eeeuser.com EeePC 900 in-depth review
May 4th, 2008 by Jon BradburyIntroduction
Reviews for the new ASUS EEE PC 900 UMPC are coming in thick and fast, but none of them seem to go into the sort of depth that the forum members here at eeeuser.com would like. With that in mind, and with my new 900 sitting on the dining room table waiting to be unboxed, I decided to attempt to answer some of the more technical questions that people have been asking on the forums, and to compare the 900 with the 701 machine I already own.
About this particular EeePC.
This machine is an official UK Eee PC 900 model, supplied by Clove Technology (www.clovetechnology.co.uk), running the Xandros Linux operating system.
UPDATE : A note about the performance measurements.
Since writing this review, I found out that setting the 900 to Power Saving mode has no effect if the machine is connected to the mains supply. To get the BIOS to actually do this means pulling the plug and running it on battery power alone. So when I saw no difference in performance between Performance and Power Saving modes in my review, I was being mislead - it was all effectively in Performance mode, since the machine was plugged into the mains. I’ve since added some more results in real Power Saving mode, and they seem to indicate little or no gains over the 701 (obviously the Performance mode does give a real boost, though).
Unboxing the EeePC 900
Before we get to the nitty gritty, let’s take a very quick look at what is in the package.
The box is exactly the same size as the 701’s box. What you find on unpacking is the machine itself, the power supply with separate cable to connect to the mains socket, a 4400mAh battery (more on this later), the Quick Guide and full User Guide, a pair of DVDs (one is the restore disk, the other the support disk) and a carrying pouch. The pouch is not made of neoprene like the 701’s pouch; it is a soft foam-padded material which looks like it will protect the machine well, but pick up a lot of dirt on the way. It looks like light grey colour will not help in this regard - I would have preferred it if ASUS had stuck to black.
Physical dimensions
The 900 is a little bigger than the 700 series.
Looking from above, with the 900 on the right, you can immediately see it is a little deeper than the 700. The difference is around 7mm. They exactly are the same width, and, at the highest point (where the hinge is), they are also identical. However, due to the speaker repositioning and a slightly thicker screen, the front edge of the 900 stands proud of the 701 by around 3mm. As you can imagine, this is not much of a problem, and the 900 can be fitted into a Brando or PDair leather folio style case with no effort. I was unable to accurately measure the relative weights of the two machines, but the difference is in the region of 50 grammes (the 900 is slightly heavier), but you are not going to notice this if you are used to carrying a 701around.
External connections
The Eee PC 900 is almost identical to the 701. On the right hand side there are the MMC memory card slot, two USB 2 ports, a VGA port for an external monitor and an attachment for a Kensington lock (which, like the 700, cannot be used at the same time as the VGA port). On the rear is the power socket, which is the same size as the 701’s, so if you have both machines, take care not to accidentally plug the wrong adapter into either of the machines. On the left hand side is the Ethernet port, a third USB2 port and microphone and headphone sockets. The microphone socket on the 701 is said to be stereo, and also to support line-in levels for digital capture from an audio source, so it is likely that the 900 can do this as well.
The only real difference is the modem plug, which is missing on the 900. There is no rubber bung as are fitted to the 701’s; the new case fills the hole.
Boot times
The 900 sat in the kitchen for a couple of hours having its initial charge. One the orange charge light had gone off, it was time to see how fast it booted. Before doing this test, I went through the first time start wizard, and found myself in the now familiar Easy Mode interface. In order to compare like-with-like, I re-imaged the 701, so it would be as it comes from the factory. This would give me a reasonable comparison, as previously the 701 was running the Advanced Mode desktop, and loaded several kernel modules at startup that are not in the ASUS Xandros Linux distribution - all things that adversely affect boot times.
To time the boot up sequence I used a wristwatch. The time measurement began when the power button was pressed and ended when the Easy Mode desktop finished displaying itself.
Boot times were not quite as expected. The 701 boots in 26 seconds. The 900 boot time was 30 seconds in Power Saving mode, and 26 seconds in Performance mode (these settings are available in the 900’s BIOS). I timed shutdown as well, from the moment the shutdown confirmation dialog box’s OK button was clicked, to the power light going out. Once again, the 701 beat the 900, but only by a second. The timings were 701 - 5 seconds, 900 - 6 seconds.
Screen Quality
The 900’s screen had no dead pixels, but looked a little grainy. This is caused by the anti-glare membrane, which is matte to cut down on reflections. The 701 has this film on its display, too, but - perhaps because it is lower resolution - the graininess isn’t so obvious.
The 900 screen is bright and clear, but has a slightly washed out look to it, which you notice even more if you compare it against the 701’s panel. I also noticed, when setting up my Advanced Mode desktop, that the colour balance on the 900’s panel is different to the 700’s. Whites look kind of green tinged, whereas on the 701 panel they are very white. When setting the window manager colour settings, I copied colours exactly as they were on the 701 (by setting RGB values in the colour selector), but they looked different on the 900. I also found it a little difficult to get good contrasts - it was necessary to tilt the screen back quite a way.
The 900’s brightness control seems to operate over a slightly greater range than the 701 - meaning it can go darker and brighter, and this is very handy in very bright or very dark environments.
Keyboard comparison
The 900’s keyboard is exactly the same as the 701’s keyboard. It’s a little cramped, but has good response. I find myself making quite a few mistakes when typing long pieces of text, but I have improved quite a bit since first trying out the 701. For a machine this size, it remains one of the best you can get, so prospective purchasers should not worry that it is under par.
Touchpad
One of the main improvements made to the 900 concern the touchpad. It is quite a bit bigger than the one found on the 701, and there is a good reason for this. It is a dual touch device, that supports various “gestures”, which have been demonstrated on various web sites already.
Pointing, tapping
The 900’s touchpad works very much like the 701’s for moving the mouse pointer about and tapping. It does seem a bit less responsive, though, and I have spent a little time adjusting the sensitivity setting in the Touchpad setup program (on the Settings tab). When you wish to move the pointer minutely, it is very difficult. On the 701 touchpad, this can be achieved by rolling your fingertip slightly, but on the 900’s pad, doing this has little effect. It can be frustrating at times. Tapping is more or less the same as the 701, except that the 900’s touchpad does not get so sensitive when it gets hot, so cutting down on accidental taps. Single and double taps are, of course, supported.
Clicker bar
The 900 has a smart new clicker bar under the touchpad, just like the 701 does. This time it sports a bevelled edge that matches the bevel on the front edge of the machine, plus a trough that suggests there are two buttons rather than one. It seems likely that ASUS designed this to avoid the (momentary) confusion that some new users of the 701 faced. In use the clicker bar operates as right and left mouse clicks, and, like the 701, is stiff and difficult to use. This isn’t helped by the width of it, as you often find yourself trying to click it somewhere between the centre and the edge, which takes much more effort than if you click at the edge. I would have preferred the bar to have been the same size as the one on the 701. The 900’s click is also sharper sounding; more pronounced somehow, but I put this down to the machine being new.
For those rare occasions when you need to do a centre button click (that’s a text Paste operation in most Linux applications), you can press both sides simultaneously, but you need to use both thumbs to get enough pressure.
Scrolling
Gone is the 701’s “hit and miss” right hand side scrolling edge. To perform a vertical scroll, you touch the pad with two fingers and drag up or down depending on the desired direction of scroll. This works well, and is a big improvement on the 701’s single finger scroll function. The only problem is that you often find yourself scrolling too far, especially if the application in question cannot keep up with the speed of your fingers. If you do go too fast, then stop, the application continues scrolling, because it (or the touchpad driver) has buffered up the scroll messages, and it won’t stop until it has acted on all of them. What this means is you have to be a little careful with this feature.
