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Asus put out like 40 models of a laptop called the “Eee PC” (2021)

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Re: Asus put out like 40 models of a laptop called the “Eee PC” (2021)

#181

Post by marttt »

macNchz wrote: post #68
JoshTriplett wrote: post #32

The eee PC was also the original netbook used for the "booting Linux in five seconds" presentation at the first Linux Plumbers Conference: https://lwn.net/Articles/299483/ That presentation inspired a whole wave of boot optimizations across the industry, that recalibrated the expectations for what "boot fast" meant. If you look at some systems at the time, "boots in 30 seconds" was a selling point . Today, you can re…

> Today, you can reasonably expect a system to be done booting in a second, with the slowest portion of booting any secure system being the user typing a passphrase. What sort of machines boot in one second? My 12-core Linux desktop with one of the fastest nvme drives on the market sure doesn’t. I’d guess more like 15-20s. I don’t think my wife’s M1 Mac is at all close to 1s either, unless you count waking from sleep…

FreeDOS would boot in about 2 seconds, literally. :)

Re: Asus put out like 40 models of a laptop called the “Eee PC” (2021)

#182

Post by JohnBooty »

Are there modern "netbook" style cheap laptops with upgradable RAM/HDD?

One of the joys of netbooks (for me) was throwing 4GB or 8GB or RAM and an SSD into those things. At which point they become pretty credible performers for a lot of things.

But every time I look into such things these days, I can't find any upgradeable ones.

Re: Asus put out like 40 models of a laptop called the “Eee PC” (2021)

#183

Post by jeffbee »

emptyparadise wrote: post #18

I just want a really small laptop like those Vaios from back in the day.

The 8" Vaio was a great little machine. I wish I knew when and why the hacker aesthetic switched from devices that fit in your hand to devices that only barely fit in your car and double as diving boards. I hate this trend. When you think of "a hacker" you think of a person who whips out an Atari Portfolio to commit some kind of mischief on the spot, not some clown with a 16" macbook.

Re: Asus put out like 40 models of a laptop called the “Eee PC” (2021)

#184

Post by marttt »

squarefoot wrote: post #111

EeePCs are still useful machines today. Need something that spits or receives packets for network testing? Grab a used one with decent battery life and you're done. Want to listen to online radio in the lab but don't want to use your phone? Again, get a used EeePC for peanuts and connect it to a pair of speakers. And what about a small IoT controller to be put in each room? Pair it with a networked VoIP terminal and…

I recorded an almost 2-hour live radio show with a Dell Mini 9 + Tiny Core Linux + Avid Mbox 2 audio interface + 2 dynamic mics + a small console recording program just two weeks ago. I configured a huge swapfile just in case, but everything worked flawlessly. Since the Mini 9 is fanless and SSD-equipped, it makes a really nice, completely silent machine for audio recording.

Interestingly, I also have a bunch of Panasonic WM61a capsules (I intended to do binaural recordings, but didn't). And, before the Dell, I often used a Zoom H1 as audio interface for an old Thinkpad T42 (hey, it had that keyboard and an IPS screen, so it was really hard to give up on!). :) Also, thanks for the reference to the AOM capsules. I didn't know about these, but had wondered whether there are any current replacements for the WM61a-s.

A Mini9/NC10/T42 + Zoom H1 + homemade WM61a/AOM-based microphones would make an awesome setup for a frugal, but somewhat knowledgeable audio geek. Given some skills and minor time for tinkering, you can really do pretty much everything with 10-15-year old hardware, or even ridiculous widgets like those microphone capsules. I think this is an extremely relevant point or realization, considering climate change and the still widespread throw-away-culture. We are drowning in old electronics. It is an incredible time to live in.

Re: Asus put out like 40 models of a laptop called the “Eee PC” (2021)

#185

Post by themodelplumber »

marttt wrote: post #179
themodelplumber wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got me thinking...I still run my MSI Wind netbook (RIP Zareason!), and it's worked great with both Haiku and Q4OS recently. The keyboard is a near-disaster in some ways but after configuring a bunch of workarounds it's reasonably comfortable. I took it on a trip to Sicily soon after purchasing and have fond memories of using it and my n810 "media center" for that trip. I didn't have WiFi at the guest house where…

"... I still run my MSI Wind netbook ..." Were the MSI Winds fanless, or did they have a fan? And the hard disk, I assume, wasn't a SSD? I ask because I just noticed kids of our relatives using an abandoned Wind as a toy (to play "work"). They claim it is "broken", but who knows. I sneaked behind their back and tested the keyboard for typing -- it felt really good! A pity to see a potentially useful machine simply ly…

That's interesting, yeah mine has a fan but it is normally impossible to notice if the noise level in the room is even just a little bit above "quiet". Same with the original HDD, which on mine was spinny. I don't recall ever hearing it in operation. I replaced that with an SSD (be sure to clean the fan venting area while you're in there if you do that) but the before/after change didn't exactly blow my mind.

