[clue-talk] new Asus Eee computers

[dennisjperkins at comcast.net]

I bought an Eee 1000.  It is slightly larger than the original and is 10.5 inches wide, so the keyboard is 80% the size of a regular keyboard.  Typing is easier, the screen is 8.9 inches and has 1024x 760 resolution.  The webcam resolution is supposed to be better too.

The Celeron has been replaced by the Intel Atom, which uses a lot less power... only 2W as opposed to 25.  Speed is 1.6 GHz and has hyperthreading, but no multicore.  The battery now has 6 cells, and they are claiming 4-6.5 hours on battery.

It has a 40 GB SSD, but if you want Windows or want a hard drive, get the 1000H instead.  Even if you don't want Windows, you might consider buying it and putting Linux on it, because New Egg is selling it for $550 instead of the 1000's $700.  I think the cost of the SSD is the reason for the difference, but hopefully that price will drop soon.

I didn't like the Xandros distro on it, so I put Eeebuntu on an SDHC chip.  Therein began the adventure.  No network!  It turns out that the Ethernet and wireless chips are not the same as on the 701, altho it sounds like the 900 has the same chips.  I found out which drivers are needed and downloaded them.  I compiled the wireless driver and finally got my wireless connection working.  Documentation on restricted WEP is very poor and contradictory, so it took a couple of evenings of digging to find out how to do it.

The Ethernet driver will be tackled next.

I think I will try one or two other distros on their own SDHC chips.  There is Eeedora and Archeee (Arch Linux).  Then I will probably tackle putting LFS on it.  I think I might build it on another machine and then copy it onto the Eee.