#ASUS EEE PC 701 SD 8G WINDOWS#
is the largest online fan base, covering all manner of hacks from turning it into a car computer, to making it touch screen or running Windows 3.11 on it if you so wish. It’s only been available for a month or two, but the EEE already has a large fan-base, and a healthy portion of those (including myself) have been exploring alternative uses and ways of running the EEE PC. Out of the box you’re left with 1.3Gb of space on the SSD. Finally, should you manage to mess something up somehow on the EEE PC, simply reboot and hold down F9 and it’ll restore the main drive back to ‘out of the box’ condition in seconds. It was able to handle pretty much anything I threw at it including YouTube, networking, and film trailers. Obviously with it’s diminutive form factor the keyboard and trackpad have been made smaller, however unlike the Toshiba Libretto of days past this keyboard is actually usable, sure it takes a bit of getting used to, but I can touch type comfortably on it after a little practise.
#ASUS EEE PC 701 SD 8G FULL#
If you’re so inclined you can have a fiddle around in the console (alt+shift+t) to enable the full desktop, and the familiar task bar, desktop and start menu. It contains nice big icons and a simple tabbed layout, giving you access to pretty much anything the average user would need such as FireFox, Thunderbird, Pidigin (IM), Media Player, Internet Radio, Google webapps, Open Office and a handful of games. Over the standard Xandros KDE desktop they’ve implemented an application launcher called ‘Easy Mode’. The EEE PC runs a custom built variant of Xandros, which itself is a variant of Debian. This is partially due to the rapid read/write speeds afforded by the SSD, but largely the custom built Linux distribution installed on the EEE PC. It was one of the quickest boot times I’ve ever seen, 13 seconds from pressing the power button to being ready to use. Once the charging light had gone out, I unplugged it, brought it over to the sofa, opened it up and turned it on.
#ASUS EEE PC 701 SD 8G DRIVERS#
You get a small neoprene slip case which is quite handy if you plan to carry it in your backpack, a Quick Start Guide, a thicker User Manual and a Restore CD containing extra drivers (we’ll get to those later). I popped it on for it’s initial charge which took about 3 (very painful) hours whilst I went through everything else in the very small box. The battery simply snaps into the back of the unit, and the mains charger is more like something you’d get with a mobile phone than a laptop – very compact for travelling. The finish ‘Pearl White’ isn’t quite as glossy as the MacBook, it’s more off white with a silkier sheen to it. Popping it on top of my MacBook (as you can see in the photos below) it’s also got a much reduced footprint, whilst being pretty much the same thickness. At 890g it’s less than 30% the weight of my MacBook, and the MacBook isn’t a heavy laptop. On taking it out of the box the first thing that hits you is how light it is. It is initially available in ‘Galaxy Black’ and ‘Pearl White’ with ‘Powder Blue’, ‘Lush Green’ and ‘Luscious Pink’ to follow soon. The number denotes the size of the SSD (solid state drive) storage, and the Surf models lack a webcam and come with a lower capacity battery.
I have the 4G model, the range comprises of the 2G, 2G Surf, 4G, 4G Surf and 8G models.