Side scrolling is also implemented, again with two fingers. To do this, slide your fingers to the left or right. Different applications seem to interpret this action in different ways. For example, Firefox treats a left side scroll as “go back one page” and a right scroll as “go forward one page”. Again, though, the feature is plagued by the buffering problem of the vertical scroll, and I found a single left hand swipe took me all the way back to the very first page I visited in the Firefox session. This is very frustrating indeed, and I have to hope that this feature will be improved upon in the future.
Zoom
You can perform a zoom gesture on the 900’s touchpad by touching it with two fingers and then dragging your fingers apart. Similarly, you zoom out by bringing your fingers together. This has no effect in Firefox under Xandros. According to the User Gide, zooming only works in the Open Office Writer / Impress, Adobe Reader and Photo Manager applications.
Touchpad settings
The Touchpad settings dialog box on the 701 (under the Settings tab) has been extended for the 900’s features. There is a new “Two finger” tab that replace the 701’s “Edge” tab. There are settings for:-
- Two finger zoom (on / off) - “Two finger” tab
- Two finger vertical scroll (on / off and speed) - “Scrolling” tab
- Two finger horizontal scroll (on/off and speed) - “Scrolling” tab
The circular scrolling feature of the 701 touchpad has been disabled.
I found no setup tool that would allow me to assign operations to the various gestures you could perform on the 900 touchpad, so it seems that for now, Xandros users are stuck with what they are given. ASUS have missed a real opportunity to innovate here in not giving Xandros Linux users a similar interface to that enjoyed by XP users (as demonstrated to good effect on various other web sites).
We can only hope that a future software update will address this.
Loudspeakers
Because the screen is so much bigger on the 900, there is no wide bezel around it in which to mount the little stereo loudspeakers. ASUS moved them to a point under the front edge of the machine, and the effects of this are evident when you compare the sound quality with that of the 701. Whilst the maximum volume you can get out of a 900 is similar to that which you get from a 701, the 900’s sound seems to have a little more body but slightly less clarity than the 701’s. This is only to be expected, as the speakers are facing downwards, pointing at the desk surface the machine is sitting on and it is this that most affects it. If you’re fond of perching it on your lap, you’re probably not going to hear anything at all - so headphones are the order of the day, just as they are with the 701.
For the occasional system notification sound the 900’s speakers are just fine.
Microphone / Camera
The microphone has been moved away from the underside of the machine (where it is on the 701) up to the top of the screen, next to the new 1.3 megapixel camera. This is the most sensible place for it, and recordings made with it have more clarity as a result. The camera is a big improvement on the 700’s camera, and there are a pair of images taken by using the built-in Webcam application below. Let’s begin with a shot from the 701’s webcam. This is a picture showing the “well organised” shelves in my study.
With the 900’s webcam, things become a little clearer.
Both images are displayed here at 100%, so you can see the difference the 900’s camera makes. The poor colour balance is caused by the lighting conditions in my study. When filming a moving image, such as your face going into and out of shot, as it would if you were having a video conversation with someone, there’s not much to choose between the 701 and the 900 webcam speed - both tend to blur movement to a certain degree. However, for web conferencing (which is the intended use of the device) this is not really an issue.
Internal storage
The 701 Eee PC was criticised for its lack of on-board storage, having only 4GB in total. With Xandros installed, this left just 1.3GB for user data and extra applications. Not much, so it is no surprise that some of the earliest hardware modifications added in-built USB pendrives.
With the 900, there is much more space to breathe. The Linux variant gets a full 20GB of SSD, split between 4GB on the motherboard and a 16GB mini-pcie card which is accessable under the memory bay door (more about this later). Again, though, ASUS have chosen an odd partitioning scheme in order to protect the operating system files from being inadvertently damaged by the user, and this operates broadly in the same way as the 701, with various physical partitions hidden by an implementation of unionfs. All user files are now located on the 16GB drive, where /home is mounted. Using the ASUS Disk Utility (under the Easy Mode “Settings” tab), we can see how much free space is available on each of the drives.
| Machine | Drive | Measurement | Amount | Percentage |
| Eee PC 701 | 4gig SSD | Total | 3773Mb | |
| System | 2353Mb | 62% | ||
| User | 46Mb | 1% | ||
| Free space | 1374Mb | 36% | ||
| Eee PC 900 | 4gig SSD | Total | 3731Mb | |
| System | 2353Mb | 63% | ||
| User | 37Mb | 1% | ||
| Free space | 1341Mb | 36% | ||
| 16gig SSD | Total | 14379Mb | ||
| User | 193Mb | 1.34% | ||
| Free space | 14186Mb | 98.66% |
This looks pretty good so far. The extra 16 gigs (14 after partitioning, seemingly) goes a long way to justify the 900’s price increase over the 701 (if we leave the obvious benefit of the screen to one side). One thing that is odd is that the free space on the internal 4Gb drive is nearly the same on the 900 as it is on the 701, and this implies to me that there has not been much added to the software lineup on the 900.
There is good news in the performance stakes, though. For the 900, ASUS have dropped the Silicon Motion chipset used on the 701’s motherboard for one made by Phison, and this yields some improvements in read / write speed.
To demonstrate and measure this, I first created a file of random bytes using the command (from the Terminal application - press CTRL-ALT-T to open one).
openssl rand -out 1Meg 1048576
The last number is important, as it tells the command to create a file that is exactly 1Mb in size (enter “man rand” to find out more about this command). Having created the test file, I wrote a short shell script to copy it to another file then delete the new file, and do this in a loop 1024 times:
#!/bin/bash
#--- Test the ssd write speed
count=0
while [ $count -lt 1024 ]; do cp 1Meg 1Meg.cp rm 1Meg.cp let count=count+1 done
This has the effect of reading and writing a total of 1Gb of data from the disk where the test file is located. I ran this test using the time command, so I could gather some rough timings for the SSD performance. On the 701, it was execcuted in the /home/user directory, because that resides on the internal 4Gb disk. For the 900, I ran it once in /home/user (which is mounted on the 16Gb SSD card) and once as root in /root (which resides on the 4Gb drive on the motherboard). The timings are interesting.
| Machine | Drive | Measurement | Amount |
| Eee PC 701 | 4gig SSD | Elapsed | 12.8s |
| User | 2.5s | ||
| System | 9.8s | ||
| Eee PC 900 | 4gig SSD | Elapsed | 9.00s |
| User | 1.80s | ||
| System | 7.17s | ||
| 16gig SSD | Elapsed | 8.75s | |
| User | 1.84s | ||
| System | 6.68s |
The speed of the 900’s SSD is appears faster that that of the 701.
Update : I since found that with the mains adapter plugged in, the machine stays in Performance mode all the time, irrespective of the Bios setting. A retest indicates similar performance to the 701 in Power Saving mode.
Update 2 : It’s been rightly suggested that because my test script doesn’t have a “sync” after each disk operation, then the timings won’t be too accurate, as all the I/O will all happen in cache.. Hmmm, I really should have thought of that. I updated the script with a sync command after the cp and rm commands and retimed it.
On the 16 Gb drive we get this:
real : 7m 21.968s
user: 2.920s
sys :8.38s
That’s about 0.431 sec / Mb (or 2.32 Mb / second).
…and on the internal SSD (/root):-
real : 3m 42.098s
user : 3.2s
sys : 9.11s
..a more respectable .217 sec / Mb - 4.6Mb (megabytes) per second. This tends to support the theory that the internal SSD is faster, but remember, my little script is not a particularly scientific test.
