asus eee pc.

[VNexecutive]

hi just wondering if anyone has used one of these tiny laptops?

im getting into the offroading scene now, and i wanna set up a small laptop with gps and run maps and everything off it rather than a gps.

anyone got any experience with these? says they only have 8Gig of memory, but i wont be storing games or anything i guess.

anyone out there got a similar setup for offroading/touring?

thanks

[TVR-190]

i had one, would be ok for doing somelike like you want. fairly useless for proper work though

[levymetal]

8gig hard drive? you must be looking a pretty bad one. most of them now come with 160gb hdds. i've got one and it's pretty awesome, really quick to boot up, 9 hour battery life, runs all applications i've tried on it etc. i don't know where you would sit the netbook for GPS use though.

[pow3rslave]

i've got one.

eeeuser.com is a decent site, got forums and everything. i had an eee700, which had a 700mhz cpu, and 7" lcd, came with 4gb solid state disk. i sold it and got a 900HA, which has the bigger 8.9" screen and a 900mhz cpu, i put a gig of ram in it (came with 512) and pulled out the 30gig hard disk for a solid state disk, so it's drop proof, faster read/writes and less power use.

i run dual boot windows XP and a custom build of ubuntu linux called eeebuntu, it's just stripped back and has only what the device needs. there's a bit of room inside, i was gonna put a 3g modem inside, but i never got round to it. i used it at uni, now it just downloads torrents overnight (less power usage)

after the 900's the brought out the 1000 series, which used the intel atom 1.6ghz processor. they also got a bit bulkier, and i never got into them, they started to blur the lines between the netbook and full laptop, so i'm not cluey on them

[pow3rslave]

gps you can get external gps usb dongles, or i think some 3g modems can do it, but i don't know how accurately

[levymetal]

yeah i've got a 1000HE (atom n270 1.6ghz, 1gb ddr2 ram, 10" screen, 160gb hdd). i was really worried when i bought it - i was expecting a slow pile of shit really. i knew what i was buying and 1.6ghz is crap. however i was greatly mistaken. it's real snappy, runs the entire microsoft office suite fine, as well as firefox, which is pretty much all i use 90% of the time. i was tempted to try photoshop but installing shit is what makes xp slow, so i decided to leave it to applications i actually need. i could probably use it as my main pc if i didn't play games, so that should say something about how fast it is

[pow3rslave]

yeah i scaled windows back heaps, deleted all the services and stuff i wouldn't need from the install disc. firefox greys out very occasionally, and youtube isn't great, but i think i paid about 400 bucks for it after all the discounts i got, so meh.
my advice is to try one out, there's a bunch of other netbooks on the market. hp do one with an almost full size keyboard, msi wind isn't great from what i've heard.

[Morton]

Grab yourself a Samsung NC20. They're only about $600 from MSY at the moment, and are by far the best quality netbook on the market at the moment.

I've got a mate who lives with me and owns an eee pc... it's a little buggy after only six months' use.

[VNexecutive]

thanks for the info guys. theres a mob in geelong who are selling these eee's for 300 bucks brand new, dunno what specs (didnt know there was such a wide range to be honest, and i only got the 8 gig memory thing off the website when browsing).

plenty of people run laptops as gps and navigational units in patrols etc, you can get stands and stuff for them, if all else fails ill screw it to the dash haha (who cares, its a ford.)

[levymetal]

yeah just check the specs and have a look around. mine cost $400 a couple of months ago (i got it for a really good deal though), but even centrecom have the model down from mine for $400 now.

Centre Com Online

i think the one you are looking at has a 7" screen, 900mhz processor, and 512mb ram. ALSO it may not come with windows installed - these ones usually have linux. be careful - the gps software may not be available for linux. i think you'd be better off spending an extra $100 and getting some decent processing power behind your netbook, a 10" screen, a hard drive that will actually allow you to store things on it, and 1gb of ram. or get the samsung, they are nice . but yeah just shop around there are better deals out there

[pow3rslave]

thanks for the info guys. theres a mob in geelong who are selling these eee's for 300 bucks brand new, dunno what specs (didnt know there was such a wide range to be honest, and i only got the 8 gig memory thing off the website when browsing).

plenty of people run laptops as gps and navigational units in patrols etc, you can get stands and stuff for them, if all else fails ill screw it to the dash haha (who cares, its a ford.)

for 300 bucks make sure it's no an eee700, even though they are just the 900mhz cpu clocked down to 630mhz, you can run into dramas clocking it back up to full power, but yeah the 700's and 900's are old stock so they'll both be heaps cheap.

[VNexecutive]

thanks for the info guys

i mainly dont wanna spend lots of cash on something that'll probably get covered in mud or other random crap and be ruined straight away. 3-500 bucks isnt worth complaining about really.

[Morton]

Yeah, just watch out for the eepcs, many don't come with windows as people have said

Take a look at the samsung stuff - go into MSY or CPL and ask for a good Samsung ebook in the range of 3-500. They do fantastic prices

[VNexecutive]

MSY or CPL? im assuming theyre shops of some sort? haha

[Morton]

Google is your friend

[jameswh]

I have a 1000HE and am fairly pleased with it. It, to my surprise, runs Windows 7 (Ultimate, 32 bit) quite well. I picked up a 500gb hard drive and through that in it, as well.
I bought the unit with the intention to take it overseas with me. Unfortunately, given it's strangely small size, airport security (at every airport I stopped at) was a little suspect when I had placed it in the container for scanning, and thought that it'd be a great idea to open it all up and thoroughly inspect it.
My only gripe with the unit is it's hard drive bracket - it's made out of some very flimsy material and hardly holds the drive in place. While overseas, I had to hold the hard drive in there with a piece of cardboard so that it wouldn't call out of the internal SATA connector.

[Jesterarts]

I jsut bought a 1005HA with the n270 processor and 8.5h battery...

LOVE IT!

Frist thing I did was blow away the 'Windows Starter' it came with and put Windows 7 Ultimate on it.

Runs it great... WITH AERO!! lol

With wireless on, last time I got a bit over 6h out of the battery... but this was its first ever charge!

Plus the AUD/USD is very goot at the moment so I got mine dirt cheap.

Cheers

[holdensupporter2005]

your better off getting a netbook rather than an eee pc. I bought a Acer A150 off ebay only about 8 months old and paid about $300 for it. It has 160Gb hard drive and 1Gb Ram memory. It had Windows XP, but I formatted it and it is now running Windows 7

Here is one similar to what I bought
Acer Aspire One AO751h-52Br - Brand New 11.6" Notebook - eBay, Laptops, Notebooks, Computers. (end time 01-Dec-09 23:23:12 AEDST)

[levymetal]

your better off getting a netbook rather than an eee pc.

an eeepc is a netbook...

[onca]

VNexec, if you wanna take the box on the road and use it as a satnav substitute, I'd say its ideal. Does everything a big-PC can do, with tiny form factor and uses bugger-all power.

It's also good for word processing, email and net surfing. As long as you don't wanna run any serious apps, as the Atom processor really struggles. (Think 1.5 ton HQ with a 173 motor lol). Another warning, the piddly little keyboard ain't suitable for speed typing with meaty fingers

The 8 gig solid state drive might be a little small... XP uses 1-3 gigs on its own... personally I'd go for 16 gigs minimum. Although having said that, external USB sticks are so cheap, so prolly doesn't matter.

hth....