ASUS $199 Eee PC laptop

[frostedflakes]

Are you sure? 2.25MB/s is pretty pathetic, I didn't even think you could buy flash that slow. The benchmarks I've seen put read speed at a very reasonable 20-30MB/s.

Random write, perhaps, but I seriously doubt sequential read/write is that slow.

Here's a bunch of EEE disk benchmarks, including the SSD.

http://wiki.eeeuser.com/diskbenchmarks?s=sdhc

And here's HDTach in Windows.

http://techreport.com/forums/v...d566b4450b4ae1ccccc0d4

 

[zig3695]

Originally posted by: Mgz
I hope EEE ver 2 in April/Summer 2008 would be better.
The ultra ultra portable one will have

7" with 704x396 or 1280x720 resolution (16:9 4tw)
Core 2 Solo ULV 1GHz to 1.2GHz (should be dirt cheap by April 2008, same TDP as the current one) or better Core 2 Solo ULV on 45nm process (should be 1.5W less than the Celeron M ULV 353)
945GU @ 133Mhz (host 533Mhz mem DDR2 400) only 5W TDP or better
chipset 945GMS/945GME @ 166/200 MHz 5.5-6W TDP with ICH7-U or ICH7-M
batteries last 6 hrs on the high end one and the ICH7-U/945GU one = 8hrs+
WiMAX/HDSPA/CDMA/GPS optional.
esata port. (ICH7-M has it, ICH7-U don't)
Windows XP customized by nlite , trimmed the fat, or ultra customized patched/h4x3d/optimized ubuntu. also this machine is Vista Aero capable.

hopefully we can decode some SD and DVD-resolution h.264. I don't really care about the SSD hard drive space because it can be easily upgradeable by SDHC, USB 2.0 2.5 external hard drive, etc.
if u want dvd-rw, etc just uses esata port or USB box.

that sort of is my point though, for that price it doesnt fullfill any niche at all. too big for the pocket yet it cant do a whole lot more then my windows mobile phone can... well i take that back because the motorola q9c is a piece of junk...

 

[zig3695]

Originally posted by: Aikouka
Hmm I'm thinking of picking one of these up. I'm actually interested because my phone sucks for "on the fly" stuff. Like one night I was out and wanted to see what movies were playing. Well, this sucked on my phone to the point where I just gave up. I'm thinking about getting an Eee PC, switching it to Windows (required for this) and using my phone as a modem or something along those lines.

It'd also be nice to have a better Google Maps rather than trying to view streets on my GPS (a pain) that's in my car.

Still not sure if it'd really be worthwhile to have for some specific time when I want to use it when I already have two 15" laptops (of course not as portable).

you might like a wm6 phone. i dont really care for my q9c, but as far as looking up movie showtimes, maps n directions, 411, all that good stuff its pretty kick ass at it. an the hell with google maps, windows live search RULES! its wayyy better then google maps, im not kidding.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes
Are you sure? 2.25MB/s is pretty pathetic, I didn't even think you could buy flash that slow. The benchmarks I've seen put read speed at a very reasonable 20-30MB/s.

Random write, perhaps, but I seriously doubt sequential read/write is that slow.

Here's a bunch of EEE disk benchmarks, including the SSD.

http://wiki.eeeuser.com/diskbenchmarks?s=sdhc

And here's HDTach in Windows.

http://techreport.com/forums/v...d566b4450b4ae1ccccc0d4

bonnie++ sucks for disk benchmarking, as it's _very_ sensitive to caching, and I believe HDTach has something of the same issue if you're not running it properly. iozone is a much better bet - look at Tom's for some commands to produce comparable benchmarks. The 2.25MB/s worst case scenario sounds entirely believable considering the extreme cheapness of the computer.

The very highest-end flash drives (like the GT series from Corsair) will have difficulty running at that high of a speed. There's no way the eee is pulling them.

I'm still waiting for the Nanobooks to come out in the USA - IMHO, I think they'll really demolish the eee when it comes to price/performance.

 

[frostedflakes]

Caching as in HDD cache? That's a null point for flash, as it has no cache. Anyways, can't speak for bonnie++, but HDTach always seemed pretty accurate based on the reviews I've read and my own experiences with it. My Flash Voyager GT reads/writes large files at about 24/15MBps, HDTach reports about 24MBps for read. Of course, these are just synthetic benches and should be taken as such; sequential read/write would be best-case performance, due to the way flash works reading many smaller files is slightly slower and writing many small files is much slower. 2.25MBps seems about right for random writes, but sequential read/write and random read should be much higher.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: frostedflakes 2.25MBps seems about right for random writes, but sequential read/write and random read should be much higher.

Why? Flash has basically no seek time. There shouldn't be any difference between sequential and random reads or writes.

And when I said caching, I meant in system RAM.

 

[NissanAlmera]

Hi guys!
Just become member of this great forum!
I've found a good gallery of photos about the eee over here:

http://www.techup.it/articoli/asus_eee

think I'll get one really soon....

 

[Aikouka]

I got my Eee today and actually had a hell of a time trying to get Windows on the USB thumbdrive so I could install it . Looks like I lent my friend my only working USB->IDE adapter too, so I guess I'll have to go buy another one or something.

I'm still not used to the keyboard though. I've got pretty big hands and the keyboard is just so itty-bitty (not as big of a problem) and the key order differences (the big problem). I also wish they wouldn't have one big button on the bottom. Also, the touchpad should be wider to accommodate a scroll pad that doesn't have a 1mm response area.

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: erwos

Originally posted by: frostedflakes 2.25MBps seems about right for random writes, but sequential read/write and random read should be much higher.

Why? Flash has basically no seek time. There shouldn't be any difference between sequential and random reads or writes.

