not to allow some obscure thing to happen.

Example: In one spot it warns that a certain file has comma-separated fields and when deleting elements you must be careful to leave the "correct" number of commas. But it does not say whether the "correct" number is the original number, or just one comma between each remaining element.

Apparently, the Advanced desktop is a shell that must be installed like any other program!!! It's not provided on the computer.

Simply because it's an alternative to Microsoft garbageware. For a small traveling computer the alternatives are:

1. Windows garbageware,
2. An $1,800 MacBook Air which weighs 3 pounds, and for me every pound makes a difference, or
3. The $250 Asus which weighs 2 lbs, 3 oz including the battery.

But I had thought that Linux had advanced a little in the two years since I last tried it.

Open offer: $100 cash to anyone who will come to my house, install the Advanced desktop, and install knights and xboard (which together make up a chess program for Linux). Or if you are located within 100 miles of me, I'll come to you for the work.

Tomorrow I'll phone a few computer service folks from the Yellow Pages. Today is Sunday...

 

Mjolinor: Thanks for the offer of help. Unfortunately, with the Asus, you don't just double-click a downloaded file to get it to install. There are repeated injunctions that Install/Remove is broken and should not be used. And on the Eee forums there appears to be no straightforward instructions for the 900. The instructions are for the 701, with parenthetical interjections to run another program first if you're on a 900, but the instructions for that are in another thread, and are unclear, and very complex. I followed three levels of nested "do this first" posts before giving up due to the complexity.

The explanations are written by users, and they are not worded for clarity. Often there is an assumption that the reader understands Linux and merely needs to know what's different about this non-standard version of Xandros. Maybe my real complaint should be that Asus did not use a standard Linux distro. (If I should be reduced to returning the machine, that will be my reason/excuse.)

However, tomorrow morning I am going to phone the local conputer service places and see if I can find a Linux professional who can set it up for me, and maybe teach me some stuff in the process.

BTW, everything seems to come down to using a program called pimpmyeee.sh which was written by a user for the 701, and warns against using it with the 900. Asus itself does not provide an advanced desktop or a chess program, and there are repeated warnings that using the common repositories could damage the OS used in the Asus.

Jonny: I agree that Linux is in theory a great system. The problem is that for those of us who do not uderstand the context of the commands, or the nature of the files in the dependencies, it becomes very frustrating. With OSX you don't need to understand any of this stuff.

I never complained about being asked for a password. In fact, OS X always asks for both an administrator's name and password, but my Asus never does. Just typing "sudo" gives the program administrator privileges.

As for "add repository," I have not yet figured out how to add a repository, and I am frightened by the often repeated injunctions that non-Asus repositories can break the OS due to (if I understand correctly) non-standard dependencies in the Asus.

Some folks have recommended just installing ubuntu on the Asus. But since I never managed to get ubuntu working properly on my old laptop, I'm scared to try. If you were here I'd be delighted to have you install ubuntu or Suse on my Asus.

But after all this ranting, the bottom line is that just as it is, out of the box, my Asus will do everything I really need it to. A chess program and the advanced desktop would be nice to have, but they are not necessary. And I'll happily take this over Windows.

It's just frustrating that it's still so difficult to install a program.

 

Yep, I'm aware that the "gimped" version of Linux on this box is not how Linux normally works. I was using Linspire on my laptop before I got the N800, and quite liked it, except that the box was too heavy.

I'd like to learn how to do this stuff myself. But it is rather daunting without a local mentor. And Asus puts the restore disk on a DVD rather than a CD, so I cannot use my existing external drive to do a restore! I cannot believe that restoring the Eee really requires the capacity of a DVD. And Asus does not support the Advanced desktop. You have to search the net for it, then install it, and as noted above, it's not a simple apt-get, it appears you have to do a lot of tweaking, etc. If I cannot find someone to help me with this locally, I'll probably just give up on having chess and/or the advanced desktop, and just use it for the main reason I got it: email, web browsing, and faxes.

It renders web pages much better than the N800, and I can actually type on it almost as easily as on my home computer. And at 2 pounds and no moving parts it really should be nice for travel.

Oh, and thanks for the warning against trying to run Ubuntu on it.

 

Yes, that was one of the files. But there were other daunting things, such as the admonitions about non-standard dependencies and conflicts if one uses the wrong repos, etc.

Upon further consideration, I have decided that the Advanced desktop is not necessary. This is not to be a work or play computer. I still have Linspire on the old laptop if I ever want to just play with Linux at home. The Asus is a travel computer, so really, the only thing I want to do is add a chess program, and from my reading, knights and xboard sounds like the way to do it. I can live with the Easy desktop. I'll be using OpenOffice, Firefox, Solitaire, and (if I can get it) a chess program. That's all I need, and all I really want.

This thread on the EeeUser board tells how to do this, but as my post at the end of the thread says, I ran into problems. The instructions begin with running pimpmyeee.sh, but that program is for the 701, and warns against using it on the 900, and the instructions do not say which repo has knights and xboard, but elsewhere there are warnings about non-Asus repos screwing up Xandros.

If you could talk me through getting chess on my Asus, I'd really have everything I need to make it the travel computer I want.