Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 25th Apr 2008 21:12 UTC
When Asus released its Eee PC, praise was almost universal. People loved the device's size, low price, and the fact it came with Linux appealed to many geeks. Consequently, the device sold rather well, and was a hit for Asus. However, the device had two major shortcomings: its small screen (7" 800x480), and its relatively short battery life. Asus took the critcism to heart, and came up with the Asus Eee PC 900, which has a 9" 1024x600 screen. So, what's the verdict?
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Member since:2005-11-12
I upgraded the memory on mine to one gig of RAM. On Linux I don't notice any lag using applications like Open Office, Thunar or Audacious. The flash RAM drive no doubt contributes to a zippy feel of applications launching. You would be surprised how much gusto the little CPU puts out. CPU clock speed alone is not the only variable to look at. The architecture of the eee lends itself to quickly launching programs and quick task switching. If you tried one out you would probably agree with me.
Member since:2005-07-17
The main advantage of Intel Atom is low power consumption, not the performance boost and that's what bornagainpenguin was referring to. Right now Eee suffers a lot from short battery life, especially after the bump to 900MHz on its Celeron-M and bigger screen.
I've read somewhere that Asus cheated by sending reviewers the high capacity batteries to the reviewers while regular ones had much worse capabitilies.
Member since:2006-04-28
The flash RAM drive no doubt contributes to a zippy feel of applications launching.
And now a patch[1] was submitted (and applied) to the Linux kernel that will allow faster I/O. You'll need to upgrade to 2.6.26 once it's out, though...
[1]http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/4/20/283
Member since:2005-07-07
"The brain dead (non-mobile) processor was what kept me away. I've already been through that once with my Dell Inspiron 5100"
You can hardly compare the Celeron-m in the eee to the Pentium 4s in the 5100.. we're talking TDP of 5 watts compared to TDP of 60 to 80 watts. Those Dell 5100s were ovens!
Member since:2005-08-07
ohbrilliance said...
You can hardly compare the Celeron-m in the eee to the Pentium 4s in the 5100.. we're talking TDP of 5 watts compared to TDP of 60 to 80 watts.
I hear you, I hear you...but we're still talking about a device saddled with a processor that won't allow it to be the best it can be. Considering how many of those old P4 crippled laptops are still in working condition due to the strain of overheating and lack of meaningful power management... Can you blame me for being doubly cautious now, not to make the same mistake twice?
ohbrilliance said...
Those Dell 5100s were ovens!
What do you mean were? I'm typing this on my Inspiron 5100 right now, running Hardy Heron 8.04--the display shows my heat as being 138F~ with just Firefox and Synaptic open. If I try to open anything else I'm looking at 160F~...
Still what other (non-Apple) laptop do you know of that can run Windows, Linux and OSX86 as well as this one?
--bornagainpenguin
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2005-08-07
That's what I'm waiting for myself...
I'll appreciate the bigger screen, no doubt--and I'm sure the extra space will come in handy on the Linux version; but it's the Intel Atom processor that I've been waiting for to make my purchase and I've been following the ASUS Eee almost a year now. Not quite since the announcement but maybe a month or two after it is when I started to get some serious lust for the Eee...
The brain dead (non-mobile) processor was what kept me away. I've already been through that once with my Dell Inspiron 5100 and the last thing I wanted was to go through it again with a ultramobile. As it is the battery life on this Dell is so poor I spend most of my time on it tethered to a power cord.
Once the ASUS Eee is finally on the Intel Atom then I think we'll all start really seeing this device show its potential.
--bornagainpenguin