Asus EEE-PC

soccfc

Pricing here is a bit of a joke.

PC World in Mahon in Cork are offering the 2GB version for €350. The same version they sell for £199 in the UK. You could get a return flight and the unit itself cheaper than buying direct in Ireland

Lucious Sweet

Latest news on the Eee PC 900
http://www.trustedreviews.com/notebooks/news/2008/04/01/New-Asus-Eee-PC-Specs-Price-Revealed/p1
20GB of solid state storage sounds excellent, but £329 will probably work out at around €500 in Ireland

TerrorFirmer

Saw the 2gig one for 350 in PC World. Madness.

Also though saw one on E-Bay, through Guru3D (so a reliable seller), a 4gig one with 2gb ram and an 8GB SD for 250 sterling. Wait, never mind, he's removed the BIN option...

Lucious Sweet

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Saw the 2gig one for 350 in PC World. Madness.

Also though saw one on E-Bay, through Guru3D (so a reliable seller), a 4gig one with 2gb ram and an 8GB SD for 250 sterling. Wait, never mind, he's removed the BIN option...

PC World in Limerick had the 2G Surf for €299 a month ago. Nothing since though.

Anyone know a bricks and mortar shop in NY City where I'd get a 4G or 8G?

Pacifico

moz wrote: »

PC World in Limerick had the 2G Surf for €299 a month ago. Nothing since though.

Anyone know a bricks and mortar shop in NY City where I'd get a 4G or 8G?

J&R at 23 Park Row. Very impressive shop

Lucious Sweet

Pacifico wrote: »

J&R at 23 Park Row. Very impressive shop

Cheers m8,
My GF has flown out to NY this morning, and hopefully she'll be back next week with the 8G
Will the US power adaptor work here?

Alanstrainor

moz wrote: »

Cheers m8,
My GF has flown out to NY this morning, and hopefully she'll be back next week with the 8G
Will the US power adaptor work here?

yup

generalmiaow

I love my eee. I would like to share the RMA experience I had though in case some of you need to avail of it: (warning: long story)

After three months of owning my EEE (pre-ordered!) I discovered there was a problem with the G and V keys on the keyboard, where even the slightest touch would cause them to register a keystroke. A search of the eeeuser forums indicate this is a common problem. I contacted ASUS via their support ticket system, and they provided me with a link to an RMA pickup site.
At the site you enter your details including the EEE serial number (btw, the serial number disappears from the sticker at the bottom from the heat, but it's on the battery as well). The site indicates it's a UK service but the ASUS rep informed me it works in Ireland as well.

After entering the details, there was no number or anything, just a message saying I would be contacted within 48 hours... so I waited, expecting an email, and there was none.
Three days later, a letter arrived by snail-mail which included a prepaid UPS label, which I affixed to a box containing the EEE (I didn't include the original box or charger). I called UPS and they picked up the EEE an hour later. Not a penny spent by me.

The letter included a reference number, so you can check the status of the RMA on a website they give you. I checked the website often, and it went from Pending to Repair Completed in about 5 days. Unfortunately in the meantime my parents went away on holiday, and I had my parents' address on the RMA, so I endeavoured to contact ASUS to find out the UPS tracking number (so I could contact UPS and discern when it would be delivered, etc).

This wasn't the best part. The website doesn't show you the UPS number for some reason, just Repair Completed. I called their UK support line (even picked the option for the EEE), which of course turned out to be in India. I am a tech support agent by trade but I found it impossible to navigate their support system. Their agent assured me that the "UK guys" would call me, but they never did. There was no useful email address, only one for the states. At one point they gave me a phone number for the UK guys but it turned out to be a fax number.

I resigned myself to visiting my parents house every few days to see if there was a delivery notice. Eventually I found out there had been one (ten days before I found the notice as the UPS guy had left the notice under a rock rather than in the letterbox, and it was mostly eaten by snails.

It had been delivered to a neighbour, so I retrieved it from there. It's fine now, good as new. They replaced the whole keyboard.

Overall, it was very fast (RMA label in three days, then >10 days from pickup to arrival) and the pickup service is great, but their phone support is a disaster and I wish they put a UPS number on their RMA status site... It is great not having to leave your home to get it fixed though.

generalmiaow

nearly forgot, someone asked for a picture earlier. Click to expand...


worth mentioning that the suspend feature is pretty lame, it seems to use half as much power while suspended as while turned on. maybe an updated BIOS will fix this. that said, it boots in ten seconds so just turn it off when you don't need it.

quarryman

what did you have for dinner there? pasta?

thanks for the info on the RMA'ing, hopefully I'll never need to use it!

