Hands-On With the Windows XP-Based Asus Eee PC

MojoKid writes "Though the Asus Eee PC Windows XP variant isn't due out until sometime in April, HotHardware was able to get their hands on a full retail bundle before they hit store shelves in the US. The standard assortment of accoutrements is included in the bundle, along with a couple of notable upgrades. Asus took the initiative to provide an additional 4GB SD card from Adata, a healthy storage expansion for the system. In addition, an Asus-branded optical mouse was thrown in for good measure. Microsoft's Windows Live messenger, photo gallery and email suite are pre-installed on the the machine for collaborative and social networking capability, in addition to Microsoft Works for word processing, spreadsheets, and calendar functionality."

Windows XP?

[Dice Fivefold]

I thought that Microsoft was withdrawing Windows XP from the market in a couple of months. Are they still going to offer it on these low-end machines?

Hmm.

[Dzimas]

The price has crept up to within $100 of a "standard" basic notebook. The only thing this little machine has going for it is size - 800 x 480 is utterly useless because you spend too much time dealing with cartoonishly huge windows. I run into this kind of trouble every time I visit my parent's house and attempt to use their machine set to 800 x 600 - it's bloody unproductive. I'd gladly reconsider the eee when they release the upcoming version with a 1024 x not-quite-enough screen, but I fear the price will be at least $399 for a semi-usable configuration.

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[account_deleted]

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PowerPoint presentation machine? VGA port?

[jschen]

At least according to the specs on newegg.com this thing has VGA out. If one can squeeze PowerPoint onto the thing, it would make the ultimate PowerPoint presentation machine. A mere two pounds, ultra-small, and more than capable of giving PowerPoint presentations that aren't overly loaded with multimedia.

Can anyone verify the presence of a VGA port? eeepc.asus.com doesn't specify, though it may be because every other page on its website is down at the moment.

Let's talk about price

[feranick]

The WinXP version will retail for 399USD. This includes the SD card and an extra mouse. As far as I know the retail price for the 4G linux version is 399USD. So I am struggling to understand the economy here, provided that the Linux is (supposedly) free. Is actually MS paying to get XP in these things? Or is Xandros license actually more expensive than WinXP license? Please, help me to understand...

Re:For those without adblock, patience...

[davmoo]

Microsoft has already made a great stride in this market...they convinced Asus to release a Windows version in the first place. They may not win, but they're certainly in the game.

Re:For those without adblock, patience...

[molarmass192]

According to him, the Windows-equipped $499 laptops outsell the Linux-equipped $399 laptops 5 to 1.
That's really amazing considering the XP equipped EEE doesn't go on sale until next month. Oh wait, that's right, you're off topic. Anyhow, I don't doubt you that the Win laptops outsell the Lin laptops. Fact is, most people have no idea what Lin is. On that note, if 20% of his sales are Lin, that's pretty amazing. Combine that with the fact that 20% of the laptop market are Macs, that means that the Win laptop market is in the 60-70% range. I've always said that I'd like to see a 3 way market, Win / Lin / Mac, with none having a share > 50%. The key to avoiding lock in is to have platform diversity. That way everybody wins, except MS that is.

Re:$399? ya.. ok..

[weffey]

I'm also curious about the price.

I just bought a 4G (with free carrying case!) this past Thursday from a local small computer store (that I have been a regular at for over 10 years). I asked the owner what the mark up is on the system and he told me that ASUS sells them to him at 379$ and if he wants to sell them at a price other than 399$, he needs to get written permission from them 14 days in advance. He can't even have a sale for them at 389$ without telling them and getting permission 14 days before the sale, in his words "it's not worth the effort just to cut my profit in half."

What he did mention is that ASUS gives him a quarterly kick back for ever 50 machines he sells, 5000$, and for every 20 2GB memory upgrades, 2000$. As an FYI, the 2GB memory upgrade cost me 50$ and they're not allowed to charge the customers labor in order for it to qualify. Same goes for the various accessories, but he didn't mention what he gets on those, I assume it's comparable. He figured they'd be doing the same with XP when it came available.

Regardless, I installed the Advanced Desktop via apt-get as soon as I got home Thursday night, and have not missed the EEE's default custom desktop one bit.

Note: all prices are in CAD

Re:Good, I hope they don't sell well.

[lars_boegild_thomsen]

> The full featured Xandros OS fits in about 200MB. It includes open
> office, flash, firefox, Google mail and chat links,
> Skype and other software that can use the webcam and a reasonable
> media player.

I am not sure from where you got that figure. The standard Eee PC 4G Surf comes with the built-in 4G flash disk partitioned into two partitions (no there's four actually but only those two are part of the Linux installation) - one slightly above 2GB and one slightly below 2GB. The first is used entirely for Linux system and the other is layered on top of that using unionfs. ALL changes by user - EVEN system updates take place on the second partition. The original more than 2 GB partition is almost full - so I reckon the standard Xandros with all you mention is around 2G roughly.

Considering the amount of software - including LOTS is not directly available in simple mode (for example konqueror, kontact, kmail etc.) that is still very impressive.

Re:For those without adblock, patience...

[Talkischeap]

According to your friend, "the Windows-equipped $499 laptops outsell the Linux-equipped $399 laptops 5 to 1."

Your friend is coming from the Microsoft centric world, so of course he's going to say that.

But look at whats really happening here.

