eee pc choice

[myusername]

im planning on getting an eee pc for christmas. and i cant decide between the 904ha and the 1000ha models. which has better ubuntu compatibility? what about battery comparison?

[noremac]

I have a 1000HA and like it much. Upgraded from a 701.

Both 1000HA and 904HA are going to have similar Ubuntu compatibilities. I liked the 1000 series as they had the larger keyboard. However I am seeing the 904 is in the same chassis as the 1000 series, according to Asus Eee Wiki (though I dont see a 904HA, just 904HD). If you are going to go with one that size, might as well be the 1000 and get the larger screen. Its brighter.

Make sure it has the Atom Processor. Most of the 1000 series has it, including the 1000HA. Good stuff with the 6 cell battery. Great runtime.

I have only had it for a week and a half, but I have yet to install Linux on it. I am rather happy with XP's start up time and performance. Having so much space, I will install Ubuntu soon, but honestly, I think I will boot into Windows more. Its fast. There are scripts and what not, and specific distributions of Ubuntu tailored to the Eee, so its great and easy to install. I put a copy on a flash drive and worked no problem on my 1000HA.

If you have a particular questions about the 1000HA, let me know...

-Cameron

[myusername]

hows the battery life on the 1000 thought? i heard u could get 7hrs on a 904ha. and i heard that some hardware stuff doesnt work in ubuntu on both models (wifi etc.)...is this true?

[linuxguymarshall]

Don't get the eee unless you are a hardware hacker. I have had hours of testing time with each and I would take the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 or Aspire One over the eee anyday. With your price range though I would get the Asus N10 (It's not eee). It is a badass netbook and play CoD4. Can't beat that.

[noremac]

The battery life is good. I seem to get about 5 hours with wifi on. With it off, it appears to get the 7 hour mark.
I am kind of interested in installing some Linux on a SD card then spinning the hard drive down. I imagine I would get the 8 hour life that the SSD Eee's get.

While there are some issues with wifi if you install straight from a Ubuntu ISO, you can easily find scripts and special distributions made with those drivers built in and work no problem.

-C

[swisscow]

Don't get the eee unless you are a hardware hacker.

I can't agree with that. I have a 901, Mandriva 2009 worked out of the box - everything.

Yesterday I put Crunchbang 8.10 on (derivative of Ubuntu). Installed the system, added the array.org kernel (which is really easy to do following the instructions) and added the eee-control package (via synaptic so again not hard).

All works fine.

Can't speak for the 904 or the other model you are looking at

[snowpine]

Ubuntu does not support wireless "out of the box" on the eee, because it requires a non-free driver. However, there are several easy methods to get the wireless working. My favorite is to install the eeepc kernel from array.org. The instructions are easy to follow, and it is custom tailored for all features of the eee.

Good luck!

[linuxguymarshall]

I can't agree with that. I have a 901, Mandriva 2009 worked out of the box - everything.

Yesterday I put Crunchbang 8.10 on (derivative of Ubuntu). Installed the system, added the array.org kernel (which is really easy to do following the instructions) and added the eee-control package (via synaptic so again not hard).

All works fine.

Can't speak for the 904 or the other model you are looking at


I'm not saying that its hard to do things, far from it. But im saying that with the other netbooks the eee has been beat in power and price from the other netbooks. Now it is only good for modders who want to install GPS, 3G, BT, and other things.

[jomiolto]

I'm also facing a similar dilemma; I've been looking for a netbook for some time now, but as time goes by it just seems to get harder to choose, because new models enter the market :p

I also read somewhere that ASUS is going to cut the prices of EEE PCs sometime in the near future (don't remember if it was before Christmas or early next year), so I'm probably waiting for that -- if I could get 901 for 250euros, I would probably buy one immediately :)

[linuxguymarshall]

I was telling 'myusername' in a PM that the Asus N10 is a great netbook. I think it is the best only because of the graphics card. If you don't need the graphics card then I am going to recommend the Dell Mini 9 or the Acer Aspire One. MSI Wind if you overclock.