Do you have Xandros installed? I bit the bullet and put XPon and have to admit I'm never going back to unix on it. Windows allows you to customise so much more.

enjoy!

generalmiaow

quarryman wrote: »

what did you have for dinner there? pasta?

thanks for the info on the RMA'ing, hopefully I'll never need to use it!

Do you have Xandros installed? I bit the bullet and put XPon and have to admit I'm never going back to unix on it. Windows allows you to customise so much more.

enjoy!

Ugh, the contents of that plate are cake, a screwdriver and rolling tobacco. Must really clean that some day. You can also see a gerbil somewhere in that picture.

Hope no-one else has to go through the RMA either, it was worrying when I didn't know what was going on but it came through. They seem to have a whole section on their support site for the EEE and the guys in India were quite knowledgeable and very polite if a little powerless to help.

I kept Xandros and I'm mostly using the advanced desktop... I agree the default mode is pretty non-customisable, I'll probably stick eeeXubuntu on it someday. I use windows and a mac through VNC though, for the "heavy lifting". It's great for controlling a movie on her laptop or music on the machine hooked up to speakers without getting up from the couch!

BanzaiBk

XP is an old OS though, I much prefer Xandros.

Alanstrainor

BanzaiBk wrote: »

XP is an old OS though, I much prefer Xandros.

I found that the xandros OS had loads of bugs and was just very irritating to use tbh. I installed windows and wouldn't go back, it might be old but it works well and the eee can handle it no bother. That and the fact that i've grown up with windows machines, so the change over, to even the very similar xandros, was always going to be a bit annoying.

quarryman

Alanstrainor wrote: »

I found that the xandros OS had loads of bugs and was just very irritating to use tbh. I installed windows and wouldn't go back, it might be old but it works well and the eee can handle it no bother. That and the fact that i've grown up with windows machines, so the change over, to even the very similar xandros, was always going to be a bit annoying.

I agree.

XP is an old OS though, I much prefer Xandros.

is a strange statement. Xandros is build from Debian which is an ongoing Unix OS. Windows is a very solid OS build, they are not comparable in terms of age.

Xandros is buggy and difficult to use if you want control without having to dig into Unix command line annoyances.

Installing VLC was a chore on xandros. On windows it was one-file, double click, done.

And it ain't gonna play any of my old PC games either!

No thanks, I'll stick to windows...

BanzaiBk

Alanstrainor wrote: »

I found that the xandros OS had loads of bugs and was just very irritating to use tbh. I installed windows and wouldn't go back, it might be old but it works well and the eee can handle it no bother. That and the fact that i've grown up with windows machines, so the change over, to even the very similar xandros, was always going to be a bit annoying.

That surprises me, I've been using an EEE since launch very heavily (8+ hours a day, including multiple speed tests and product reviews) and have only really had issues with one programme.

quarryman wrote: »

No thanks, I'll stick to windows...

Meh, that's the thing though. People have a windows mentality about things like this which is understandable to a point. It just seems alien to me, and kind of changes the EEE experience. That's just me though.

I also don't understand how it's strange? Xandros is an offshoot of a constantly evolving base system, XP is one offshoot of Windows that's what, 5/6 years old at this stage?

Alanstrainor

quarryman wrote: »

Installing VLC was a chore on xandros. On windows it was one-file, double click, done.

And it ain't gonna play any of my old PC games either!

No thanks, I'll stick to windows...

That was one major reason for switching. Installing software was a biatch, i wanted easy of use, and was willing to sacrifice some of xandros's benefits such as boot time and battery life. Before anyone says i should have left it on "easy mode" with the tabbed interface, i wanted the flexibility to install software as i wished.

art

Odd reading this. One of my own preferences is specifically for a low cost Linux based laptop. This is due to the light weight character of linux and it's generally better security, it suits the essentially low spec of something like an EEE, I would have thought, far better than something like XP or, worse, Vista. But then again I don't really want to use it to customise it and put extra software on it, I just want a robust mobile laptop for working on that's low cost enough that I don't fret about how I handle it etc.

