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The pre-installed OS is pretty good for most things, but I find it is a bit limiting for real work. Xandros comes with KDE 3.4.2, so installing any newer KDE based apps is tricky, since that will force the upgrade of the kdelibs and could break stuff.
The other reason why the default OS is not appealing to me is that there is a 2.3GB read only partition for the OS files and pre-installed programs. So you only have 1.4GB for your user files on the built-in drive. That wouldn't really be such a big problem if you could free up some space, however even if you uninstall apps you don't use, you can't actually use any of that freed space because no data gets removed from the system partition. And if you install new apps it uses space on your user partition.

So that's a no go. I installed plain debian on my EeePC and it works really nicely. All the apps I need (Firefox, Openoffice, Kopete, Konversation, KDevelop, , plus a full Qt/C++ development enviroment fits into 1.5GB so I have more functionality in much less space and much more flexibility. Got an extra 4GB SD card so I might put Windows on that (although windows is a bitch to install on removable storage).

Overall the EeePC is really awesome.. Even though it has a small screen, I find I'm using my main laptop less and less at home. There's a huge benefit to having something you can easily carry around with one hand, has no moving parts, and can use in any place, and boots up super fast.

The design is too boring. It looks like old dad's laptop, suddenly found when cleaning the house. Palm's Foleo could be much more attractive.

and I'm using it with the default "Simple" os and it works splendid!

I did write a couple shell scripts to launch through the file manager for some programs not accessable from the easy interface (and yes, I know I could fire up xterm and do so) but I wanted something quick, so I've got .sh files to launch Rdesktop as well as a few other programs.

I kept it at the default because the speed is what I wanted out of it, I wanted the 20 second boot and the 8 second shutdown, I wanted a laptop to sit under my coffee table that I can bust out for a few minutes here or a few minutes there to check movie times, showtimes or even check my mail.

Good stuff in this tiny package, I dropped a 2g SD card in for some extra space, but for my needs, I don't think it's really necessary.

...as a Christmas present. It's not bad. I don't much like the Asus version of IceWM, but I was able to enable a start menu and add quite a few programs to the default IceWM interface (more is installed than the simple, big buttons indicate). To create start menu items, the package icemc helps. I also enabled KDE (apt-get install ksmserver kicker), which runs quickly.

http://linux.wordpress.com/2007/11/06/eee-pc-adding-a-start-menu-an...

Software availability is very limited with the default repositories, and the best solution is to add the standard Xandros repositories to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://xnv4.xandros.com/xs2.0/upkg-srv2 etch main contrib non-free
deb http://dccamirror.xandros.com/dccri/ dccri-3.0 main

While still somewhat limited, these help a lot. I suppose you could also grab from Debian Stable, if you need something not provided by Xandros. In general, Xandros packages are older than Debian Stable's. The EEE PC uses newer versions of the Kernel, OpenOffice, and Firefox, however.

My impressions: Overall the system boots quickly and runs well. The system suspends, but does not hibernate, as there is no swap file. Startup is well under 30 seconds.

Lots of stuff is labeled "Xandros" this and Xandros" that. The weirdest one was Xandros Anti-virus. It's just ClamAV. The Xandros file manager is showing its age. Konqueror 3.4, though old, is a vastly better file manager.

Probably the strangest thing I have done is install Qemu and run Windows 98 at 640x480. Kqemu will not compile, even with the appropriate kernel source downloaded from Xandros.

To give a flavor of what this little toy can do, I took my daughter to choir practice, and waited at a coffee shop that offered free WiFi. I did some sermon prep using OpenOffice files I had put on an 8 gig. SD card (which also holds /usr/source). I used Firefox to browse resources on the Web (updated to 2.0.0.11) while looking at reference material on Windows 98. It was easy to switch back and forth. The WIFI worked fine, and I suspended everything when going out to plug the parking meter. In the end I was quite wired, and I had a sermon prepped.

I had to fly recently, and found the EEE PC much easier to work with than my last laptop. I don't fly first class, so there isn't much room for a laptop on the standard airline tray table. There is for this puppy.