For a hacker it could be great. You could do a LOT with it. Most development and scripting tasks are easy. However I would strongly recommend a separate pointing device, as it's a pretty substantial upgrade to the user experience.

For web browsing, Falkon and 3-4 tabs max can work pretty well but modern JS SPAs probably wouldn't be very fun (if they'd even work in Falkon). I use Dillo a lot myself.

I remember hearing about the Samsung, that's too bad about the white screen problem. I think the biggest problem I've had with the Wind was that the power button's blue LED failed, but all the other LEDs work and the button itself is fine.

Re: Asus put out like 40 models of a laptop called the “Eee PC” (2021)

#186

Post by timw4mail »

Sunspark wrote: post #15

The Eee PC 701 was amazing. It was really good for students who needed something small and light that they could take to the library, etc. The alternative back then was a heavy power-hungry full-size laptop. This is before all the stuff we take for granted today like tablets, etc. The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 was the next really good netbook. After those, Apple introduced the Macbook Air which came in a 11.6" size. Even…

Netbooks are kind of back, though. 11/12" screens, N3000/N4000 series Celeron processors, 32-64GB of storage, sd card slot, and Windows 10.

Re: Asus put out like 40 models of a laptop called the “Eee PC” (2021)

#187

Post by rkangel »

Nursie wrote: post #42
Sunspark wrote: post #15

The Eee PC 701 was amazing. It was really good for students who needed something small and light that they could take to the library, etc. The alternative back then was a heavy power-hungry full-size laptop. This is before all the stuff we take for granted today like tablets, etc. The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 was the next really good netbook. After those, Apple introduced the Macbook Air which came in a 11.6" size. Even…

Nah, the 901 was where it was at! Atom chip, more usable screen size, 4GB system drive that was reasonably snappy. I used that thing for years, even ran OSX snow-leopard on it for a while.

I've just dug through my email to be sure - I also had a 901! The 20GB version version, running Linux.

I was just about not a student at this point but still doing a lot of Theatre touring. The EEE PC was great for what I needed which was to be portable enough to carry around all the time in Edinburgh, check my email in bars, and even be solid enough to run the sound effects for a show!

Re: Asus put out like 40 models of a laptop called the “Eee PC” (2021)

#189

Post by decafninja »

wirrbel wrote: post #163
Sunspark wrote: post #15

The Eee PC 701 was amazing. It was really good for students who needed something small and light that they could take to the library, etc. The alternative back then was a heavy power-hungry full-size laptop. This is before all the stuff we take for granted today like tablets, etc. The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 was the next really good netbook. After those, Apple introduced the Macbook Air which came in a 11.6" size. Even…

I think I have never seen a chromebook in real life.

Same. Then again, outside of work I seem to rarely see any laptop in use that isn't a Mac these days. I know that's not representative, but still.

Re: Asus put out like 40 models of a laptop called the “Eee PC” (2021)

#190

Post by l72 »

dirtyv wrote: post #56
Sunspark wrote: post #15

The Eee PC 701 was amazing. It was really good for students who needed something small and light that they could take to the library, etc. The alternative back then was a heavy power-hungry full-size laptop. This is before all the stuff we take for granted today like tablets, etc. The Dell Inspiron Mini 9 was the next really good netbook. After those, Apple introduced the Macbook Air which came in a 11.6" size. Even…

If you are actually interested in buying something like that you just described the Pinebook/Pinebook Pro. I've got the Pro and love it

I bought a Pinebook Pro because I wanted to support the project. However, it has turned into my primary personal laptop. It works great for all my personal development projects (emacs + elixir/javascript/react/python), running my side business (Shopify store), along with book keeping (plain text accounting), and general web surfing.

Suspend works well. Battery life is good enough (not as good as my m1 macbook). Wifi and everything else works fine. The only annoyance is the sound card doesn't get reset correctly after suspend. This required setting up a script to reload the module + a systemd unit to run it when coming back from suspend.

It is cheap enough that I'm not worried about throwing it in my bag or taking it overseas. It also seems to get a lot of attention in public as it has no markings on it at all!

I've thought about expanding the hard drive (as 64G isn't much), but it forces me to push everything to my home server/NAS which is a good thing.

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