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Greg Anos · 05-23-2009, 05:06 PM

Sorry to be late to the party, DG, but I've been busy today.

I have two of the little beasties. I have an original Asus 4G (with the 7" screen) and I have the ASUS 900HA, which has a 160 GB hard drive and a 8.9" screen in the almost the same size case as the original ASUS 4G.

I have swapped out the 160GB drive for an 80 GB drive to testbed LINUX MINT's Gloria RC1 release of Ubuntu Linux. The original came with XP Home.

I don't like them as an e-book reader. You can use them for such, But I still prefer e-ink.

I went with ASUS because they were rated as very easy to upgrade. I can vouch for the hard drive change. Undo 4 screws, pull out the hard drive, put in another, and put the cover and 4 screws back in. Real easy.

Hardware comments. Size is what these little beasties are all about. This cuts two ways. Really small is easy to carry and keep around, but you pay for that convenience but little screens and small (sub-normal size) keyboards. You can go with bigger, more comfortable, portables, but they are just that. Bigger! That's a personal call, only you can decide what is the right size. You at least have choices. I went with the smallest possible with a 2.5" hard drive. If I want a SSD drive, I can buy it later. you can plug in an external mouse and/or keyboard and/or screen, but you'll have to pack then along. I always pack a mouse with my ASUS, as I hate trackpads. Total carry weight (w/mouse and power supply) is over 3 pounds (or 1.5 Kilos). Dimensions are 9" x 6.8" x 2". Netbooks all have basically the same CPU, the same graphics chip, and have about the same throughput. It's about what a desktop had 10 years ago. For my uses, acceptable. If you want to run the latest and greatest Photoshop or games, it isn't up to it. It'll run Skype.

Software comments. Ubuntu Linux will run fine on the bigger ASUS, but I still have a big learning curve on installing applications. Furthermore, I find the most hyped video player, VLC, unacceptable on the machine. It drops frames, and didn't handle menus correctly. This is not a hardware limitation, as PowerDVD 5 under XP worked just fine with the same video. Music players work just fine though. On the other hand Linux is safer for internet. Probably a dual-boot set-up would be fine. (With the limited processor power available, I hesitate to try Microsoft emulators. Besides, I downloaded Virtual Box, but it didn't show up on the menus. As a complete N00B, fixing it was beyond my knowledge base.)

Therefore I'm going back to XP when I can afford a 500GB hard drive, probably a dual boot configuration.

Hope this helps...

05-23-2009, 05:06 PM	#37
Greg Anos Grand Sorcerer Posts: 11,532 Karma: 37057604 Join Date: Jan 2008 Device: Pocketbook	Sorry to be late to the party, DG, but I've been busy today. I have two of the little beasties. I have an original Asus 4G (with the 7" screen) and I have the ASUS 900HA, which has a 160 GB hard drive and a 8.9" screen in the almost the same size case as the original ASUS 4G. I have swapped out the 160GB drive for an 80 GB drive to testbed LINUX MINT's Gloria RC1 release of Ubuntu Linux. The original came with XP Home. I don't like them as an e-book reader. You can use them for such, But I still prefer e-ink. I went with ASUS because they were rated as very easy to upgrade. I can vouch for the hard drive change. Undo 4 screws, pull out the hard drive, put in another, and put the cover and 4 screws back in. Real easy. Hardware comments. Size is what these little beasties are all about. This cuts two ways. Really small is easy to carry and keep around, but you pay for that convenience but little screens and small (sub-normal size) keyboards. You can go with bigger, more comfortable, portables, but they are just that. Bigger! That's a personal call, only you can decide what is the right size. You at least have choices. I went with the smallest possible with a 2.5" hard drive. If I want a SSD drive, I can buy it later. you can plug in an external mouse and/or keyboard and/or screen, but you'll have to pack then along. I always pack a mouse with my ASUS, as I hate trackpads. Total carry weight (w/mouse and power supply) is over 3 pounds (or 1.5 Kilos). Dimensions are 9" x 6.8" x 2". Netbooks all have basically the same CPU, the same graphics chip, and have about the same throughput. It's about what a desktop had 10 years ago. For my uses, acceptable. If you want to run the latest and greatest Photoshop or games, it isn't up to it. It'll run Skype. Software comments. Ubuntu Linux will run fine on the bigger ASUS, but I still have a big learning curve on installing applications. Furthermore, I find the most hyped video player, VLC, unacceptable on the machine. It drops frames, and didn't handle menus correctly. This is not a hardware limitation, as PowerDVD 5 under XP worked just fine with the same video. Music players work just fine though. On the other hand Linux is safer for internet. Probably a dual-boot set-up would be fine. (With the limited processor power available, I hesitate to try Microsoft emulators. Besides, I downloaded Virtual Box, but it didn't show up on the menus. As a complete N00B, fixing it was beyond my knowledge base.) Therefore I'm going back to XP when I can afford a 500GB hard drive, probably a dual boot configuration. Hope this helps...