The screen is small and lacks vertical resolution. Learn the ALT-F11 key in IceWM, as it toggles the removal of the window boarder. On KDE you can have programs start with no boarder by default.

The keyboard is bigger than the screen, but still small. You can't tough type on it, but I haven't found it a problem. I use two (rarely three) fingers on each hand to type, and can get up a bit of a head of steam.

If you don't fear playing with config files, you can set up IceWM to show a double height task bar that auto-hides. KDE lets you do this by right clicking the Kicker, and selecting "Configure Panel."

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4062

I managed to hose my installation the day I got it; I fully expected to. That's when I learned how to use the restore disk, and boot off of a USB based DVD-RW player.

I've been tempted to pick one of these up, but a few things about it that are a turn off for me.

Namely that the 900Mhz cpu has been underclocked to 630Mhz. Now I understand this thing isn't ment to be a speed demon but 270Mhz is a rather large chunk to be missing in a sub 1ghz cpu. Its like buying a dell with a 3.2Ghz cpu and finding out that it only runs at 2.5Ghz unless you void your warranty

Speaking of warranty upgrading your ram voids it, and the ssd would as well but its soldered into the motherboard.

I don't own a Eee PC but I have used one. This is what it thought:

Pros: Sensible UI, Good performance for price, full-featured apps

Cons: Ugly (White is so-so, Black is fugly)

I am ordering an OLPC (from G1G1) because of its nice screen (big, high-res and swivel), interesting UI, mesh networking (with myself lol but still cool) and of course, giving to charity for the same price.

What's it for? I think of it as perhaps an upgraded PDA, or something you could travel with if you don't want to lug, or have the space for, a full-sized laptop, or even an ultra-light laptop.

While some have mentioned that the 4 GB flash memory drive is small -- and so it is -- the machine also sports a couple USB2 ports, so a small form factor external hard drive could be plugged in without being too much of an additional burden in size or weight. That same drive could be shared with your main computer to synchronize files.

Has anyone heard of a working modem solution for the Eee? This would be perfect for traveling light, but sometimes this means using dialup or dialing directly in to devices, and IIRC this has been a problem so far.

Psion series 5/MX was such an amazing product. perfect size, perfect keyboard, lighter than any comparable device even today. Just make a similar one with today's technologies of CPU/mem/Screen and it's gonna be an instant winner. Compared to the Series 5, the EEPC looks so clumsy and waste of estate, especially the screen area. To make the EEPC perfect, it needs to dump the touchpad area and leave the bottom part with KB only, have touch screen, make the upper part same size as the bottom and let the screen have the entire area of the upper part. The speakers should be on the sides. That would be cool.

Edited 2007-12-06 01:34

Anyone wanting a larger screen must also realise that this will also require a larger battery and all of this costs money.

One of the reasons for the small screen was to conserve battery power, since the screen is probably the single biggest power consumer in the whole unit.

It would be great to have x and y feature just like other laptops but I think people are forgetting that if it did have all the features of other laptops, it would then be the same price as all the other laptops.

Its an ultra-low-cost laptop, so take it or leave it.
I'll be buying one as soon as the budget allows!

actually I would've preferred they made it smaller again, lose the webcam, maybe even a bit less of everything except the size of the keyboard and have it cheaper still...but then I'm thinking more along the lines of a super-pda that runs a full linux distro.

But why isn't this thing running Sugar or gOS? It seems like they are targeting almost the exact same space with this laptop although I do understand that Sugar is probably too basic of an environment but why not coordinate their efforts more? Also it seems like the Asus and Everex laptops could use some of the OLPC tech such as the screen and mesh-networking. Why isn't more coordination happening between these projects?

Edit: What kind of BIOS is this thing using?

Edited 2007-12-06 07:52

I don't understand the appeal of a 7" screen?

Well since Eee laptop is linux based you can always install rdesktop on the laptop and run windows apps on ThinServer XP

http://www.rdesktop.org
http://www.aikotech.com/thinserver.htm