The battery
Since this is a proper “official” UK spec Eee PC 900, it is supplied with a woefully inadequate 4400mAh battery. This is a major disappointment, because early review machines were sent out with a 5800mAh battery, so this is what we have come to expect. The batteries are reputed to be in short supply following a fire at one of ASUS’s battery supplier’s factories, and so ASUS chose to supply some regions like the UK with an inferior unit. This is odd, considering the 900 is the flagship of the Eee PC range, and the lesser 701 has a 5200mAh battery. We in the UK will be looking toward ASUS to provide a free replacement as soon as better cells become available (as they have reputedly done in other markets).
Unfortunately I have not had enough time to perform formal battery testing with the 900, but it seems to last around 2 hours before needing a recharge. This can be extended by switching the wireless card off or setting the operating mode to Power Saving.
It was rather telling when, testing the 900 and 701 side by side, doing the same things to each in turn, the 900 announced that it was going to shut itself down in 3 minutes because the battery was nearly dead - and the battery monitor on the 701 was still showing 60%. This was after a full charge on both machines.
Fortunately, though, the 701 and 900 batteries appear to be interchangeable, despite the slight voltage difference. The 701 battery is rated at 7.2 volts, whereas the 900 battery comes in at 7.4 volts, thus improving its actual energy storage capacity a little. Despite this, when swapped, both machines were happy to start up using the other’s battery, so I imagine I’ll be using the 701’s bigger capacity battery with the 900 for the time being.
Charger
The charger is one more thing that ASUS have changed. Rather than having a mobile phone style “wall wart” device, where the transformer is integrated into the wall plug as per the 701, for the 900 ASUS introduced a more conventional “brick”, design which has a figure of eight plug in the side to which is attached a short lead that in turn is plugged into the wall. The specifications are a more conventional 12v 3A as can be seen in the picture. Yet this charger is very, very small in consideration with its power output. I measured the “brick” at 85 x 34 x 25mm (LxWxD), which is actually quite alot smaller than the 701’s charging unit (even if we take the wall plug part of it out of the equation). The 900’s power supply is actually easier to pack into a small bag, because the wall plug lead is separate and so can be fitted into an odd spot in the bag. Total cable length is comparable to the 701’s rather generous 3m trailing lead (the 900’s cable is around 30cm shorter, with the transformer box around 70cm away from the wall socket).
Due to the increased power output of the 900 charger, it should be able to charge the battery much quicker than the 701’s charger, and support more plugged in USB devices as well. For comparison, the 701’s charger is rated at an unusual 9.5v at 2.315A, which has made it difficult finding alternative power supplies. It is a great relief that the 900’s power supply is so much more conventional in output (12v / 3A).
The other addition of note is the inclusion on the 900’s power supply of a nice bright blue LED, which comes on whenever it is connected to the mains.
Wireless
It is a great pity that the Eee PC 900 is still fitted with the Atheros 5700 wi-fi card that the 701 comes with. The reason I say this is that the chipset it uses is not properly supported by the Open Source community, so it can be difficult getting it to work with other Linux distributions like Ubuntu. There is a solution, but it involves using a driver that is supplied partially as a binary to which there is no freely available source,m and it has to be manually installed.
That said, the 900’s wireless card works pretty much as it does on the 701 under Xandros with one notable exception - range. The 900 does not seem to have the same range as the 701. I tested this rather unscientifically by measuring the signal strength of my wireless router given by the “Wireless Networks” utility under the Internet tab of the Easy Mode desktop of each machine and walking round the house. At various locations, I put both machines down and clicked the dialog box’s refresh button a few times, noting what effect the new location had on the signal strength. This cannot be considered a scientific test, but as a comparative test, it raises some concerns.
| Location | 701 signal | 900 signal |
| Study (next to router) | 100% | 100% |
| Kitchen | 81% | 45% |
| Lounge | 97% | 81% |
| Playroom | 80% | 0% |
| Lounge | 97% | 81% |
| Outdoor 1 | 85% | 0% |
| Outdoor 2 | 22% | 0% |
What this test is showing us is either an alteration of the driver configuration between the machines, or that the WiFi antenna in the 900 is different to that of the 701. I suspect the latter, as there is less space in the 900’s screen surround, so it seems likely it has a smaller and less efficient antenna. Whatever the reason, it is clear that the 900 has an inferior WiFi range when compared against the 701.
Heat and fan noise
The 900 seems to run a little cooler than the 701, but the fan comes on much sooner. When it does it is very noticeable. Gone is the whisper-quiet 701 fan - now what we have is something altogether more noisy. I have not had a chance to install the well known eee.ko kernel module on the 900 that provides a means of controlling the fan, but I hope that, providing it is compatible, it should be possible to at least alter the “fan on” threshold.
Potential owners should not be unduly alarmed by this. The fan seems noisy to me because I am used to the 701’s fan. You still need to be in a quiet place to be able to hear it.
As a side note, 701 owners may have noticed that their batteries get quite warm in use. This appears to be mostly caused by direct heat transfer from the machine to the battery. The 900 has an extra piece of plastic glued to the bottom of the battery bay and I speculate that this may be there to provide a little extra insulation for the battery. If so, it’s a good idea, as the Lithium-Ion cells found inside the 900’s battery pack will deteriorate faster when warm.
Memory
The 900 comes with a full 1Gb of memory, twice what you get with the 701. That is enough for most people who are using the Xandros Linux operating system, but it’s always nice to have a bit more. Upgrading the memory in the 900 couldn’t be easier. First, lay the machine down with the bottom facing upwards. Then remove the “Eee” sticker that is covering the right hand memory bay door screw. This isn’t a warranty sticker as was found on the early 701s, and it can be removed and replaced without damage if you are careful.
Now, taking a small cross head screwdriver, remove the two memory bay screws. Use a finger nail to remove the memory bay door. This is what you will see:
The top compartment contains the 16Gb SSD drive plugged into the mini PCI-E socket on the motherboard, but in the bottom compartment resides the object of our interest. It’s an A-Data DDR2-400 (200 pin) SO-DIMM module, which is the same specification as the memory fitted in the 701. Use the screwdriver to lever the clips on either side of the memory card, and it will pop up. Carefully lift it out, and replace it with a 2 gig DDR-2 SO-DIMM module (I used a DDR2-667 module which was previously in my 701), then push the module down until the clips locate with a click. Replace the memory bay door and carefully tighten the little screws up.
As you can see, the 900’s BIOS recognises the memory, as it would do on the 701 BIOS. But the great news is…
…yes, you guessed it - the stock Xandros kernel does, too. On the 701, the kernel only recognises a maximum of 1Gb of RAM, making it necessary to compile and install a different kernel (without the hardcoded 1Gb limit), and this is a problem for novice users. Well, at least on the 900, it isn’t a problem any more.
Since I’d scavenged the 2Gb memory stick from my 701, I put the A-Data card from the 900 in its place. Naturally, it worked perfectly.
Graphics performance
For this test I have opted to use the program “glxgears” which is a 3D demonstration program that animates a set of three interlocking cogs in a window that is 300×300 pixels. By passing the (undocumented) argument -printfps, you can get it to print the number of frames the graphics card is drawing per second as the animation progresses. I should point out here that glxgears is far from an exhaustive test of the capabilities of the graphics chipset, and as such is not regarded as a particularly good benchmark; however, it is easy to install and many people know what it is.
