Asus Eee PC 901

[folderol]

I managed to get one of these 'nearly new' for 200 ukp recently. I know someone who has got his set up as a DAW and gets reasonable results from it - mind you he only works with MIDI and sound samples.

Since I got mine, I mostly use it for work, and note taking. However I will eventually see what it can do sound-wise. Certainly it gives very reasonable results playing ogg files with its headphone plug connected to a domestic HiFi.

As a matter of curiosity I've just completed a 'real life' test of battery life on it.

I run the ubunto 8.10 based easy peasy, but instead of the gnome desktop, I run ROX desktop with openbox window manager.

First I gave the battery an all day charge, then left it overnight to 'settle'. This morning I plugged in an optical mouse and switched on. Gkrellm reported 96% charge, which seems reasonable. I had the screen set to a moderate brightness - clearly visible indoors. I also had wireless inactive (but can't seem to actually switch it off).

I then ran the machine as a music player - ogg vobis of course while doing just enough occasional mouse work to stop the screen going into standby. After an hour or so I decided to plug in the wired network and check for software updates, installing a handful. I also ran firefox for a few minutes. Through the entire session gkrellm was reporting a fairly steady 45% CPU usage.

Gkrellm showed an uptime of 4 hours as the battery dropped to about 2%. When gkrellm showed the battery level dropping to 0% the computer ran for a about another minute before unceremoniously shutting down.

[Oren]

Yes, Will, I was looking at one of those. Is that the one with solid-state hard drive?

MSI now sells a dual core Athlon-equipped laptop with a 14.1" screen, 160 gig drive, and 2 gigs of RAM for roughly 300.00 GBP, shipping with
no operating system. The N-Vidia graphics card makes it perfect for Linux, so when there's a few pennies saved up in the music fund, I may grab one...

[folderol]

Yes it is an SSD version. That was important to me for shock and vibration resistance. I have started using it for work now, and it is just perfect. Some of the machines we work on are huge and really rattle your teeth. This little baby just sits there bouncing up and down happily - the non-slip feet are great.

Actually the 'drive' is two flash cards. One internal at 4G and the other plugin at 16G. At the moment, the original OS is on the 4G section and ubuntu is on the 16G one, so I can dual boot if I want to. Eventually, when I'm confident of the best way to use the computer, I will almost certainly wipe everything and set the internal part as / {root}, and the removable one as /home.

Incidentally, I figured out how to properly disable wireless, and now under exactly the same conditions I show only 25% processor usage (don't understand what wireless is doing there!) However, I only gain an hour of usage, suggesting that the bulk of the power use is now the screen. As I said, I was deliberately preventing that from going into standby.

So I can now confidently say under real working conditions I can get more than 5 hours of continuous use. That'll do me fine

[kara]

Sounds very cool 

k

[folderol]

Well, Ubuntu 9.04 is out now and includes a 'Netbook Remix', we also have a weather forecast for wet weather this weekend...
I could be trying this out soon

[Oren]

Well, Ubuntu 9.04 is out now and includes a 'Netbook Remix', we also have a weather forecast for wet weather this weekend...
I could be trying this out soon

Let us know how the new Ubuntu performs for you.... 

[Laguna Rising]

As long as my 1.4 Ghz centrino works, I'm not interest to change it.
I hope it will last another couple of years... 
Anyway I keep asking my friends how their laptop and netbooks performs, in order to keep myself informed on the new technologies advance.
This is interesting

Cheers

[folderol]

At last I've found time to do some testing on this - mostly because the weather has been so grotty today - a bank holiday

Rather surprisingly I had stability problems with the ubuntu 9.04 netbook remix, also there is a bug where if you try to go to the 'classic' style desktop it seems to work OK, but your next re-boot gives you no desktop at all! However, I then tried the standard desktop 9.04. That installed perfectly will all features working (including wireless access).

Having got it set up and able to do some useful 'stuff' both domestic and for work. I installed Zyn. Running it with its own fake keyboard I was able to get about half of my voice patches working reasonably, but the more complex ones would break up if I pressed many keys, or moved too quickly. I was surprised at how good the sound quality was.

This is a long way from an ideal setup - I'm not using an RT kernel, nor is the machine in any way optimised for audio work. So being able to do anything with it was a bit of a bonus.

I've forgotten how to connect a MIDI port to Zyn outside jack, so I installed it and plugged in my MIDIsport and an external keyboard - using qjackctl to connect up MIDI. There was quite a performance hit and although it worked, only the simplest sound patches were really usable. My favourite sound - the broad sweeping synth - could only be used one note at a time, v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w-l-y.

[Oren]

I'm not using an RT kernel, nor is the machine in any way optimised for audio work. So being able to do anything with it was a bit of a bonus.

I've forgotten how to connect a MIDI port to Zyn outside jack, so I installed it and plugged in my MIDIsport and an external keyboard - using qjackctl to connect up MIDI. There was quite a performance hit and although it worked, only the simplest sound patches were really usable. My favourite sound - the broad sweeping synth - could only be used one note at a time, v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w-l-y.

Will,
Using Ubuntu desktop O/S 8.10, without a real-time kernel, I had good performance from audio applications that do not require JACK -  Audacity and Hydrogen worked particularly well.
For your purposes, I would be inclined to install Ubuntu Studio 8.04, and then remove all applications (like Ardour) that are not in regular service. That gets you the current real-time kernel, and a very functional stripped-down operating system that will run Zyn and Rosegarden with JACK.
 (am I making any sense? )

[folderol]

There are actually limits on where I can take this, as the machine is becoming a very useful tool for general officy type things (as well as at work). Going back to 8.xx would be a real retrograde step, so I'm more likely to wait until I can experiment with an RT kernel that's compatible with 9.04.

Zyn is a very cruel test of any machine - especially with some of my more exotic patches, so I'm far from disappointed.

[Oren]

... I'm more likely to wait until I can experiment with an RT kernel that's compatible with 9.04.
Zyn is a very cruel test of any machine - especially with some of my more exotic patches, so I'm far from disappointed...

 ...Can we justifiably label you a "tweaker", dear fellow...?

[Oren]

My wife just bought an Asus EEE PC 8G, her second "laptop". This one has the tiny 7 inch screen, 1 gigabyte of RAM, and an 8 gigabyte SSD.

The operating system is a custom Linux creation from Asus, and does a really nice job! It does everything Windows does, but with a fast start-up time, no virus worries, and it takes up very little space on the solid state drive. Asus maintains it's own on-line "repository" so you can add or remove software according to your needs of the moment.

We use it as our "telephone" (with Skype), and when travelling, my wife plans to take it with her to stay in contact with home and friends, look up features of her destination while "on location", and upload photos to the web.

Other than the tiny display, this is a very capable computer!

[kara]

Interesting, certainly something handy to take on a trip.
7'' does sound rather small, I gues it depends on the quality of the screen ....

k
 

[Oren]

Just found a three-year-old Asus eeePc 701 - http://www.wirelessmuse.com/winternet/2008/03/asus-eee-pc-710.html - for sale. Scooped it up for $80.00 Canadian.
4 gigabyte solid-state "hard drive", 512 megabytes of random access memory, 630 megahertz Pentium processor.
The plan is to set it up as a tiny mobile DAW with Puredyne on a 16 gigabyte USB stick... ...we'll see...

[folderol]

Wow! I'll be very interested to hear how you get on with this.