BanzaiBk

art wrote: »

Odd reading this. One of my own preferences is specifically for a low cost Linux based laptop. This is due to the light weight character of linux and it's generally better security, it suits the essentially low spec of something like an EEE, I would have thought, far better than something like XP or, worse, Vista. But then again I don't really want to use it to customise it and put extra software on it, I just want a robust mobile laptop for working on that's low cost enough that I don't fret about how I handle it etc.

Exactly my thoughts, articulated in a better way.

Lucious Sweet

Exactly what I was thinking

art wrote: »

Odd reading this. One of my own preferences is specifically for a low cost Linux based laptop. This is due to the light weight character of linux and it's generally better security, it suits the essentially low spec of something like an EEE, I would have thought, far better than something like XP or, worse, Vista. But then again I don't really want to use it to customise it and put extra software on it, I just want a robust mobile laptop for working on that's low cost enough that I don't fret about how I handle it etc.

TerrorFirmer

But the thing is, the EEE isn't that low spec relative to XP; XP runs on 233mhz and 64mb of ram, versus the EEE's Celeron 900mhz - which is far faster then a 900mhz clockspeed relative to wwhat 900mhz have been when XP was relased - and 512mb ram...more then perfect for running XP.

I'm planning on getting an EEE, but I'm undecided as to what sort - Can't see it replacing my Vostro entirely as I write essays on that, so I'm thinking I'd be playing it safe with the basic 2gig model + 4gb sd..

telecinesk

I dumped xandros within a day. I usually run OSX or Fedora on my other ibm laptop, but the xandros is badly compiled and impossible to work even after 2yrs running linux I hate it. Put 2gb ram into it and runs well on Fedora8 or xp. Bus speed is slow so had to flash bios to get a bit more kick out of it. Will try osx patch as a speed test also.

Xp works great and its down to what you want out if this thing really.

Bout to wire a us hub inside due to lack of bluetooth and flash ram to install. Got 16gb sdhc to use as storage.

This is the 4g version, got it from Taiwan for 320euros delivered. Forget warranty, thiis is for hacking open and playing with.

art

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

...versus the EEE's Celeron 900mhz - which is far faster then a 900mhz clockspeed relative to wwhat 900mhz have been when XP was relased ...

CPU is clocked at 600 on the eee though, as far as I recall.

The_Conductor

art wrote:

CPU is clocked at 600 on the eee though, as far as I recall.

Mine lets me change the frequency in the Bios by choosing maximum battery life or maximum performance- which are 600 and 900Mhz respectively.

fisab

The Sunday Times had a review of the eee (701) in the 'Cars/Gadgets' supplement. It stated that the PC 900 should be available later this month for €389.

Sounds a bit cheap when they are sources (trusted reviews) quoting stg£329, and I thought it would be at least June before it was to be launched.

Anyone else see an April release date mentioned anywhere??

Alanstrainor

art wrote: »

CPU is clocked at 600 on the eee though, as far as I recall.

There is a program you can download that allows you to change the processor speed, fan speed, and the screen brightness above that of the norm. handy little app,
eee ctl

And yes, the eee is clocked at 630mhz to improve battery life

art

fisab wrote: »

The Sunday Times had a review of the eee (701) in the 'Cars/Gadgets' supplement. It stated that the PC 900 should be available later this month for €389.

Sounds a bit cheap when they are sources (trusted reviews) quoting stg£329, and I thought it would be at least June before it was to be launched.

Anyone else see an April release date mentioned anywhere??

Saw it mentioned April in the US, then other countries later in the year. I would have expected online shops to be taking pre-orders by now if it really was to be available in April?

By the way, pixmania has 4GB EEEs apparently "in stock" right now. They are the coloured ones - pink, green or blue, which may be a deal breaker for some?

http://www.pixmania.com/ie/uk/933576/art/asus/eee-pc-4g-blue-uk-version.html

towel401

telecinesk wrote: »

I dumped xandros within a day. I usually run OSX or Fedora on my other ibm laptop, but the xandros is badly compiled and impossible to work even after 2yrs running linux I hate it. Put 2gb ram into it and runs well on Fedora8 or xp. Bus speed is slow so had to flash bios to get a bit more kick out of it. Will try osx patch as a speed test also.

