Sunday, October 5, 2008

My rEEEview of the Asus Eeepc 900

Ok im a a week or so into my ownership of the Asus Eeepc and I think that I can now give a fair review. Because I'm a giant nerd the first thing I had to do is get rid of Xandros. Xandros is a huge pie o shit. This has nothing to do with the patient agreement with Micrsoft they have, this is solely about software... its shit. Nothing was intuitive, it seemed like there was a hodgepodge of software and none of it was integrated. So I tried to install eeebuntu. Tried is the operative word, the version of ubnetbootin was borked, and after a day of hacking on it, i had gotten nowhere and I was at work and had no net access so I was stuck trying to get
that download working. Once i got home i decided to try ubuntu-eee and OMFG is it great the older and better version of ubnetbootin was preconfigured for the ubuntu-eee hardy image and installed first try, NO ISSUES!!!!! Everything but the SD card slot works. Wifi,
webcam, sleep, power saving, all of it, so eff an SD card slot. You can see screenshots at http://www.unixporn.com/screenshots/thumbnails.php?album=5

And now on to hardware I got the 8.9 inch eeepc 900 with a 900 MHz Intel Celeron processor, 16 gb sshd, and 1gb of ram. this thing is awesome!! the keyboard is a bit of a pain in the ass. but i am getting used to it. these keys are tiny, but that isn't the real problem. the real issue is all of the non letter keys (tab, enter, backspace) are smaller than the letter keys. that drives me nuts! but again i am getting used to it. i really don't know what else to say this thing is tiny and pretty powerful. I could have gotten this with a 1.n GHz Inttel atom processor but I don't feel like i am missing anything 900mgz is more than enough

For all of the uber nerds here is my lshw:

three@ScreeechOwl:~$ lshw
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
screeechowl
description: Computer
width: 32 bits
*-core
description: Motherboard
physical id: 0
*-memory
description: System memory
physical id: 0
size: 1002MiB
*-cpu
product: Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor 900MHz
vendor: Intel Corp.
physical id: 1
bus info: cpu@0
version: 6.13.8
size: 900MHz
capacity: 900MHz
width: 32 bits
capabilities: fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse
sse2 ss tm pbe nx up bts cpufreq
*-pci
description: Host bridge
product: Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 100
bus info: pci@0000:00:00.0
version: 04
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
configuration: driver=agpgart-intel module=intel_agp
*-display:0 UNCLAIMED
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 04
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list
configuration: latency=0
*-display:1 UNCLAIMED
description: Display controller
product: Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2.1
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.1
version: 04
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list
configuration: latency=0
*-multimedia
description: Audio device
product: 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1b
bus info: pci@0000:00:1b.0
version: 04
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=HDA Intel latency=0 module=snd_hda_intel
*-pci:0
description: PCI bridge
product: 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1c
bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.0
version: 04
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pci normal_decode bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=pcieport-driver
*-pci:1
description: PCI bridge
product: 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 2
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1c.1
bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.1
version: 04
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pci normal_decode bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=pcieport-driver
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: L2 100 Mbit Ethernet Adapter
vendor: Attansic Technology Corp.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
logical name: eth0
version: a0
serial: 00:22:15:2e:d3:b2
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=atl2 driverversion=2.0.5 firmware=L2 latency=0 module=atl2 multicast=yes
*-pci:2
description: PCI bridge
product: 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 3
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1c.2
bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.2
version: 04
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pci normal_decode bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=pcieport-driver
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter
vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
logical name: wifi0
version: 01
serial: 00:15:af:b5:91:79
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list logical ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath_pci latency=0 module=ath_pci multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g
*-usb:0
description: USB Controller
product: 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1d
bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.0
version: 04
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: uhci bus_master
configuration: driver=uhci_hcd latency=0 module=uhci_hcd
*-usb:1
description: USB Controller
product: 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1d.1
bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.1
version: 04
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: uhci bus_master
configuration: driver=uhci_hcd latency=0 module=uhci_hcd
*-usb:2
description: USB Controller
product: 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1d.2
bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.2
version: 04
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: uhci bus_master
configuration: driver=uhci_hcd latency=0 module=uhci_hcd
*-usb:3
description: USB Controller
product: 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1d.3
bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.3
version: 04
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: uhci bus_master
configuration: driver=uhci_hcd latency=0 module=uhci_hcd
*-usb:4
description: USB Controller
product: 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1d.7
bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.7
version: 04
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: ehci bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=ehci_hcd latency=0 module=ehci_hcd
*-pci:3
description: PCI bridge
product: 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1e
bus info: pci@0000:00:1e.0
version: d4
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pci subtractive_decode bus_master cap_list
*-isa
description: ISA bridge
product: 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1f
bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.0
version: 04
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: isa bus_master
configuration: latency=0
*-ide
description: IDE interface
product: 82801FBM (ICH6M) SATA Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1f.2
bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.2
version: 04
width: 32 bits
clock: 66MHz
capabilities: ide bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=ata_piix latency=0 module=ata_piix
*-serial UNCLAIMED
description: SMBus
product: 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1f.3
bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.3
version: 04
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
configuration: latency=0
*-scsi
physical id: 1
bus info: scsi@2
logical name: scsi2
capabilities: scsi-host
configuration: driver=usb-storage

1 comment:

Klaatu said...

You didn't like Xandros?? How could you not love those huge Fisher-Price icons, the lack of a well integrated file manager, the random way the apps pop open or take over the screen (just depending on what the app in question feels like) when you open them? Or what about the random categoris they placed the apps into, making it impossible to find the same app or control panel twice? Maybe that patent deal they signed with Microsoft specified that they would forever have to make clunky, non-intuitive, over-sized interfaces?