And when I said caching, I meant in system RAM.

You're right latency is almost non-existent for reading and writing, I think my wording wasn't very accurate. What slows things down is that flash can only be erased in blocks. So this means that if you're writing to empty blocks speed should be similar to sequential write, but if you're overwriting blocks with small files speed will be much slower. For example consider writing 1KB files to the SSD, the default NTFS block size is 4KB, so that means to write that 1KB file the entire block needs to be erased and rewritten with the new information. That means writing this 1KB file to the disk actually requires 4KB to be written (it's just all done behind the scenes and you don't realize it). This is just a logical assumption, I don't know if it's how things work in real-world use, but I'd assume this means that writing 1KB files will be roughly 4x slower than writing sequentially, because 4x as much data has to be written for every 1KB file.

 

[Aikouka]

I was thinking... isn't FAT32 better for solid state storage solutions? Hence why most thumb drives come in FAT32 because of the less amount of writing per change? I've seen a lot of articles suggesting using a NTFS partition when installing XP on the EeePC and that made me wonder....

 

[Parasitic]

Originally posted by: Aikouka
I was thinking... isn't FAT32 better for solid state storage solutions? Hence why most thumb drives come in FAT32 because of the less amount of writing per change? I've seen a lot of articles suggesting using a NTFS partition when installing XP on the EeePC and that made me wonder....

FAT32 is better for small partitions IIRC.
My Windows XP partitions on the eeePC are formatted FAT32.

 

[frostedflakes]

Yay, finally found an EEE for a good price on eBay, $255 for a 2G Surf. More than I was looking to spend, but I couldn't wait any longer.

 

[ghost recon88]

Gah I want one. Anyone know anything more specific other than "Q2" for the next-gen release?

 

[konakona]

Originally posted by: Aikouka
I got my Eee today and actually had a hell of a time trying to get Windows on the USB thumbdrive so I could install it . Looks like I lent my friend my only working USB->IDE adapter too, so I guess I'll have to go buy another one or something.

I'm still not used to the keyboard though. I've got pretty big hands and the keyboard is just so itty-bitty (not as big of a problem) and the key order differences (the big problem). I also wish they wouldn't have one big button on the bottom. Also, the touchpad should be wider to accommodate a scroll pad that doesn't have a 1mm response area.

thanks for sharing your experience, now I know I want something better, hopefully in their next version...

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: konakona
thanks for sharing your experience, now I know I want something better, hopefully in their next version...

It's not too bad and I doubt the keyboard will really change. I'm tempted to just find a way to remap the keys so they're not so much different. Last thing I need is to get used to EeePC typing and then start messing up my normal (and more important) typing.

 

[RyanF]

I installed windows xp with a USB cd drive, went absolutely flawless. Formatted Fat32, 2GB Ram, overclocked to 800Mhz with 800x600 scaled resolution, 4GB SDHC card as "2nd hard drive". Quite a quick little machine, far better than I expected. The keyboard and touchpad (which is a bit too small) took a few hours to get used to, but are completely useable.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: RyanF
I installed windows xp with a USB cd drive, went absolutely flawless. Formatted Fat32, 2GB Ram, overclocked to 800Mhz with 800x600 scaled resolution, 4GB SDHC card as "2nd hard drive". Quite a quick little machine, far better than I expected. The keyboard and touchpad (which is a bit too small) took a few hours to get used to, but are completely useable.

What'd you use to scale it? Mine just makes me scroll if I change to 800x600 =\.

 

[abaez]

Originally posted by: RyanF
I installed windows xp with a USB cd drive, went absolutely flawless. Formatted Fat32, 2GB Ram, overclocked to 800Mhz with 800x600 scaled resolution, 4GB SDHC card as "2nd hard drive". Quite a quick little machine, far better than I expected. The keyboard and touchpad (which is a bit too small) took a few hours to get used to, but are completely useable.

You have somewhere on how to install xp with a USB cd drive? I found how to do it with an external cdrom via usb, but nothing about usb sticks.

 

[Parasitic]

Originally posted by: abaez

Originally posted by: RyanF
I installed windows xp with a USB cd drive, went absolutely flawless. Formatted Fat32, 2GB Ram, overclocked to 800Mhz with 800x600 scaled resolution, 4GB SDHC card as "2nd hard drive". Quite a quick little machine, far better than I expected. The keyboard and touchpad (which is a bit too small) took a few hours to get used to, but are completely useable.

You have somewhere on how to install xp with a USB cd drive? I found how to do it with an external cdrom via usb, but nothing about usb sticks.

http://www.eeeguides.com/2007/...xp-from-usb-thumb.html

 

[abaez]

Thanks! I'm gonna go with that along with this guide I found on nliteing your xp install: http://www.i64x.com/eeexp.php

 

[RyanF]

To install xp with a usb cdrom, just plug the cd drive in, set the first boot device to the usb cd drive, take out all the expansion cards you have (sd flash, usb thumbdrives, etc). I really recommend nliting the xp cd, you can get the install down to around 500mb.

 

[Aikouka]

I could never even get the damn process of installing via USB Stick to work... so I said screw it and used my XBOX 360 HD-DVD drive (even if Blu-Ray wins, I will have a use)!

 

[zig3695]

heh, aikouka- you try to get fullHD h.264 to play smoothly on the EEEPc too?

 

[IlllI]

info about the 9in version Text

7in vs 9in Text




comparison of the screens Text

9in is supposedly going to be 1024x 600 resolution.. bleh

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: zig3695
heh, aikouka- you try to get fullHD h.264 to play smoothly on the EEEPc too?

Sure did! I have 720p h.264 content on my server and I gave that a try .