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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)

#41

Post by rdw »

I had one, and I wrote a lot of code on it. There was pretty much nothing else on the market that could do web browsing in that portable of a form factor, and at that price point. Steve was somewhat right to worry about them -- in an alternate history they would have taken over as the dominant form of computing, creating a whole evolutionary tree of tiny laptops, converged with keyboarded mobile phones, at all price points and build qualities.

The 11" Air I got to replace the Eee was much better in every single way. One note is that the thin-and-long of the Air was much more portable than the chunky but stubbier Eee. It just fits better into the kinds of bags we all have. The thinness wars started then.

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

#42

Post by Nursie »

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.

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

#43

Post by russnewcomer »

In 2008 or 9, I had about 20 Eee 701s shipped to the international school I was the IT Director at in Central Asia to make a mobile computer lab, outfitted some Gorilla cases with power and foam, and had a pretty decent cheap expansion lab. The downside was that our internet was a 10:1 oversub’d satellite with a max 1mb (and that was upgraded from the 5:1 256k that we had been on) and the teachers wanted the lab to do internet-based projects, and between that and the 3 DDWRT’d Linksys routers that I had scrounged from the bazaar since I had no room out of my 10k tech budget for the year that had to cover _everything_ tech for the 400 student K12 school, it wasn’t a great solution for the actual problem, but those little machines were awesome at the time.

I know for most people, phones or tablets fit that gap, but I think I would prefer an Eee over my Surface Go for casual use, if just for the typing form factor.

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

#44

Post by doubled112 »

bitwize wrote: post #10

I still have my MSI Wind. Great little machine. It runs Emacs and a compiler comfortably, so it's still useful. I prototyped a game on it over a series of subway trips to/from work. One time a pretty girl at a bar saw it with its little retro Window Maker desktop, and told me I should buy Apple products because they're "more digital". I guess netbooks are considered "retro" computing devices now, huh. Damn, I'm old.

I recently recycled an MSI Wind U100. Battery was shot, hinges gave up years ago, keyboard was in pretty rough shape. Still booted though off a budget (at the time) 40GB Intel SSD that made it feel fast.

Still chuckle that they offered the overclocking option as if it mattered on that Atom N270 CPU.

Dragged it everywhere for a bit. It was the first laptop shaped device I could afford new as a teenager. I refuse to believe it's retro.

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

#45

Post by lizard »

alisonatwork wrote: post #17
emptysongglass wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways that era of netbooks felt like the glory days of creative computing devices and OSes. Intel created this really lovely UI on top of Linux called Moblin. My mom ran Jolicloud, which was built around webapps. A bunch of netbooks were coming out with their own Linux flavors to the mass market and webOS was right around the corner. I'm going to say this with a straight face: if only more people would have ha…

I think the most accessible small form factor Linux box right now is the Steam Deck. You're paying a bit more for game controller hardware if you just want to use it as a workstation, but it is just Linux under the hood and looks to be a pretty neat cyberdeck-like device.

I recently learned however that the SteamOS desktop is built on a read-only image, with the expectation software will be installed via flatpak.

It is apparently possible to turn the read-only protection off to use pacman or your own thing, but anything you do may be wiped out on the next OS update.

See: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/671A-4453-E8D2-32...

I believe it was mentioned in a previous story that it would at least not void the warranty to replace SteamOS entirely though.

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

#46

Post by ryukafalz »

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…

As for why manufacturers don’t make netbooks… it’s a fair point if you’re only looking at the major PC makers I guess, but overall they actually do! Think GPD Pocket series, One Mix series, (soon) MNT Pocket Reform. It’s a niche, but the hardware exists!

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

#47

Post by DoktorDelta »

For a few years I had an X205TA "Eeebook" which was a bit of a mixed bag.

The battery life was stellar on the Atom processor, and the boot time was fast enough that I could save even more battery by shutting it down between classes.

The cramped keyboard and tiny screen, however, made it a pain to use sometimes, and 2gb of RAM meant having to be careful about what I had running to avoid seriously slowing it down.

When Windows 10 came around and PCs started upgrading without any user input, my laptop was among them. Unfortunately, the original operating system was the slimmed down "Windows 8.1 with Bing" that was intended for use on low-spec hardware. Windows 10 absolutely killed the performance and I had to grab a used Thinkpad Carbon to have something light but functional.

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

#48

Post by TheCycoONE »

maicro wrote: post #26
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'll just throw this out there - GalliumOS works fairly well to convert a Chromebook into a full-fat Linux laptop. I've only installed it on one, but the process wasn't too hard. The end result is kinda hacky, and from what I recall there's not much development being done on Gallium of late, but it's still an option.

GalliumOS works for the x86 chromebooks. For a handful of arm chromebooks archlinuxarm works reasonably well.

I bought a Samsung Chromebook Plus (1st gen) before covid when I was taking the train every day. I find it to be a great carry with me device for note taking, web browsing, coding, and light gaming when combined with a tiling window manager. It certainly feels like the netbook promise of the late 2000s.

I have to caution that for that particular device the stock kernel in archlinuxarm no longer boots because there are limits on the boot partition size. The workaround I'm aware of is to build out your disk on an sd card / usb stick on another computer, cross compiling the kernel with a reduced set of drivers, and installing it using binfmt-qemu-static/chroot.

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

#50

Post by hattmall »

DoktorDelta wrote: post #47

For a few years I had an X205TA "Eeebook" which was a bit of a mixed bag. The battery life was stellar on the Atom processor, and the boot time was fast enough that I could save even more battery by shutting it down between classes. The cramped keyboard and tiny screen, however, made it a pain to use sometimes, and 2gb of RAM meant having to be careful about what I had running to avoid seriously slowing it down. When…

Damn, I had, still have the exact same one, managed to avoid the Win 10 upgrade and it worked well but my issue now is charging. Battery life was Amazing and it really was good enough for most stuff, just can't reliably charge even after 3-4 replacement chargers.
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