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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)

#81
post #77

I still have four EeePCs. I had four of the original Linux-only model with the tiny keyboard and weird Linux distro. Those I got from a startup which bought a lot of them and found them useless. I replaced those with EeePC 1001 ("Seashell") models, which I buy on eBay for about US$30, wipe, and install Xubuntu. They're convenient for things for which one might use a Raspberry Pi. You get a keyboard, screen, case, pow…

This was my high school computer! It was, shall we say, not top of the line. I tried compiling Linux and gave up at about the two hour mark.

That said, it was a great, if slightly small, little portable computer. Which was really mostly all I needed.

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

#83
post #55

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 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…

[deleted]

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

#84

My takeaway from the article: Microsoft gave ASUS a deal they couldn't refuse. ASUS took the bait and sold the Eee PC with Windows preinstalled but the version of Windows was a little too crappy. Ultimately this sealed their fate as people upgraded to a "real computer," resigning the Eee PC's position to that of a toy. Is this right?

The one I bought came with Linux, but some weird distro I never heard of and I doubt anybody would really want to use. So I install a mainstream distro on it, no big deal, but then the limitations of the very small screen size become apparent when KDE/GNOME fail to fit basic things like settings GUIs onto the screen. With a tiling window manager it became perfect for me. But I think most general computer users would…

I couldn't do my timecard on my eee PC due to screen size.

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

#85
post #68

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…

I don’t really have to reboot my M1 ever (short of updates), so booting is more or less equal to flipping open the screen.

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

#86

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…

pretty sure i bricked my eee doing a bios update so i could put linux on it.

Mine almost bricked itself due to the accumulation of driver and Windows updates, so I installed Linux to save it. But by then it was slow, noisy, and full of moving parts compared to alternatives and I never really used it again.

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

#87
post #55

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 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…

[deleted]

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

#88
post #56

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

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

#89
I know it’s not the same, but if you are looking for a small form factor with a real OS, consider the Surface Go 3. I have the 2 and have really enjoyed it so far. Not the fastest thing in the world as you would expect, but I have even done some Rust coding in it while traveling. Perfect for VSCode remoting!

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

#90
I had one of these! I brought it on a bicycle tour around Europe to stay in touch with my business, as I hopped on WiFi hotspots at all the McDonalds. I remember it being awfully slow but small enough to fit into the front bag of my bicycle, which is super, super wild now that I think of it.
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