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

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

#201

Post by squarefoot » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

marttt wrote: post #184

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 Pana…

> Also, thanks for the reference to the AOM capsules

You're welcome. I read some reports of them around a while ago and looking at the data sheet was amazed about their s/n ratio: 80dB! From a €3.03/pc at Digikey capsule! I'll be relocating in a couple months so with half the gear already packed I'm not going to start new projects right now, but my 1st use case will be small clip-on mics for a acoustic drumset; the physical construction will probably represent a bigger challenge than the electronics itself.

> We are drowning in old electronics. It is an incredible time to live in.

And some of it is still convenient to use. All my PCs but one are used or refurbished, including the NAS. It's amazing how much one can save by doing in the meantime also a service to the planet.

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

#202

Post by mrguyorama » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 6:44 PM UTC

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…

My Windows PC, with a cheap low range samsung SSD boots from dead to Firefox playing a youtube video again in less than ten seconds. It's the main reason I haven't put much effort into fixing a dumb BSOD that is probably caused by the same SSD.

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

#203

Post by xtracto » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 4:23 AM UTC

jabbany wrote: post #153

macNchz wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This +1. I have a similar setup and it definitely takes upwards of 20s for a cold boot. Though like mentioned above, I don't really do cold boots that often and my average uptime is about a 20 days (mostly rebooting to apply updates). My guess is that doing proper power on self test (POST) stuff will always add a delay (having multiple network ports and 128G of RAM does not help). Though a lot of modern OSes like Win…

Hibernating is one of the things I wish worked better on Linux.

I am one of those few that dont like leaving my PC in sleep mode , but prefer a complete off state with full hibernation.

The times when I've tried to setup hibernation in Linux, it is clumsy (add swap file, config textfile mangling, etc) and theres always something that doesn't work when coming from hibernation.

I would even pay for some super fast/small non-volatile storage dedicated for Hibernation file. Maybe some internal small (64gb) hyperfast name raid0 setup.

This being 2022...

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

#204

Post by jwommack » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

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…

Windows updates on older Eee PCs got/gets brutal a few years in. Mostly due to them needing to take up more and more hard drive space.

I remember there was a significant security update a few years back that would just constantly retry on Eee PCs because it needed like 20Gb of storage it would basically never get. Made it essentially unusable.

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

#205

Post by GekkePrutser » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 5:09 PM UTC

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…

The EEEPC 701 was not great in terms of maximizing usability for the form factor. The screen bezels were huge as were the speakers beside it. The vertical resolution wasn't even enough to show some control panel dialogs in Windows XP. I had one myself but there were just too many corners cut to take make it work out.

Later models solved these issues and more and were much more bang for the buck. And maximized the usability for the size and price point.

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

#206

Post by strken » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 5:26 AM UTC

pnutjam wrote: post #191

strken wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a student the 701 was great. It fit in my (large) coat pocket, supported up to 2gb of ram, ran Xubuntu fine, was sturdier than my main laptop, had amazing battery life, and a real keyboard. It fit in that annoying niche between my tiny consumption-oriented phone and big work-oriented laptop, when I needed a full Linux environment for something but didn't mind if the command took a little while longer to type or ru…

Yeah, soldered parts; but most manufacturers sell a windows pc with emmc storage that is pretty cheap. I have an older HP version with 2GB of Ram and 16GB eeMC storage. It fits in the tablet pocket of my backpack, is super light, long battery life, and runs opensuse like a champ, even with KDE. EDIT: emmc, not eemc.

The only problem I have with soldered parts is soldered RAM. Everything else can be worked around with patience or external parts, but once you don't have enough RAM to run a web browser with a single tab open to a common website, you're constantly page faulting.

I'm not sure whether this is planned obsolescence, or just the consequence of consumers who don't know or care about upgrading their device to keep it current.

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

#207

Post by Doxin » Mon, Aug 01, 2022, 11:24 AM UTC

tapanjk wrote: post #71

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 ... Unless you work for a large enterprise and your laptop is managed by IT. Not sure what goes on but getting from power on to the point where you can start using your laptop seems to take ages.

Roaming profiles would be my guess.