It seems that two team of explorers will be taking the ASUS Eee to extreme lengths just to prove it’s durability. One team took an Eee 900 on a 70-day excursion to the Canadian Arctic while another will be taking an Eee 701 4G to the Himalayas.
According to Stanley Wu of ASUS India, “This is one of the best opportunities for us to demonstrate our technology in the Indian market. ASUS P750 and Eee PC 4G will be put to test by one of the country’s best motor racing team in the world’s most demanding motor racing feat. We wish Team Millennium the very best at the Raid de Himalaya motor rally.”
And Australian explorer Chris Bray said, “Of all the equipment we brought with us on this expedition, it was our ASUS Eee PCs that blew me away the most, in terms of just how well suited they were to our needs and their impressive ability to survive the rigors of harsh expedition life. We’d be in the tent at night, wiping condensation off the screen with our sleeve, rubbing the touch-pad mouse clean from all the mud and chocolate and other grime, shaking the keyboard free of bits of tundra and other rubbish, and accidently bumping, dropping or leaning on them…and they never even flinched! Both Eee PCs soldiered on like true heroes right to the end.”
Liliputing reviews the Asus EeePC 1000H and gives a positive verdict. While the 1000H is heavier than most other netbooks, the main come ons are the bigger screen, bigger keyboard and the long battery life.
Overall, I’m quite happy with the Eee PC 1000H. When I have some time i’ll try to run some more scientific tests on things like battery life. But there’s very little that my 6 pound, 15.4 inch laptop can do that the 3 pound 10.2 inch Eee PC 1000H cannot. And the Eee PC gets about 3 times the battery life, which makes it my current notebook of choice for working away from the confines of my home office.
The 1000H is usually compared with the MSI Wind, because it’s a 10-incher, but is heavier and heftier. The 1000H is also compared with the HP Mini note, because the Mini note’s heft almost makes it a 10-incher, but the Asus is definitely faster and more power-efficient because of its Atom processor.
Written by jangelo on August 27th, 2008. 1 Comment »
Filed under Reviews.
Asus Philippines has launched a promo whereby every purchase of an EeePC 701 gives the buyer a chance to win a trip to Hongkong Disneyland and a Hongkong tour.
ASUS gives you the chance to experience just how mobile the Eee PC is—not only in the comforts of your own home, school or office—but in a whole new country. Not alone either—but with your entire family.
Enjoy a Disneyland Package for 3 days and 2 nights, inclusive of roundtrip tickets from Manila–Hong Kong via Cathay Pacific, hotel accommodations, a whole day Disney tour, and a half-day city tour for you and your family!
Get a chance to be one of eight (8) lucky families of four (4) vacationing in Hong Kong by simply purchasing an Eee PC 701 2g or 4g models between July 22 to August 15, 2008 and send the important details like name, address, signature, and contact information on a sheet of paper, along with a photocopy of the sales invoice, billing statement or delivery receipt and a cut out portion of the box where the serial number is indicated (Customers can only send in one entry per sales invoice, billing statement, or delivery receipt.100 models on one receipt, for example, is considered to be one entry). Place entries in an envelope and sending it to 14 United St., Bo. Kapitolyo, Pasig City, 1603 before the draw date of August 20, 2008.
This contest is open to buyers in the Philippines. For more information, you can get in touch with Asus Philippines at (632) 738-0398 or 631-4715.
I wonder why they have not included the EeEPC 900 in this promo. Perhaps they intend to move the first-generation EeePCs faster. But the price drop of the EeePC 70x would perhaps be a big selling point (the 4G sells for about PhP 16,000 or approximately $350). With competition from the new Acer Aspire one (which sells for PhP 18,800 or $418) Asus has reason to be aggressive in marketing.
Here’s one thing that will give Asus a big edge: The EeePC 901. There are a handful of netbooks being launched this time of the year. But so far, in my opinion, the big advantage that the Asus EeePC 901 has over its contemporaries is its battery life. With the default setup (6-cell battery pack), the 901 can last up to 8 hours. Most others will only go up to 3 to 4 hours with the standard/default setups. With extended battery packs, other brands (like the Acer Aspire one) can go up to 7 hours, but in some markets (like the Philippines) these other netbooks are sold with the smaller battery packs.
At any rate, Asus is still the trailblazer in the netbook industry, I would say. I hope they come up with more innovative gadgets.
If eeepc.net has it right, Asus Philippines will not be releasing the much-anticipated (from my point of view) EeePC 901 here. I guess I’ll have to either import one or look for grey-market sellers. The price difference between the 901 and the 900 is reportedly small, which makes the 901 definitely a better buy because of the longer battery life.
Anyway, this August, Dell will be launching their E series, with an attractive entry price point of $299. Maybe that’s even a better buy than the Acer Aspire one (currently selling locally here in the Philippines for PhP 18,800 or approximately $417).
Written by jangelo on July 19th, 2008. 2 Comments »
Filed under News.
Since the dawn of the Eee, there have been a ton of netbooks launched by other brands, like the HP Mini Note, Asus Aspire one, MSI Wind. And from reviews I’ve read, a lot are praising the WIND for its value, the Aspire one for its low price, and the Mini Note for its sexy looks. Of course, the Eee 901 gets its praise for its long battery life, too (at the default configuration), at about 6-8 hours.
But what I really like about having an Eee is the community. Won’t you think so, too?