[azangru]

I can't agree with that. I have a 901, Mandriva 2009 worked out of the box - everything.

You mean - everything? :-P The standby mode, wi-fi, bluetooth, webcam, microphone - everything? Without tweaking?

And how's the boot time, by the way? :wink:

[smartboyathome]

Even if everything doesn't work, now that Best Buy carries the EEE 1000H online, I may just get it. The battery is the biggest of any of the netbooks I've seen, though I just wish that one of these retailers around here carried a netbook with an SSD besides the HP MiniNote (its got a small battery :().

[swisscow]

You mean - everything? :-P The standby mode, wi-fi, bluetooth, webcam, microphone - everything? Without tweaking?

And how's the boot time, by the way? :wink:

Yep, the lot. Though to be fair I cannot comment on bluetooth as I never used it and disabled in the bios.

Only thing I did to make the experience better was to install the eee-control package which someone kindly rpmed.

As for boot, it wouldn't set any records but up and running in around a minute or so.

Only thing that wasn't so good was the metisse effects. Great on a machine with a small screen, the scaling of windows was really useful. However logging in became hit and miss and I experienced some crashes, so I learnt to live without it.

Can't give you any more info because using crunchbang at the moment - this distro just makes me smile

[Motomo]

Even if everything doesn't work, now that Best Buy carries the EEE 1000H online, I may just get it. The battery is the biggest of any of the netbooks I've seen, though I just wish that one of these retailers around here carried a netbook with an SSD besides the HP MiniNote (its got a small battery :().



Double check the ones you see from best buy....I was thinking of picking up the 1000h from best buy but when I went to the store to take a look at it the 1000h and the 900 they were selling were a special version for best buy that did not have the webcam.
The version of the 900 they were selling did have the atom processor but only a 4gb ssd

[Bateluer]

So what EEE did you go with?

I just picked up a 904HA a few days ago with XP Home. My initial impressions were favorable, but I haven't put it through its paces fully yet. I've been thinking of installing Ubuntu Eee on it, but I'd want to secure an external optical drive first in the event that I need to restore it to factory.

http://www.ubuntu-eee.com/index.php

[alphaxxn]

I was telling 'myusername' in a PM that the Asus N10 is a great netbook. I think it is the best only because of the graphics card. If you don't need the graphics card then I am going to recommend the Dell Mini 9 or the Acer Aspire One. MSI Wind if you overclock.

How can you honestly recommend a N10 to someone who is interested in buying a netbook? Look at the market demographic for the two notebooks. The eeePC demographic is primarily concerned with compatibility,reliability,portability, battery life and boot times. For the most part, with current technologies if a laptop offers decent video performance, it also offers either attrocious battery life or a weight not remotely comparable to a netbook. The N10's formfactor might put it near netbooks, but as far as mobility and battery life, no way.

The Mini9 and Aspire One are much better suggestions.

[bdash]

On a EEE PC, here is your possibilities to get Ubuntu:
* Install a vanilla ubuntu - most of the peripherals won't work. You need to install Array's kernel, then some ACPI scripts.
* Install Ubuntu-eee, that will do automatically the same as the previous option. Problem is, you can't dist-upgrade! You'll have to install from scratch when they release a new version... Which is Intrepid, it's not released yet.

I'm actually a big Ubuntu fan but for my EEE PC I went for Mandriva, it has support for all EEE PC out of the box. I prefer that to tweaking an Ubuntu install that may break at any upgrade.

[jlc]

I have a Eee PC 1000 and here is what I did to install it.

http://justinconover.com/blog/2008/12/31/asus-eeepc-1000-ubuntu-810/

[Fenris_rising]

I have a 904HD it came as XP but with my trusty mem stick and, 20 minutes of my time, later I had Ubuntu eee with everything working out of the box. I am also playing with crunchbang on my 4G SDHC card just to play with only one very minor tweak was needed to get the sound working everything else a OOTB :) I have tried aa few others but they didn't function for one reason or another.


regards

Fenris