The results of running this program are interesting, especially when compared to the same results obtained on a 701.
| Machine / setting | fps |
| 701 | 455 |
| 900, Performance | 805 |
| 900, Power Saving | 560 |
There is a clear performance improvement here. The 900 is supposed to have the same on-board hardware as the 701 (apart from the SSD controller chip), yet here it is, returning nearly twice the performance in a simple 3D rendering test, and even in Power Saving mode, there is a small improvement.
Perhaps a better test would be to play Penguin Racer, the 3D game which is supplied with both machines. It is accessible from the Games icon of the “Play” tab of the Easy Mode desktop.
The graphics in this 3D game on the 900 are visibly much smoother than on the 701, and that is with a higher resolution display.
Update : I since found that with the mains adapter plugged in, the machine stays in Performance mode all the time, irrespective of the Bios setting. A retest indicates 560fps in Power Saving mode (the table was updated to reflect this).
The multimedia experience
Right now you’re probably wondering how the 900 performs when playing a DVD or a video file, compared to the 701. Well, the answer is that, like the 701, you will need to install the libdvdcss.so library from the debian-multimedia repository to do this (there are clear instructions on the eeeuser.com wiki), and you do need an external DVD drive, of course.
For this test I used the LG GSA E50-N “Slimdrive”, which is a full featured DVD writer that can be powered from a single USB port.
After installing libdvdcss, the 900’s in-built media player, smplayer, worked flawlessly. There is one tweak you need to do to get the best from it, and that is to set it up to use the “xv” video driver (that’s found under Options -> Preferences -> “General” tab -> “Output Drivers - Video”). This gives a better picture with less tearing. Picture quality was fine and I notice with this new screen that the blacks really are a deep black, so it must have a good contrast ratio.
The built-in video playing application can handle a wide variety of video formats, including those downloaded from a digital video recorder (for example, the Humax PVR-9200T). Again, picture quality was very good, although I noticed some tearing (as I do on the 701 with these .ts files). I think this is caused by the video player setup, but I have not been able to experiment with it as yet.
Advanced mode desktop
The advanced mode desktop can easily be installed by following the instructions on the eeeuser.com wiki. I used the instructions entitled “Enable Advanced Desktop Mode - The Easy Way”, because the (even easier) technique, which uses a shell script called “pimpmyeee.sh” is said to not be 100% compatible with the 900 (it was written for the 701).
However, following the indicated instruction set, I now have a KDE desktop on my 900, and so far it has worked flawlessly.
A quick Ubuntu test
It’s now time to have a go with another Linux distribution. I’m going to boot up Ubuntu 8.04 “Hardy Heron” on the 900, to see what it looks like on the bigger screen.
That seems fine. The Atheros wireless card, as expected, does not work properly and the acpi keys aren’t all there either, but the display is very crisp and there are various fixes to the minor incompatibilities we are faced with here. See the eeeusr.com wiki for more details.
The geeky tidbits.
This information comes from the Eee PC 900’s operating system and as such is only going to be of any interest to the Linux die-hards out there. Please let me know if I missed anything out!
cat /proc/devices
Character devices:
1 mem
2 pty
3 ttyp
4 /dev/vc/0
4 tty
5 /dev/tty
5 /dev/console
5 /dev/ptmx
7 vcs
10 misc
13 input
14 sound
29 fb
81 video4linux
116 alsa
128 ptm
136 pts
180 usb
189 usb_device
226 drm
254 usb_endpoint
Block devices:
1 ramdisk
7 loop
8 sd
11 sr
65 sd
66 sd
67 sd
68 sd
69 sd
70 sd
71 sd
128 sd
129 sd
130 sd
131 sd
132 sd
133 sd
134 sd
135 sd
Output of lsmod command
Module Size Used by
uvcvideo 49288 0
compat_ioctl32 576 1 uvcvideo
videodev 23552 1 uvcvideo
v4l1_compat 12868 2 uvcvideo,videodev
v4l2_common 11200 2 uvcvideo,videodev
usb_storage 22212 0
libusual 5968 1 usb_storage
wlan_scan_sta 9728 1
ath_pci 74084 0
ath_rate_atheros 24768 1 ath_pci
wlan 144280 4 wlan_scan_sta,ath_pci,ath_rate_atheros
ath_dfs 25476 1 ath_pci
ath_hal 139968 3 ath_pci,ath_rate_atheros
pciehp 31172 0
pci_hotplug 9672 1 pciehp
atl2 23064 0
ehci_hcd 25420 0
uhci_hcd 18636 0
usbhid 13444 0
usbcore 91992 7 uvcvideo,usb_storage,libusual,ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd,usbhid
fuse 34516 0
asus_acpi 6240 0
button 5648 0
processor 19820 0
battery 7940 0
ac 3524 0
autofs4 15876 0
sr_mod 13284 0
cdrom 30624 1 sr_mod
snd_hda_intel 14168 0
snd_hda_codec 174280 1 snd_hda_intel
snd_pcm 52872 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_timer 15300 1 snd_pcm
snd 32964 4 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 3744 1 snd
snd_page_alloc 6472 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
genrtc 6028 0
Output of mount command
rootfs on / type rootfs (rw)
/dev/sda1 on / type ext2 (ro)
none on / type aufs (rw,xino=/.aufs.xino,br:/=rw:/=ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/sdb1 on /home type ext3 (rw,noatime,data=ordered)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
Output of cat /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name
8 0 3940272 sda
8 1 2409718 sda1
8 2 1510110 sda2
8 3 8032 sda3
8 4 8032 sda4
8 16 15761088 sdb
8 17 15759733 sdb1
The Conclusion
It’s certain that the Eee PC 900 represents a significant step up from the 701. The price difference is an additional £110, which brings the cost to £330 in the UK. For that kind of money, you can easily get a more capable laptop PC with a 15″ screen, dual core processor and built-in DVD drive.
However, it is the portability that makes people want to buy the Eee PC, and in the case of the 701, the low price tag. The question is, has ASUS improved the product enough to justify the increased price?
I think they have. Consider this : if you had a 701 and upgraded it with a 16Gb USB stick and extra memory, you’d be well into the extra £110, and that is without including the bigger screen. If portability is your thing, the 900 is for you. There is also evidence of genuine improvements in performance, too, and this is something you cannot modify a 701 to emulate.
The only major flaw with the 900 is the provision in the UK market of such a low capacity battery on what is essentially a brand leading product. This is a real disappointment to the many existing Eee PC users who expected, based on initial reviews, a far better battery (to be absolutely fair, ASUS never advertised the battery capacity, but they did send the initial reviewers Eee PC 900s equiped with 5800mAh batteries, thus raising expectations). It seems that in this instance, enthusiastic early adopters in the UK at least will be penalised.
The issue of the battery really overshadows the other problems I mentioned and for me at least, taints what should have been a very good experience. Buying another battery of a more appropriate capacity will add at least £60 to the retail price, and for many I suspect this will be a step too far.
However, that said, I think it a worthy successor to the 701and a good upgrade - especially if you keep the 701’s battery!
May 4th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I don’t remember where I read it (I think it was in the Chen interview), but I’m pretty sure you [i]can[/i] use the new power supply on the 701
May 4th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Other than that, excellent review, and please continue your work as an eee-reporter. I think I am still going to hold out for the 8-hour battery life that Mr. Chen said would be coming soon.
May 4th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Thanks Jon for an excellent, comprehensive and well-balanced report!
May 4th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Thanks for all the great reading! You’ve done a fantastic job to give both good information and to stil keep it interesting! Keep up the good work!
May 4th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
great review, maverick, dont hold out for 8 hour battery life, because you’ll be waiting an awful long time.
May 4th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Excellent job, Jon!