Xp works great and its down to what you want out if this thing really.

Bout to wire a us hub inside due to lack of bluetooth and flash ram to install. Got 16gb sdhc to use as storage.

true. i usually use fedora myself and find this particular xandros distro quite limiting. the eeePC repositories contain hardly any software. the stock kernel isn't great either - it doesnt like my nokia E61, bluetooth dongle, printer and some other thing I can't remember. all these things I can get to work perfectly on my desktop. it is limited, stripped down stuff like this that usually makes a bad name for linux. if they don't stock their repositories properly people will think that linux really is a terrible OS that won't run / support anything.

time for me to install eeeXubuntu or something, I think

Ron DMC

art wrote: »

By the way, pixmania has 4GB EEEs apparently "in stock" right now. They are the coloured ones - pink, green or blue, which may be a deal breaker for some?

http://www.pixmania.com/ie/uk/933576/art/asus/eee-pc-4g-blue-uk-version.html

Hmmm... I'm tempted to stick in an order. I suppose blue wouldn't be that bad. Might hold out for a black 900 though. Certainly if it's gonna be less than 400.

Decisions, decisions.

NicsM

Ronny Mitchell wrote: »

Hmmm... I'm tempted to stick in an order. I suppose blue wouldn't be that bad. Might hold out for a black 900 though. Certainly if it's gonna be less than 400.

Decisions, decisions.

I ordered the white 4G from eXpansys, it says they're getting them in stock on the 21st of this month. There was a problem with my credit card details so I had to ring them yesterday, the guy said they've ordered 400 units and that there are only 178 orders to be filled...not sure whether to believe this so I might just cancel my order and go for the blue one.

I'd prefer the 900 but I don't have the patience to wait for it!

chris85

was in london and saw the 4gb version in duty free in the airport. at the current exchange rate it would have worked out at €280. I should have bought it but didnt as I am still deciding whether to get the new version

art

Ninaluna wrote: »

I ordered the white 4G from eXpansys, it says they're getting them in stock on the 21st of this month. There was a problem with my credit card details so I had to ring them yesterday, the guy said they've ordered 400 units and that there are only 178 orders to be filled...not sure whether to believe this so I might just cancel my order and go for the blue one.

I'd prefer the 900 but I don't have the patience to wait for it!

I'm running out of patience myself The fact that it is just hearsay what the 900 will retail for and when it will appear makes it worse. I'm starting to think I'll just get the 701 too and be done with it. Not sure about them colours though

art

Developments!!?

Two sites taking pre-orders on EEE 900, one says early May, the other June/July. Both quote ST£329

http://www.supergps.co.uk/asus-eee-pc-900-windows-xp-os-white-ultra-mobile-pc-p-3277.html

http://www.nexus13.com/productcart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idcategory=&idproduct=1312

art

Hooray!!!!

Continuing this conversation with myself, Dabs.ie have the 4GB in black in stock now for just 299 yoyos... so I ordered one!

thefinalstage

I'm gonna wait and buy the new one. 1.3 megapixel webcam and that size. Oh yes.

art

I can't believe the 900 will have the same battery life as the 701, even if ASUS claim it will, and battery life will be important to me. So, happy to grab a 701 now but the 900 will probably be nicer in the hand alright.

conzy

Any idea when the 900 is officially out? Is it June sometime?

towel401

Ninaluna wrote: »

I ordered the white 4G from eXpansys, it says they're getting them in stock on the 21st of this month. There was a problem with my credit card details so I had to ring them yesterday, the guy said they've ordered 400 units and that there are only 178 orders to be filled...not sure whether to believe this so I might just cancel my order and go for the blue one.

I'd prefer the 900 but I don't have the patience to wait for it!

you will probably be able to get a 900 before expansys will have 4g's in stock. I ordered a 4g at the very start of february from expansys and they still don't have them in stock. ended up getting an 8g from america

fisab

conzymaher wrote: »

Any idea when the 900 is officially out? Is it June sometime?

looks like Asus is going to rush it out ahead of schedule (May) with the current celeron chip rather than wait for Intel's new Atom chip that is launching at the end of June.
HPs "eee-killer" is launching this week and Asus look desperate to get their PC900 into the market quick.
Acer will only join the fray after June with an Atom machine and at that stage Asus will also switch to the Atom.

