On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 10:29:16AM +1100, Rev Simon Rumble wrote:
> Hi folks.
>
> I'm in the market for one of these ultra-portable little laptops. I'm
> keen on a 9" screen, and would prefer not to pay the Redmond tax.
>
> So what's people's experiences? The MSI Wind is looking like a front
> runner from the reviews I've read.
>
> What are the real world experiences?
I have the Asus EEE 901. Points of note (in braindump format :):
* it's lovely :) it came with linux. it was black. the screen is
beautiful.
* whilst I use a hand-crafted kernel I do believe all components have drivers
in debian (inc wireless if you backport from sid). given the
out-of-tree wireless driver, a handcrafted monolithic kernel works just
fine too. :)
* standard debian install works just fine off an SD card.
* the internal 16gb ssd is as fast as the 4gb ssd and they are both
twice as fast as a class 6 16gb sd card (in as far as hdparm can be
used to ascertain such things)
* the standard xandros install is good for non-geeky things. it all
works and works simply. if you need a terminal you can get one (good
way to start getting geeky :)
* ASUS provides automatic updates (prompted rather then forced down your
throat), inc the bios.
* my xfce4 lenny environment with a fair few plugins (cpufreq, battery,
clock, bluetooth, wicd, etc), a few terminals and seamonkey is just
shy of 200mb and I don't have swap configured. I regret buying a 2gb
stick of ram. seems a waste.
* don't be fooled by the 1.6ghz in the cpu specs. the cpu is /not/ that
fast and you will feel as if time was slowing down as you get a few flash
applets going. ;)
* wicd is, well, wicked. :) it works wonderfully and I have a wpa2-aes
11n wireless network going and I got it going in a fairly brainless
manner (once you have the wireless kernel driver up and know that the
interface is ra0 then you're prettymuch done). wicd is not in debian,
you'll need to get it off the site (ok. it's in sid but it's an older
version than the debian deb provided on-site).
* my battery life is 6hrs with wireless and bluetooth drivers active, it
was around 9hrs going off the wire and both those off.
* I've not configured up the special keyboard buttons (completely forgot
about them) but I hear it can be done.
* the size of the keyboard /will/ be annoying at times. that said, the
size of the laptop more then makes up for it. I'd say the size of the
901 is the minimum you'd want as far as total width*depth of the
laptop and the size of the screen.
* my bluetooth mouse works wonderfully most of the time. I can get lag
due to its position wrt the laptop but it's mainly in "corner" cases
that this happens in. I think heavy cpu use may also affect it.
* I got internet access via bluetooth and my mobile phone going once but
now weirdness has set in and I can't seem to get it going again - most
annoying.
* the powerpack is wonderfully small.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head. In summary, though, I
have no regrets.
If you have more specific questions, holler.
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