Cheers,
May 4th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
[...] Kollegen von EEEUser haben ein sehr ausführliches Review zum EEE-PC 900 geschrieben welches man hier nachlesen [...]
May 4th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Excellent review - thanks!
I have cancelled my pre-order for a black 900 from play.com despite a £20 discount because, in my personal opinion, the battery on the 900 is a nonsense. The advantage the 900 has over more powerful, more capable laptops at the same price is its portability. But it loses much of this by having such a short battery life,
I was particularly interested to see from the review that my 701’s battery could be used in a 900, but I’m not sure it’s enough for me to re-order.Thanks anyway for clearing that up.
May 4th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
>dont hold out for 8 hour battery life, because you’ll be waiting an awful long time.
Probably not that much longer
http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/technology/03/04/0304intel.html
May 4th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Wow, thanks for the EXCELLENT review, very informative!
I have a Vaio TZ myself but I think my little brother will get this for college in a few months.
May 4th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
There isn’t an MMC slot on either the 900 or 701, it’s SD.
May 4th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
[...] eee PC 900. If you need some in depth info on what to expect from the new Asus eee PC 900 then read this on the eeeUser.com. Its is a great review and is more detailed than a lot of other [...]
May 4th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Great review. The 900 seems very cool, but doesn’t really seem like enough of an upgrade to go from the 701 (which Im on right now.)
I’ll wait a few generations. I am curious if the 16GB SSD would work in a 701 with the PCIe slot. at this point it’d pay more for my to spend $100 or so and add that on.
May 4th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Nice one. Thanks for a great review. Lets hope Ausus do the right thing regarding the batteries….
cheers
May 4th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Man you are a legend.
I was curious about the heat and noise, and didn’t find any review that cover that area. Many tks and keep up the job
May 4th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
eee900 screen is good enough.
eee 700 power can not in Eee 900. Carrymobile ’s leather case for Eee 900 eee900 can fit.
May 4th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
This is a great review!
Now I’m not concerned anymore about the SLC and MLC SSD issues as I was.
After watching the various videos, reading jkkmobile’s review and now this one, I am ready to get my first eee, which will be a black 20GB.
I won’t pre-order, I’ll wait to see what battery will be included first. In the mean time, I’ll read more in the wiki about the wireless driver issue under other Linux distros. Thanks for bringing this issue to my attention!
May 5th, 2008 at 1:53 am
[...] самый известный сайт по Eee, наконец-то опубликовал обзор Eee PC 900 (через Google Translate). В конкретном случае могут быть [...]
May 5th, 2008 at 1:56 am
About firefox going back one page:
type about:config
and set
mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action to 0
mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.numlines to 1
reading on…
May 5th, 2008 at 1:59 am
Good review Jon,
However, I don’t believe that there is any hardware difference in your glxgears results.
My 701 gets 795-800 pretty consistently at 100 fsb. I can get 888 at my highest overclock.
I think the difference is probably from the fsb being at 100 on the 900.
My results are based on ubuntu 7.10 running 915resolution.
May 5th, 2008 at 2:17 am
Great review! Thanks a lot!
One quick question - would I be able to use my 701’s brick charger for new 900 machine?
I assume, even if I could, it would charge longer, because it has 2.315A vs. 3A?
May 5th, 2008 at 3:02 am
‘dont hold out for 8 hour battery life, because you’ll be waiting an awful long time.
Probably not that much longer
http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/technology/03/04/0304intel.html‘
memobug: first of all, the eee pc will be getting an atom cpu, but it is diamondville, not silverthorne. There is no way you’re going to be getting 7 hours on this. I don’t dispute that it will happen at some point in the future. But not on the atom eee pc. its just not possible with a four cell. They would have to include an 8 cell at least, which would vastly increase the weight therefore decreasing portability. If you’re waiting for the atom, it should be for no other reason than you just want the latest one. I wouldn’t be suprised if its not widely available till september time too.
May 5th, 2008 at 3:09 am
Thnak you for the great review.
Do youthink that:
- the 900 bios can be ported on the 701 (which I own) in order to have a “clean” support to the fsb 100 mhz speed?
-the 900 kernel can be installed on the 701 as well, because I have 2 GB RAM installed and the 2 GB RAM compiled kernel but it sometimes behaves oddly (i.e. can’t recognize usb, sd cards and bluetooth dongle)?
Thank you again
May 5th, 2008 at 3:17 am
Excellent review - best I’ve seen!
The price issue is important. At £220 (the price of the 701 in the UK last year when I bought my unit) is at a price point where many people would not think about the price because it is so low. At £329 (at Clove and Micro Anvika) the price seems more of a barrier. But I think if you want portable computing £329 is still reasonable value but it’s not a bargain like the 701. Also perhaps we’ll see UK prices of the 701 go back from the current £240 back to £220 now that the 900 is available.
May 5th, 2008 at 3:20 am
I don’t think the disk benchmark you have there will test much more than RAM bandwidth, you are repeatedly writing the same small file so it might all occur in cache?
May 5th, 2008 at 3:40 am
Zog : Maybe. I never said it was a scientific test!
Adam : Sorry, but you’re wrong there, sort of : the manual describes it as “MMC/SD” slot. The full compatibility list is MMC, MMC Plus, RS-MMC (with MMC adapter), SD, Mini-SD (with SD adapter) and Micro SD (with SD adapter).
Iops : Sorry, I’m not going to try a cross compatibility test with the chargers!
creeepingme : Hmm. Hadn’t thought to do that. I’d re-imaged the 701 by then so there was no eee.ko module on it at the time of the test. Looking at the 900’s results, then, should we conclude that “Power Saving” mode does not reduce the FSB?
War : Nice one. That annoyed me.
cervelli : You could try it… it might work.
Maverik : Forget what Chen said, the new power supply delivers 12v against the 9.5v that the 701’s delivers. Plug that in and I reckon you’re in for a fry-up. I’ll let someone else try it first!
May 5th, 2008 at 3:55 am
[...] des Eee PC 701 auseinander, wie der Kollege Jon Bradley. Auf Eeeuser.com hat er einen umfangreichen Eee PC 900 Test veroeffentlicht, in dem er so ziemlich auf jede Frage eingeht, die aufkommen koennte. [via] [...]
May 5th, 2008 at 6:29 am
Thanks for the great review! I guess I’ll wait a bit longer for those 5800mAh batteries, that is a pretty large difference from 4400.
May 5th, 2008 at 6:42 am
Hi Jon,
I didn’t ask you explicitly to test chargers (You already did huge work by wrintig such a review). I was wondering if somebody in this forum knows more than I do and maybe tested that
May 5th, 2008 at 7:05 am
[...] interessanter Test, der genau aufzeigt, wo die Neuerungen Früchte tragen und wo evtl. nicht. Hier gehts zur [...]
May 5th, 2008 at 7:28 am
[...] has done an in-depth review of the Linux Xandros equipped ASUS Eee PC 900. The US release is set for May [...]
May 5th, 2008 at 8:56 am
The speaker of Eee PC 900 EeePC is in downside. pls watch out. Asus ’s staff introduce this during their press. When you use the leather case, the sound may be not good. You can try Carrymobile’s leather case which has 2 special cutout for the specaker.
May 5th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
[...] энергопотребление при выключенном wi-fi, да и судя по обзору eeeuser.com, с дальностью сигнала не всё так хорошо, как в [...]
May 5th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
I don’t like that the screen is of lesser quality and that the wifi has worse reception, although i suppose its possible to mod in a bigger antenna.