Looks like its a bad time to buy an eee. With the competition getting cut throat in the early autumn the prices should drop.

The_Conductor

conzymaher wrote: »

Any idea when the 900 is officially out? Is it June sometime?

I think its "officially" released for sale on the 16th of April, however as there have been no "official" EU stock allocations as yet, obviously it'll not be available to purchase. I tried to place a pre-order directly with Asus in the UK, but they refused to take it.

Adyx

Last week I decided I'd finally had enough of the Xandros installed on my eeePc. Frequent crashes, Firefox not working and slow even with a gig of RAM. Since I had a spare XP licence, I used nLite on it. Now my eeePC actually boots faster and performs better and XP takes up less than 500MB.

Alanstrainor

Adyx wrote: »

Last week I decided I'd finally had enough of the Xandros installed on my eeePc. Frequent crashes, Firefox not working and slow even with a gig of RAM. Since I had a spare XP licence, I used nLite on it. Now my eeePC actually boots faster and performs better and XP takes up less than 500MB.

Okay, so here's a question, i installed xp on my eee, and didn't use nlite, just a full install so i now only have 400 mb free:eek:, is there a way to manually cut down the size of windows, (i've turned off system restore and run cCleaner).
Cheers

squonk_ie

Try the tips on this site. Be careful though. You can easily bork your XP installation. I got mine down to below a gig

http://technical-issues-tips.blogspot.com/2007/08/tips-reduce-size-of-windows-folder.html

Ron DMC

art wrote: »

Hooray!!!!

Continuing this conversation with myself, Dabs.ie have the 4GB in black in stock now for just 299 yoyos... so I ordered one!

You must've grabbed one of their last.
As of just now: "Asustek E Pc7" Blk 512 4GB Flash Linux
Due in 3-4 weeks"

art

Ronny Mitchell wrote: »

You must've grabbed one of their last.
As of just now: "Asustek E Pc7" Blk 512 4GB Flash Linux
Due in 3-4 weeks"

Aye, I didn't hesitate when I saw it in, just in case. They didn't have them yesterday so must have been only a few came in. Mind, yesterday it also said "due 3 to 4 weeks" so it's possible that it will get updated again before that long, for anyone that is still interested.

Basically, for anybody who wants to "stock watch", here's where I was getting updates: http://eeestock.cpjackson.co.uk/
But bear in mind some places (like amazon.co.uk) will not send to Ireland (though, on the flip side, when it listed dabs.com today as having stock that did include dabs.ie).

chris85

€322 from pixmania apparently in stock :rolleyes:

http://www.pixmania.com/ie/uk/933705/art/asus/eee-pc-4g-green-uk-versio.html?itag=3894

art

I've gotten an email update from a asus re-seller.

The 8GB version of the 701 has been cancelled "at this time", to be replaced by the 900.

The 900 is to be launched end of April with stock being made available in May. It syas here the 900 will have a 20GB SSD (?)

chris85

art wrote: »

I've gotten an email update from a asus re-seller.

The 8GB version of the 701 has been cancelled "at this time", to be replaced by the 900.

The 900 is to be launched end of April with stock being made available in May. It syas here the 900 will have a 20GB SSD (?)

Any idea on pricing?

Lucious Sweet

art wrote: »

I've gotten an email update from a asus re-seller.

The 8GB version of the 701 has been cancelled "at this time", to be replaced by the 900.

The 900 is to be launched end of April with stock being made available in May. It syas here the 900 will have a 20GB SSD (?)

Not sure about that mate. My girlfriend picked me up a black 8GB model yesterday from J&R in New York http://www.jr.com/JRSectionView.process?N=402428&BrandStore=t

And didn't I read somewhere that the 8GB version had only recently started shipping again because of problems in supplying power adaptors?

I reckon it will be Autumn at the earliest before we see the 20gb here.

BanzaiBk

OMG Asus what are you doing?! Imagine the price of a 20GB SSD model. Completely deviating from the target market imo.

Adyx

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Okay, so here's a question, i installed xp on my eee, and didn't use nlite, just a full install so i now only have 400 mb free:eek:, is there a way to manually cut down the size of windows, (i've turned off system restore and run cCleaner).
Cheers

nLite can be used on an existing Windows installation as well as for creating custom installation cds. The guide I used to create my cd is here and I'd say it's your best bet even for an existing installation.