Judging from how active the EeeUser forum is, the community love that the Eee has can’t be beat. I guess that’s one advantage of the Eee’s being the first of its kind. It did break barriers. And the community support just grew and grew.
These are real-world tests. I didn’t use any burning software, but instead did my usual day-to-day work, which involves Gmail, reading via my feedreader (Bloglines Beta), reading up various blogs, and also posting on blogs. And as such, being a real-world test, this involved some pauses in between for bathroom breaks, snacks, and such. And so you would notice a few minutes of “sleep” time in between, where I would close the Eee’s lid to save power.
This was done on an EeePC 900 12GB running (the OEM) Windows XP, updated to SP3. Brightness was at 30%, with WiFi on and audio muted. Note that I had turned off wired LAN in my BIOS, since I didn’t need to get wired, anyway. Camera was also turned off via EeePC tray utility.
Battery is the stock 4-cell battery rated at 7.2V, 5800 mAh.
Here are the results:
2:39 p.m. – Cold boot. Windows usually takes about 30 seconds to launch and another 25 seconds until SSD reads stop.
2:46 p.m. – Sleep. Sudden torrential downpour. And we have laundry hanging outside. And so I had to run out to bring the clothes under cover. Sigh. That’s working at home for you!
Uptime: 7 minutes.
2:59 p.m. – Wake up. Back to work. Am at my desk now, so I’m actually working on my bigger laptop at the same time.
3:31 p.m. – Auto sleep. Read a pretty long email on the bigger laptop, so I somehow left the Eee idle for 5 minuets–which is the idle time I’ve set Windows power management to put the machine to sleep.
Uptime: 32 minutes.
3:39 p.m. – Wake up. It’s a battery test, after all, so I’ve turned the Eee back on again to do some reading up on relevant forums.
4:37 p.m. – Sleep. The Eee actually spent another 5 minutse idle. Damn those long emails.
Uptime: 58 minutes
4:39 – Wake up. 5:55 p.m. – Sleep. No more rain. Brought clothes back out. Not that there’s any sunlight to help dry them faster, but it’s something one has to do.
Uptime: 76 minutes.
6:06 p.m. – Wake up. Battery meter is saying I only have less than an hour left.
6:23 p.m. – Battery LED is flashing LED.
6:32 p.m. – Windows is giving the critical battery alert. I figure I could still do a post, and I publish an article I’ve been writing on Blogging Pro.
6:39 p.m. – Power down.
Uptime: 33 minutes.
And so adding all those uptime minutes, we come to a round sum of 206 minutes. This translates to 3 hours and 26 minutes or roughly 3 and a half hours.
Strangely, that’s exactly how long BatStats estimated the 5800 mAH Asus battery to last.
One of the things I miss in eeeXubuntu (or practically any Linux distro that uses KDE, GNOME or other similar desktop environments) is how I can move windows by just holding the alt button while dragging the window from any grab point. On Windows, you have to drag the window by its title bar in order to move it from one place to another.
This can be problematic with low-resolution screens like that of the Eee (particularly the 7-inch ones). There can be cases where Windows are non-scrolling, and you have to press confirmation buttons at the bottom. But there’s no way of accessing those buttons except for moving the window such that the top part is off-screen.
Both these scripts will let you resize just by holding down the alt key and grabbing the window from anywhere. You can customize AutoHotKey via script, while Win32WM offers customization via dialog box.
A thread on the EeeUser forum details how some (or most?) EeePC 900 units drain battery even when turned off.
I was just wondering if anyone else has been having this same problem. Now when my eee pc 900 is fully charged and i leave it for a couple of days not using it the battery still drains when even not in use.
And I agree that this is a serious reliability issue. For many people, the Eee serves as a mobile work machine, and for some, as a travel companion. Some just turn on their Eee for a few minutes to check on email and read news, and then off again. But if you lose 10% to 20% of your charge each day then you’d have to plug it in often, which beats the purpose of having a portable computer with a three-plus hours battery life.
I have yet to test this on my machine, but I’m curious to know how Asus will deal with this. Is this perhaps just a BIOS issue? Or is this a battery issue?
And so I’ve convinced myself to switch to Windows XP on my wife and kids can use it. They’re not Linux users, after all. (My 5- and 3-year old kids aren’t used to Windows, but they’re comfortable with OS X Tiger on their Mac Mini. But that’s another story.).
I was thinking of installing XP from scratch using a retail copy, but then I would have to optimize, customize and lighten the installation using the steps Asus had outlined in the 701 user manual. So I thought of just installing the copy that came with the Asus EeePC 900, since that seems to have been tweaked by Asus already.
And it does work. Since the EeePC 900 essentially has a 4GB SSD for its primary storage, the recovery DVD will restore the contents to the 701’s 4GB SSD just fine. It took me about 45 minutes for the recovery, plus some tweaks. The only things that that I had to change were the driver for the touchpad (the 900 uses Elantech, while the 701 uses a Synaptic touchpad), and the webcam.
Otherwise, all worked without a hitch.
Now as for apps, some of the 900’s programs were installed on d:\Program Files by default. So what I did was install these on a 4GB SDHC, which serves as my more or less permanent D: drive for that machine.
According to Stanley Wu of ASUS India, “This is one of the best opportunities for us to demonstrate our technology in the Indian market. ASUS P750 and Eee PC 4G will be put to test by one of the country’s best motor racing team in the world’s most demanding motor racing feat. We wish Team Millennium the very best at the Raid de Himalaya motor rally.”
Liliputing 