May 5th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Sweet review, but please put a after the intro. Frontpage of Eeeuser.com is scrollinghell now :>
May 5th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
damn… no edit button… “put a split after the intro”. You know, in WP’s texteditor (tiny mce) it´s the “more”-button.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
I dunno, from reading the review it seems like Asus improved everything but lowered the quality. The poor screen, speakers, and added brick (I really liked the idea of the wall wart, bricks are such trouble to carry around) made me give the 701 another look. Maybe if Asus adds atom to their old 7-inch screens I might give them a try.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
[...] reading at Trusted reviews. addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fscalegamer.com%2F2008%2F05%2F06%2Fasus-eee-pc-900-review-roundup%2F’; [...]
May 5th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
=(
This review’s convinced me not to get one. A laptop that could get about one movie out of it on the road without charging for that price? Rubbish.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:09 am
[...] Asus, eee PC 900 Στην ιστοσελίδα eeeUser.com θα βρείτε ένα πολύ καλό review του νέου eee PC 900 ( UK version ). Από το review προκύπτει ότι και στην Αγγλία [...]
May 6th, 2008 at 2:56 am
I think the review is a little misleading as regards storage. Sure, it’s a 20GB SSD, but if there’s still only a 4GB ’system’ disk on the mobo, then it’s no better than the 701 when it comes to installing new apps and updates if you’re running a default setup (unless you compile everything from source and configure them to install in /home, but who wants to do that?)
You could of course wipe Xandros and install your OS of choice to the 16GB PCIE SSD, but most ‘default’ users won’t do that.
With this issue, plus a grainy screen, lesser quality audio, a power brick, and a louder fan, I think I’ll stick to my 701 +4GB SDHC card, running nLited WinXP.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:18 am
The screen isn’t really of lower quality, it just has a slightly less vibrant colour balance.
May 6th, 2008 at 5:09 am
[...] here for the full [...]
May 6th, 2008 at 5:13 am
Is it true that the 16gb is not the fast SSD but a slow one? I have read that whoever installed applications on the 16gb it was quite slow. The same applied to those who installed OS on the 16gb.
May 6th, 2008 at 5:48 am
See here : http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?pid=244100#p244100
My SSD test omitted the sync calls, so may have all been done in cache. With sync in the script, we see the internal SSD is performing around twice the speed of the pci-e drive.
May 6th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Thanks for a comprehensive review. I’m going to stick with the 701. For my basic use, an extra US $150 is not worth it. I can see where it might be for others, but not for me specifically. For portability too, I hope they don’t make it any bigger, because then it will defeat that whole purpose too. If ASUS doesn’t go beyond that size and price point, I think it’s fine, but beyond that, and it’s heading into that territory toward UMPC devices that are way too pricey.
May 6th, 2008 at 7:50 am
Thank you, Jon. My question is that beyond numbers and figures, is the 16gb SSD usable or suitable for installation of software? Will it be very slow? I have read that it’s pretty bad. So if I have to stick only with 4gb room for OS and software then this is a big limitation.
May 6th, 2008 at 8:03 am
So what are the exact dimensions of the brick? Looks about… 11×5x2.5.
May 6th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Err, disregard that, it would probably help if i read.
May 6th, 2008 at 8:29 am
siralex1980 : Seems to run at about half the speed of the internal SSD.
Django : Err, yep…
May 6th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Ok, so in a few words it is advised OS and software must be in the 4gb SSD. Limitation, limitation, limitation…
May 6th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Quick question, I’m planing on getting the 900 when it gets released with the atom processor, does anyone have any idea how much actual HD space is availbe on the pre-installed windows version?
May 6th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
What is the graphics chip used in the EEE 900? I’ve seen conflicting reports - everything from a GMA900 to a GMA X3100. The EEE 701 shipped with a GMA900; I’m really hopeful that the performance increase you saw is coming from a GMA950.
PLEASE, if there’s any way to determine this, do.
As for the SSD limitations, I don’t see any reason you couldn’t install a fresh OS on the 16GB SSD and boot from that. I plan on loading Ubuntu on the internal 4GB SSD, and Windows XP on the 16GB SSD. Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait for it to appear in the States before I can give it a whirl.
May 6th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
[...] has done an in-depth review of the Linux Xandros equipped ASUS Eee PC 900. The US release is set for May [...]
May 7th, 2008 at 1:34 am
[...] En la web eeeuser.com han publicado una revisión a fondo del Asus EEE PC 900 [en inglés]. [...]
May 7th, 2008 at 4:57 am
Could you give a more in-depth description on the wireless
Location 701 signal 900 signal
Study (next to router) 100% 100%
Kitchen 81% 45%
Lounge 97% 81%
Playroom 80% 0%
Lounge 97% 81%
Outdoor 1 85% 0%
Outdoor 2 22% 0%
as it is not too clear on where your study is in your house, how far the kitchen is from the study and the general distance of all the rooms from the router for it to have such an impact on the wireless.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:55 am
[...] http://www.eeeuser.com/2008/05/04/eeeusercom-eeepc-900-in-depth-review/ [...]
May 7th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Is it true that the eee 700 batteries work with the 900?
May 7th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Tony Z - No need. The results are supposed to demonstrate that the 900 is no as good as the 701 when it comes to wireless reception. So, where the 701 gives n%, you can expect the 900 to be x% worse, That sort of thing. I said it wasn’t scientific.
But for the record, the study is on the first floor in the centre of the house, at the front. The lounge is below it, the kitchen is in the back of the house, and the park is at the front of the house with direct line of sight to the study window. The playroom is on the ground floor at the back of the house and generally gets the worst reception. It’s a Georgian farmhouse so the walls are very thick, solid, made of rubble & lime mortar. Not much clearer,eh?
May 7th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Matty S : Yes, they are 100% compatible with each other. I’m typing this on the 701, with the 900’s lousy 4400mAh battery in it.
May 7th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
thnkyu
May 7th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Overall, it looked like worthwhile improvements (even the brick instead of the wall-wart, which often are “piggish” about the space where they plug into a socket - I usually wind up packing one of those short 6-inch extension cords to compensate, so the brick style actually should spare that hassle), BUT the wifi degradation appears to be a deal-breaker. The batteries can be swapped somewhere along the way, but that will not be so easy wifi antennas, or whatever the cause (likely hardware and I am not into soldering/case-modding efforts). Bummer, but thanks, Jon, for a very pertinent review.
Makes me glad I dumped my 701 after a frustrating month for a Lifebook P5020: 10-inch screen (not quite glossy, which is ok with me), easily swapped HDD, built-in DVD-ROM/CD-RW, PCMCIA and even CF and SD slots - all for about $400 on eBay. The only negatives are heat buildup under the left palm rest from the HDD (seems that small notebooks have to have heat somewhere noticeable), and a somewhat “loose” feel from a bit of age I suppose. About equally nasty with the touchiness of a touchpad - would much rather have a Trackpoint, but they seem to be about totally out of favor nowadays (been looking at the Lifebook P1510 - more like a EEE form factor, and with a Trackpoint getting my notice…:-).
ROC
May 7th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
What a bummer the EEE 900’s reception is so much worse than 701…What gives
May 8th, 2008 at 12:26 am
It be nice to see how Mandriva 2008 Spring plays with the new member of the Eee family, particularly the wireless and battery life.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:32 am
I have my doubts about the wifi reception testing being accurate… I’d be interested in seeing more testing done; specifically, testing using the exact same locations with the same elevation and screen pitch. Screen pitch can DRASTICALLY change wifi reception. Also, all testing for each machine done within a relatively close time proximity would be ideal. Who knows, the neighbors could have started up their wifi jamming devices between testing sessions. =) The antenna is usually stretched around the LCD… I doubt Asus made the foolish mistake of changing the layout to accommodate the larger screen. *crosses fingers*
May 8th, 2008 at 9:51 am
[...] 900 review EeeUser.com eeeuser.com EeePC 900 in-depth review Was reading it, looks pretty good. But I’m going to get a 700 for the price. __________________ [...]
