Discussion
cyberface said:
I don't think they're aimed at the same market... which is why I have both. The Air for general work (train commute and office work) and an ultraportable for travel where work isn't as intense.
The "two laptop minimum" idea is pretty common.http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2008/03/com...
One of the few blogs I read everyday, and one of the few places where Windows, OS X and Linux get equal love.
LukeBird said:
But at the higher-clocked models, a stripped down Celeron is going to give bigger bang for your buck 
Not so sure about that, the Samsung Q1 has a lot of processor options, 900Mhz Celeron, 1.0Ghz Pentium, 800Mhz A110 and a Core Solo. The new Q1U Premium with the Core Solo smokes the others, the Celeron and the A110 are about the same in the various benchmarks. Celeron is slightly faster, but not by the amount that the A110 increase battery life. The Core Solo needs a bigger battery however.
Interestingly we found that the SSD option (along with 2Gb Ram for Vista) made the biggest single difference to speed.
IMHO Intel will have to ramp up the Atom a fair bit to get it to run "big" OSes with any degree of acceptable usabilty. Unless MS pull their finger out with Windows 7 and produce something lighter, then these Lintel devices are going to be hard to beat.
Noger said:
Not so sure about that, the Samsung Q1 has a lot of processor options, 900Mhz Celeron, 1.0Ghz Pentium, 800Mhz A110 and a Core Solo.
The new Q1U Premium with the Core Solo smokes the others, the Celeron and the A110 are about the same in the various benchmarks. Celeron is slightly faster, but not by the amount that the A110 increase battery life. The Core Solo needs a bigger battery however.
Interestingly we found that the SSD option (along with 2Gb Ram for Vista) made the biggest single difference to speed.
IMHO Intel will have to ramp up the Atom a fair bit to get it to run "big" OSes with any degree of acceptable usabilty. Unless MS pull their finger out with Windows 7 and produce something lighter, then these Lintel devices are going to be hard to beat.
Interesting stuff there, thanks! The new Q1U Premium with the Core Solo smokes the others, the Celeron and the A110 are about the same in the various benchmarks. Celeron is slightly faster, but not by the amount that the A110 increase battery life. The Core Solo needs a bigger battery however.
Interestingly we found that the SSD option (along with 2Gb Ram for Vista) made the biggest single difference to speed.
IMHO Intel will have to ramp up the Atom a fair bit to get it to run "big" OSes with any degree of acceptable usabilty. Unless MS pull their finger out with Windows 7 and produce something lighter, then these Lintel devices are going to be hard to beat.
Found the bit about SSD's interesting. I currently run a raptor (36Gb) for an XP boot drive, and a pair of 150Gb Raptors in RAID 0 (hardware RAID) as program drives, I'd dearly like to change them for SSDs, but I didn't think the cost would be beneficial. Interesting to hear it can be
AIUI SSD is very fast read (understandable given the almost zero seek time) but fairly slow on writes.
We saw significant reduction in boot time using an SSD, people found it could halve the boot time.
No idea what that would mean in comparision to your speedy SATA drives however. XP would fit on a 16Gb SSD though, and they are not bonkers money now. Interesting project
We saw significant reduction in boot time using an SSD, people found it could halve the boot time.
No idea what that would mean in comparision to your speedy SATA drives however. XP would fit on a 16Gb SSD though, and they are not bonkers money now. Interesting project
Noger said:
AIUI SSD is very fast read (understandable given the almost zero seek time) but fairly slow on writes.
We saw significant reduction in boot time using an SSD, people found it could halve the boot time.
No idea what that would mean in comparision to your speedy SATA drives however. XP would fit on a 16Gb SSD though, and they are not bonkers money now. Interesting project
Indeed it would be We saw significant reduction in boot time using an SSD, people found it could halve the boot time.
No idea what that would mean in comparision to your speedy SATA drives however. XP would fit on a 16Gb SSD though, and they are not bonkers money now. Interesting project
I was quite tempted when I (re)built but I want the OS on a separate drive to a suicide RAID set. Hence having 3 raptors
As expensive as that lot was, it'd be nothing in comparison to a 16Gb SSD and then 2 128's! 
The seek time on my raptors is very quick, but the read and write (and sustained) is pretty impressive in RAID 0. Perhaps my next rebuild
I will be taking my eee on holiday with me and am hoping to allow the kids to watch some DVD's, Can I get some advise on how to do it, I assume I would need to get a memory card , Sandisk thing, Can I get several films onto one card ? advise on size of card needed.
Then the hard bit for me how do I get the DVD onto a memory card ?
Can I also get TV on the eee900 or would that be talking up too much of the memory. I think the memory of the new one is larger than the old one but not sure how much difference it makes.
so many questions, assuming I can get TV can I also use the slingbox thing that connects to my home Sky ? or is that taking it too far ?
Then the hard bit for me how do I get the DVD onto a memory card ?
Can I also get TV on the eee900 or would that be talking up too much of the memory. I think the memory of the new one is larger than the old one but not sure how much difference it makes.
so many questions, assuming I can get TV can I also use the slingbox thing that connects to my home Sky ? or is that taking it too far ?
