Scripting News: Asus passed another test (Scripting News)
Josh Bancroft
· 1 year ago
I have an Eee PC 901, too, and it is an amazing little computer. The battery life is easily the best feature. I credit the Atom procesor (even though I work for Intel, I'm not just trying to shill here). A Core 2 Duo laptop chip (like in a MacBook Pro) runs at about 35 Watts. The Atom processor in the Eee PC runs at 2 Watts, and can scale down to 500 milliwatts (0.5 Watts) dynamically if it's not being worked hard. Amazing. :-)
I saw news yesterday of a 3rd party company called Bluetrade selling 8 cell 9800 milliamp-hour extended batteries for the Eee PC 901 (the one it comes with is a 6 cell 6600mAH) for $140. That's almost 50% more capacity than the already huge 6600mAH battery. Should easily be good for 7 or 8 hours solid usage. Here's the link:
If you're going to get an extended battery for your Eee PC 901, that might be the one to go for, if you don't mind a little extra size/weight. Of course, just having an identical spare of the original battery would work, too. :-)
dave
· 1 year ago
Josh, the website is entirely in French so it's hard for me to tell if they ship to the US.
I'd probably go for another battery just like the 6-cell one that comes with the computer.
Any ideas where I can get one of those?
Siamak
· 1 year ago
Hi Dave, I found a Hong Kong company selling an 8800 maH battery for the Asus eee 901 and it looks like they can ship to any country:
The folks at asus really have their ract together. Regarding Apple, I think there will be an "ultra-portable" mac out this year.
sameasiteverwas
· 1 year ago
"Regarding Apple, I think there will be an "ultra-portable" mac out this year."
I'll go out on a limb and say that you won't ever see a Mac in this form factor. The EEE isn't competing against the MacBook; it's competing against the iPhone.
dave
· 1 year ago
I completely agree. I observed the other day (and I should and will blog this) that since getting the Asus, I hardly ever use my iPhone for anything other than a phone. I much prefer it. I think however that's why Apple *should* produce a Mac in this form factor. Don't let Windows have all the users who prefer a computer to an iPhone. Either way I don't care -- as a user, the Asus meets all my needs.
Kevin C. Tofel
· 1 year ago
Dave, great sharing of the experience. I'm thorough enjoying that you're "getting it" with these ultraportable devices; the way we have for a few years now. Of course, today's hardware makes it a much more powerful (and less expensive) experience. I took nothing more than my MSI Wind netbook to the Mobilize conference in SF this week and was able to do everything I needed to do. Using it right now as I sit in Atlanta on my way home to Philly, in fact.
As far as Apple making something like this: we've been hoping for that over the last two years or so. Best I can do is to install OS X on my Wind, which I'll do once I get back. I could see Apple making something like my Wind or your Asus, but it's bound to be more expensive. And I don't think they'll do it until they're positive that the overall experience and performance is more than adequate. In support of Josh's comment, the Intel Atom platform is doing well as compared to prior mobile chipsets I've used over the past few years. I've seen evidence that it can handle OS X well enough, although I'll likely add another 1 GB of RAM to my Wind. Keep sharing the experiences!
Siamak
· 1 year ago
Dave, one problem that I think you will come across pretty soon is the small size of the "C" partition on the 12GB windows version of the eee PC. Once you start installing the various windows updates, I think you may find that that there will be very little free space left on the C drive. So, you might want to run a freeware utility called CCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/download/downloading) on a regular basis.
kbolgarov
· 1 year ago
I absolutely agree, eee is actually my only machine (except for the office desktop which i use pretty rarely). I also have a very old samsung laptop at home, but i use only as a typewriter, because that keyboard, i donno, it's magic - it helps writing ;)
sameasiteverwas
· 1 year ago
"No problem using Windows as long as it's XP"
I think you just answered your question as to why Microsoft doesn't "promote the hell" out of it...
I too love my Eee PC (mine is running Linux) but the only thing that would make it better is if it ran Mac OS X. (Officially, not some hacked version of OS X.) I've got the original 701 model, so I don't see the battery life being so great on it. Still, you should check out eeeuser.com as there is a blog, forum and wiki where you might find some useful info on the Eee PC and battery options.
Jean Warner
· 1 year ago
When you find out where to buy a battery, let me know. I bought one from Amazon - on your recommendation- 2 weeks ago for $449. Love at first sight. Thank you, Dave!
tdroza
· 1 year ago
I've had an Eee901 (linux) for 2 weeks now. Really impressed with the hardware (build quality, keyboard, webcam, etc) but the standard Xandros linux was awful (quick to boot, but multitouch didn't work properly, flash video was choppy, update manager didn't work, shutdown only worked intermittently). Two days after I bought it I formatted the SSD and installed Ubuntu (www.ubuntu-eee.com) and it's completely transformed my Eee. Took about 15mins to install and pretty much everything just works without any extra config (and I've never really used linux before). The UI is slick, it's responsive, comes with Firefox3 (including flash), skype, pidgin, openoffice. Highly recommended - you can run it from USB or SD to play around with it before you wipe your existing OS.
Bill
· 1 year ago
Dave, this thread convinced me to get the 901 yesterday. I owned the 701 and used it frequently, but I found the 800x480 screen too much of a limitation. It did teach me that I only *thought* I needed to have a big hard drive. Thanks for sharing your user experience. That makes more impact than all the unboxing videos on the Internet.
Thejesh GN
· 1 year ago
I have asus 701. Its pretty good except battery life. I used it during my recent finland trip and Nokia OpenLab event. I didnt miss my laptop :)
All Comments
I saw news yesterday of a 3rd party company called Bluetrade selling 8 cell 9800 milliamp-hour extended batteries for the Eee PC 901 (the one it comes with is a 6 cell 6600mAH) for $140. That's almost 50% more capacity than the already huge 6600mAH battery. Should easily be good for 7 or 8 hours solid usage. Here's the link:
http://www.liliputing.com/2008/09/3rd-party-980...
If you're going to get an extended battery for your Eee PC 901, that might be the one to go for, if you don't mind a little extra size/weight. Of course, just having an identical spare of the original battery would work, too. :-)
I'd probably go for another battery just like the 6-cell one that comes with the computer.
Any ideas where I can get one of those?
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/8800mA-Extended-Battery-f...
I'll go out on a limb and say that you won't ever see a Mac in this form factor. The EEE isn't competing against the MacBook; it's competing against the iPhone.
As far as Apple making something like this: we've been hoping for that over the last two years or so. Best I can do is to install OS X on my Wind, which I'll do once I get back. I could see Apple making something like my Wind or your Asus, but it's bound to be more expensive. And I don't think they'll do it until they're positive that the overall experience and performance is more than adequate. In support of Josh's comment, the Intel Atom platform is doing well as compared to prior mobile chipsets I've used over the past few years. I've seen evidence that it can handle OS X well enough, although I'll likely add another 1 GB of RAM to my Wind. Keep sharing the experiences!
I think you just answered your question as to why Microsoft doesn't "promote the hell" out of it...