May 8th, 2008 at 10:07 am
my 900 just arrived, had a quick play and so far very happy, cant really comment on the wi-fi levels (connected to our work one with 96% when some dell laptops in the office cant connect at all!) or the battery but the screen is very nice and the envy levels in the office are very high right now!!
Any questions i will attempt to answer.
Ross
May 8th, 2008 at 11:46 am
@StratoDriver: How’s the fan noise? I have a Asus W7J laptop and I *love* it EXCEPT for the really bad fan noise. It’s horrible! I would never buy a noisy laptop again, so actually I’m looking at Thinkpads. But still would like to get a smaller and quiet laptop someday, for casual web surfing and video watching.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
@Jeff:
Well dont really know how to answer that one, Either i havent been using it long enough for it to come on, or its so quiet i cant hear it! Have been using it now for about an hour just playing around with it, getting the wi-fi to all setup for home, playing a couple of DiVX movies and so far the only thing i can hear is the sound from the speakers.
Its great!!
Looked in the BIOS and its running in High Performance mode so i would think if it was going to make a noise i would have spotted it by now.
Go buy one!!
Ross
May 8th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
I am eagerly awaiting the availability of the Eee 900 in the United States. Are any companies accepting pre-orders? For those of you who have purchased this product, where are you purchasing it from?
As you can guess, I am not a computer geek but a regular individual who needs an extremely lightweight computer for travel due to a bad shoulder. I happened on to this website and do enjoy the comments although I don’t understand all the tech talk. I just want an Eee 900!!!
Jackie
May 8th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
@StratoDriver: So I take it the speakers are pretty decent? I know even the best notebook speakers (i.e. with even subwoofers built in) aren’t spectacular. I do like the stereo speakers on my W7J which are in the LCD bezel, facing forward–which means decent imaging (even better with SRS WOW). From the reviews I’ve seen, it looks like there are 2 speakers in the Eee 900 and they’re on the bottom facing downwards, with slots in the case for airflow. While I appreciate stereo speakers, I’m skeptical about sound quality due to the orientation of them. Any thoughts?
One last question: An Asus website states, “# Ideal companion for reporters, wildlife photographers and other like-minded outdoor enthusiasts.” [http://eeepc.asus.com/global/900.htm] Does this mean the screen is brighter than most? I kinda doubt this. Sorry for the abundance of skepticism
May 8th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
[...] for more (and competition looming) ASUS hasn’t wasted any time announcing the release of the Eee PC 900. And although the 900 model will undoubtedly be popular with consumers, it’s the Eee PC 701 [...]
May 8th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Great review. But somewhat disappointed. Can somebody explain to me why Asus has not decided to include a bluetooth chip inside this marvelous machine? Is it that difficult or expensive? Don’t think so.
Very frustrating carrying around and BT dongle/adapter…
May 8th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
The speakers on the eee 900 seem fine not audiophile quality but perfectly OK for watching TV shows or the odd movie. The sound aint great if your using on your lap but if its on a level table if fine.
I would say the screen is fine for inside use but would not be great outside in direct sunlight.
Ross
May 8th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Can you send us /proc/cpuinfo?
May 8th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Also how does, say, Miro perform?
May 9th, 2008 at 2:53 am
You guys would be better off conducting this discussion on the eeeuser.com forum. There’s one just for the EEEPC 900, and many of your questions have already been answered. Just click the “FORUMS” link at the very top of the page.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
[...] eeeuser.com EeePC 900 in-depth review [...]
May 9th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Haven’t read the review yet, but did go through the Comments (go figure!).
Glad to know the batteries of the e7xx and the e900 can be swapped between them. I had wondered if the different size case of the e900 had tempted Asus into changing the physical size of the battery!
May 9th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
[...] Big Asus e900 Review eeeuser.com EeePC 900 in-depth review [...]
May 9th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
i can’t wait for the 900….tracking ebay sales for 701 to see if i want to list it there… there are some fantastic deals on the 701 if anyone’s looking to get one cheap…saw one for like $200 usd with some bonus stuff…kinda wish i was getting the 701 now, lol
May 10th, 2008 at 2:55 am
[...] EeePC 900 in-depth review [...]
May 10th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Aspid, bluetooth dongle aren’t that big
try the new trust one
here
http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?origin=gbase10.2&prodID=B93726
or here
http://www.pcwb.com/catalogue/item/A0397415?cidp=Froogle
May 11th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Read the review (finally!). Do you think there’s a possibility of also reviewing an XP version?
May 11th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
@knobcottage
Thanks for the info. Actually I have already one of those. Still unpleasant to see it sticking on the side of the Eee… looks like a bug.
The real question is not yet answered. Why has Asus opted not to include the bluetooth chip. In my opinion it is not that difficult the assemble in the motherboard and not expensive to produce it. I’m guessing that this doesn’t affect much the final price of the Eee. Just a few dollars more.
May 11th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
[...] shortly be available in the US (and has already been released elsewhere) is the Eee PC 900, and here’s a review of it. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Another cheap but good Linux laptopWine [...]
May 11th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
[...] of the complaints about this new laptop is that it has a smaller battery than the 700. This is unfortunate because mobility is really what you are paying for with [...]
May 13th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
[...] EeeUser [...]
May 14th, 2008 at 10:57 am
I love my EEE 900 20GB pc it suits my Backtrack 3 needs.
On the other hand I do feel done when it comes to battery life. Being an enthousiast I got mine early and got stuck with a 4400mAh battery! Albeit the reviewers 4400mAh battery tested with 5500mAh!
Boy o boy what a crap battery! Lasts about 2.5 hours.
Shame on you ASUS! Don’t forget about your UK customers (Hong Kong customers are eligable for a free battery upgrade)….
May 14th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Any thoughts on the 10400mAh batteries for sale on ebay with 5 hour usage times? Just curious.
Thanks for the Ram upgrade info, I’ll be sure to use that on my 900.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:53 am
The 900 model seems to treat external plugged-in items differently - mine shows letters for these - like “D”, “E” and “F” (DVD player) ?
May 15th, 2008 at 4:04 am
I had delay with shipping from PurelyGadgets.co.uk, but I got rewarded for thet - Eee 900 came with 5800mAh battery ;0)
May 15th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Just to note:-
We’ve received 3 701s here and they all came with the 4400mAh battery. One of the chargers even came with an adapter to take it from two pin to the UK standard of 3 pins.
The 701s are great little machines. I’ve put ubuntu on these, connected them to mobile phones and set up a VPN connection to connect to the works network. The screen and the storage size are the low points and for this reason I wouldn’t buy one for personal use.
Got my eye on the 900 but at £320 it’s getting a bit expensive for what it is. Just waiting to see what the price does….
May 15th, 2008 at 10:20 pm
I have a 701…do you guys think I should sell it to upgrade to 900 ?
Or should I wait for MSI Wind ?
May 16th, 2008 at 2:25 am
Haha i got such a sense of deja vue looking at those pictures. I have those Dinosaur magazine holders!
May 16th, 2008 at 9:09 am
…..doing the advanced desktop the easy way does not work on the eeepc900. Least it did not on mine. You need to do a litte extra stuff to get it to work. Haven’t hd the time to try that yet.
http://forums.vr-zone.com/showthread.php?p=5290738
May 16th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
…just rebooted…everything fine….phew!!