Exigeowner said:
I will be taking my eee on holiday with me and am hoping to allow the kids to watch some DVD's, Can I get some advise on how to do it, I assume I would need to get a memory card , Sandisk thing, Can I get several films onto one card ? advise on size of card needed.
As big as possible. A typical film, once compressed, will take up 700MB - 1.4GB, so work out how many films you want to take.Exigeowner said:
Then the hard bit for me how do I get the DVD onto a memory card ?
You can either download them ready compressed (illegally) or rip/compress them yourself, usually turning them into an .avi file. There are myriad ways of doing this; I use something called Gordian Knot to do it, but this can be confusing. Have a look and choose one that works for you: http://www.google.co.uk/search?source=ig&hl=en... Edited by mft on Tuesday 6th May 18:07
Noger said:
p.s. Does the eee work with a USB 3G modem ?
The 701 is actually rated for the Huawei U220 (as in it's written as supported in the manual!!!) but any Linux distro can download the Vodafone package for the modem (they just present themselves as normal serial modems to the OS on the other side of the USB port - all the clever UMTS stuff is done on the other side of the modem).As a result I'd expect the Eee to work with the E172 speedy-modem as well... I would test it for you but it's all packed up for its new owner tomorrow
However I'm receiving my new Eee 900 tomorrow (according to City Link, so may not) and will test the E172 HSUPA with that. I bet it will work. The cool thing about those USB 3G modems is that they always worked with Windows, Mac OS X and Linux from the very start - even before Mac drivers were officially included, it was obvious that they were just another USB serial modem to the OS - and Linux-like techniques worked fine for OS X. You can get a Vodem working on a Mac without the Vodafone drivers, incidentally - it's just more hassle.
When I was messing with the Eee 701 I acquired a Linux package for the Vodafone drivers (presumably a Linux app as well, that's nice of Vodafone)... called vodafone-connect-card-driver-for-linux-1.99.17.tar.gz - I'm assuming there are later versions as well. The PCMCIA card also acted as a modem and needed the same init strings so should work perfectly.
I am most certainly expecting to be able to use my 900 with the E172 on 3.5G (I'm getting 6 Mbps downstream on that thing at home...). And compared to the Macbook Air, at least, I'll be able to plug it in without a short extension cable (the dongle's too fat to fit in the MB Air's single, tiny, shrouded USB socket
)cyberface said:
I would test it for you but it's all packed up for its new owner tomorrow
Sorry to hijack a little, but does she have a new owner yet? I'll be interested to hear how you get on with the new one, looks like it could be the ideal size between a 'proper' laptop and the original eee
Edited because I can't quote properly...
Edited by LukeBird on Tuesday 6th May 21:21
LukeBird said:
cyberface said:
I would test it for you but it's all packed up for its new owner tomorrow
Sorry to hijack a little, but does she have a new owner yet? I'll be interested to hear how you get on with the new one, looks like it could be the ideal size between a 'proper' laptop and the original eee
Edited because I can't quote properly...
Edited by LukeBird on Tuesday 6th May 21:21
If City Link do what they claim on their website, a shiny white Eee 900 will turn up at Cyberface Towers tomorrow, whilst the first Eee 701 to run Mac OS X *properly* in the world will be handed to its new owner at lunchtime in a pub in London...
I'm seriously considering trying a Hackintosh again on the 900... it's 1024x600 now and that's a lot more real estate... though height was the main issue. Hmm... though eeeXubuntu was rather good with Compiz, it was also more than a tad buggy. I don't care about the problem with the wireless ethernet and the L2 wired ethernet in OS X if I can get the E172 Huawei Vodem to work, as that's pretty much broadband already... We will see!! And 20 GB of space is ample, whereas 4 GB was a touch tight for OS X (fine for Linux, of course).
Watch this space... I'll probably start a new thread at the weekend when I've got time to have a play (assuming City Link deliver... I'm always instantly on guard when a vendor confidently tells me they use City Link...
)Regarding 'right size between original Eee and a 'proper' laptop' - it's more or less the same size. Full info here. Just the 4GB soldered-on-board-flash model with an additional 16 GB removable SSD, and the speakers relocated to the base of the unit, and a wider screen. Other than that, the same. I hope they've solved the SD card overheating issues, and have some nice new BIOSes to try.
And lastly, there are rumours that the units shipped to reviewers had 5800 mAh batteries, but the ones being sold to customers have 4400 mAh batteries. This would be somewhat irritating (1.5 hour battery life with the big new screen? no thanks) so we will see....
Edited by cyberface on Tuesday 6th May 22:22
Cyberface, I will be interested for your thoughts on the size difference having both machines together ( when yours arrives ) It seems to be a fair bit bigger to me but it may be a good trade off to have that bigger screen,
My battery is the 4400 so not too impressed with that, I guess all the UK machines have been purchased on the gray market, I did read somewhere that all the units purchased in teh far east that had the smaller batteries that Asus replaced then for the 5800 but I would assume that will not include units purchased in the UK, Update on your battery size when it arrives.
My battery is the 4400 so not too impressed with that, I guess all the UK machines have been purchased on the gray market, I did read somewhere that all the units purchased in teh far east that had the smaller batteries that Asus replaced then for the 5800 but I would assume that will not include units purchased in the UK, Update on your battery size when it arrives.
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