May 16th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Oops! WRONG LINK POSTED ABOVE. Should be, if someone out there would be so kind as to edit for me:
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=1083&p=11
May 17th, 2008 at 6:35 am
My EeePC 900 get 430 frames executing glxgears in performance. What’s wrong?
May 19th, 2008 at 6:19 am
[...] Eeeuser reviews the Asus EEE900 May.19, 2008 in News Im sitting here writing an easy at my local university library for my university course and this one popped up: an review of the Asus EEE900 over at eeeusers. Definatly an interesting read. The features and hardware of this unit makes it an worthy choice. I’ve been thinking asbout perhaps picking one of these up this summer when im in the US. The size and features of it makes it an really interesting choice. Check it out over at eeusers.com [...]
May 20th, 2008 at 8:10 am
There does seem to be some sensitivity to certain 2G SODIMMs - not all tried work properly, and there is an ongoing discussion in the Fora about this, see here –
http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?pid=263100#p263100
May 22nd, 2008 at 9:50 pm
check out our website http://www.asuseee-pc.net
May 27th, 2008 at 2:00 am
He,
I reinstall my Linux version eee PC 900 with full windows xp pro sp2 over and install all the drivers needed (chipset, video etc.) everything seems to woks fine until I stick 4GB USB Flash drive, and 4GB SD HC cl6 card.
Then I realize that my eee PC is working on USB 1.1 mode (no more then 1.2 MB/s).
I try with reinstalling chipset drivers, manually updating Intel USB drivers components etc.
But all my attempts seams fruitless :(((…
Can anyone help me?
May 27th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
The 900 in Taipei comes with a 5800mAh battery and the 701 comes with a 4400mAh but they cell 5200mAh for extra storage.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
how do u get another support CD Rev.1.0
May 30th, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Jon, what a very well done job in providing this comprehensive, technical, and detail review. I can’t wait for mine to arrive.
Thanks,
fandi
June 1st, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Excellent review. You answered my question on whether or not it had one of those horrible glossy screens that are now being sold. I’m glad it doesn’t as I’m not interested in glare from lights and seeing people behind me. On the wi-fi modem - can it be removed? unplugged? I will not have one internal as I get sick from radiation and don’t trust it to be turned off by software. I discovered this when I got a pcm-cia wi-fi modem for my old Sony Viao - I ended up with headaches and nausea after 1 to 1.5 hours online. Going back to wired eliminated the headaches. Using a USB wi-fi modem gave symptoms after 1.5 - 2 hrs (this is compared to the 10-15 minutes it takes with a cell phone)(I now limit my calls to 1-3 minutes and use less than 25 minutes a month). I bought a 6 foot USB extender cable for the wi-fi modem and now no headaches even after 4-6 hours. The inverse square law really works (I’m a retired electronics telecoms design engineer and have been around RF for many years and never had these symptoms). When I played with a pc 700 at tigerdirect store I felt nauseous and got headache after about an hour. Great articles on this on BBC site. Anyway, I’m still turned off by no dialup modem in it. Real dumb. I travel a lot in the US and in Greece and dialup is always available but wi-fi isn’t. This means another $30 for a usb dialup modem. And the 900 has linux with 20G while 12G would be enough ($50 here) and a webcam which I don’t want ($50 here) - which means that a version as desired should sell for $450 - which I think is reasonable. They had these variants in memory and webcam in the 700 why not now? And the 901 will be even more expensive??? huh??? real dumb. I may end up lugging my 6lb Sony around for longer. I do like the move from the wall wart to the brick power supply - I hate wall warts - clumsy space eaters on a power strip. Even though I hate microsoft, the interface driver issue worries me with linux. I really need to get off my bum and load in that ubuntu disk I have and check it out with my usb modem and printer. Thanks for the tip on the slimdrive. Time will tell if I buy. Of course I might be too late already what with the 901 coming.
June 2nd, 2008 at 7:22 am
Thanx for this good review.
But two more questions: You mentioned installing the DDR2-667 RAM, but how much RAM do you think the eeepc 900 can handle; and is it running at 667 or still 400 (FSB)?
June 5th, 2008 at 4:23 am
I have a EeePC900 12 Go with windows XP SP2. I updated XP and windows-update send SP3 update.
The update is refused: Not enough place on Hard Disk 4 Go. To accept i have to delete programms on Hard Disk 4Go and reinstall on Hard Disk 8Go.
Why Windows XP is preinstalled on hard disk 4 Go ?
Is it possible to reinstall XP on HD 8 Go ?
If it is possible How?
June 12th, 2008 at 4:22 am
Hey guys, having the same trouble with the USB drivers after installing Win XP SP2. USB is now at 1.1… anyone with any ideas?
June 13th, 2008 at 2:13 am
Eee-gentlig fortreffelig…
Asus har lansert en billig-PC med Linux som ferdiginstallert operativsystem, noe som er med på å presse prisene enda mer….
June 13th, 2008 at 2:17 am
Xubuntu + Asus Eee = sant…
Lørdag fortalte jeg at syntes at Ubuntu og Asus Eee var en dårlig match.
Etter at det blogginnlegget var skrevet og skuffelsen hadde sunket litt så bestemte jeg meg derfor for å oppdatere innholdet på min LiveUSB for å kunne installere Xubuntu 8….
June 17th, 2008 at 7:47 am
for the folks with usb 1.1 problem, set OS to ‘finished’ in the bios and it will play nice…
June 18th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Thanks Jon, very informative.
On battery issues, I phoned Asus (Holland) tech helpline from UK and they informed me that UK 900’s ship with 4400 battery as standard and they will NOT be upgrading for free. BUT on June 25th (I think) they will offer the option to buy the bigger 5800 for 10GBP + 7GBP P&P.
June 28th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
[...] eeeuser.com EeePC 900 in depth review The 900 seems to run a little cooler than the 701, but the fan comes on much sooner. When it does it is very noticeable. Gone is the whisper-quiet 701 fan - now what we have is something altogether more noisy. …EeeUser.com - http://www.eeeuser.com [...]
July 11th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
hi .. i just got the eeepc 900 but the scroll dose not work with me in the explorer every thing els work like zooming useing the smart pad only the scroll dose not workwith me can u help me on this pleaes
July 19th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Excellent work, Jon. Many thanks.
August 8th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
epic thorough - thank u
August 10th, 2008 at 6:23 am
However, it turns out that my 900 with Winows XP is much less noisy than 701 that I had used before. Some insignificant noise in 900 is only detectable when I stick my ear to the keyboard, even after several hours of work. The 701 started buzzing after 10 minutes of work on battery.
August 10th, 2008 at 6:48 am
If you use Win XP with eee900, forget about updating Windows - 4 Gb overfills almost at the first automatic update. I had to cut off all Windows updating functionality to avoid problems with the disk space. It is really a nuisance and the major drawback of eee900 that only 4 Gb are allotted for the system files and 8 Gb for the rest, and not vice versa.
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:48 am
Great review ^_^ although you neglected to mention the two finger click… When used in Firefox, it will open a link in a new tab… having only got my 900 yesterday not sure what else i can do with it just yet!
September 18th, 2008 at 1:24 am
I’ll re’ask the question MAX asked.
“Thanx for this good review.
But two more questions: You mentioned installing the DDR2-667 RAM, but how much RAM do you think the eeepc 900 can handle; and is it running at 667 or still 400 (FSB)?”
and my new question….
With the same sized RAM DDR2-400/667 what would be the difference in FPS for glxgears.