One out of five laptops that your friend sells now have LINUX on them instead of the Windows operating system.

So it looks to me that Windows is losing market share in this sub group of portable computing.

And for the life of me... I can not understand why anybody would need Windows on an Eee PC, it works just fine out of the box with LINUX.

Five folks that I know have purchased an Eee PC since seeing mine, and all of them were diehard windows users who have adapted quite easily to the Eee PC's "easy" LINUX operating system.

Of course... on mine I've already installed 2 gigs of ram, and enabled the advanced desktop, and BERYL.

Loads of fun, and no Windows involved.

Re:Windows XP?

[wasted]

I suppose they could eliminate Vista and rename XP to Vista as a means of withdrawing it.

More like Vista Eee

I'm tired of hearing this

[tknd]

The price has crept up to within $100 of a "standard" basic notebook.

I'm tired of hearing this. The price is on target because it is not a basic notebook. It is an ultra portable device at an affordable price point compared to other ultra portable devices (read ultra portable does not necessarily mean laptop). People buying the eee don't care that the resolution is low, that the device can't play crysis, or that they can get a bigger brick at the same price. All they care about is: is it portable and does it allow me to do email, internet (yes people think browsing web pages == 'internet'), read documents, and run my little apps (IM, youtube, and mp3s).

Until the eee pc came out, every computer manufacturer failed at getting the requirements right for a laptop. It just so happened that asus got it right and that the tech needed (SSDs, CPU speed increases, ram capacity increases) was cheap enough.

However, I still give the OLPC/XO most of the credit for helping to create the market. If all of the news and media coverage of the OLPC never came to be, Asus and others may never have attempted such a device.

Re:For those without adblock, patience...

[jhol13]

We all live in Microsoft centric world.

You only need to browse a little http://forum.eeeuser.com/index.php [eeeuser.com] to notice there really is need for Windows version for the EeePC, there are a lot of people who rather run XP.

Oh, I have EeePC and the Xandros is definitely worse than XP would be. Maybe Ubuntu 8.04 will fix all the problems, maybe, the beta apparently does not. I have EeeXubuntu and it needs a lot of tuning and still the wireless is unreliable. Something average Jane/Joe certainly is not happy about.

And If the Windows version would cost, say, $50 more I wouldn't be surprised if it would sell better. Add some crapware and the $50 difference is going to be quite a high estimate.

Re:For those without adblock, patience...

[Talkischeap]

"We all live in Microsoft centric world."

Speak for yourself Windows lover.

I have 2 Macs, 11 PC's and an Eee PC, and only two PC boxes run Windows, all the rest run LINUX.

I'm sure that I'm not alone here.

So perhaps you meant to say that you live in a Microsoft centric world, because I sure don't.

And your post has nothing to do with the point I was making, you sound like a Microsoft fanboi to me.

"Oh, I have EeePC and the Xandros is definitely worse than XP would be."

I call BS on that, make a point and back it up, don't throw stones and run.

I have no problems using my Eee PC, wireless and all.

Re:For those without adblock, patience...

[shellbeach]

My friend runs an online store and 90% of his sales are laptops. It's not a small business since he's selling hundreds of lappies every month, so his facts are interesting. According to him, the Windows-equipped $499 laptops outsell the Linux-equipped $399 laptops 5 to 1.

I don't think the average Eee buyer is going to care much for specifications as much as they care for the whole concept, which is why I think you are wrong.

Yeah, but the Eee is a bit different. People aren't buying them as replacement laptops, they're buying them as a second notebook to travel with. As such, they don't need all the bells and whistles -- provided it does what they need (surf the web, handle email and edit documents/spreadsheets/presentations) that's all they'll ever need.

Let's think about how the sales conversation with Joe Average might go:

----

Salesman: "So, you can get the Eee with Windows installed and 8Gb storage, or with linux and 12Gb storage. Same price."

Joe: "Uh, yeah, linux. I've heard of that. Any difference between that and windows?"

Salesman: "Not really. Most things you want to do on the Eee, you can do with linux. It won't run all your windows software, but it depends what you want to do with the Eee. For the basic tasks, linux will be fine."

Joe: "And I can always install Windows on the linux one if I don't like linux, can't I?"

Salesman: "Well, sure, they're the same computer, just one has more storage space for the same price."

Joe: "Well, in that case, I'll get the linux one, thanks!"

----

The thing is, nobody expected the Eees to do so well. They were toys, they'd never catch on ... but they sold so fast most stores couldn't get enough of them. It's one of the more amazing computing stories of recent years -- average guys going crazy buying what was only ever going to be a geek's play thing. And they bought them without windows, and nobody cared! That's the thing that's hurt MS more than anything -- Asus was selling these things without even the option of having Windows, and nobody even blinked. Joe Average didn't care.

Re:For those without adblock, patience...

[Zencyde]

The unfortunate part of this review is that they don't seem to do actual tests on specs themselves. They reported that the Eee PC has a processor clocked at 900 Mhz. This is a lie. The Eee PC does have a 900 Mhz Process; but, the FSB has been clocked down to 70 Mhz. This puts the processor at 630 Mhz. The system has been specially configured to misreport the clock speed. This is well known on the forums at "www.eeeuser.com". Also, the wireless connectivity is poor. The system also misreports percentages. This is most easily tested using Linux. Often the Eee PC reports 100% while other distributions will report about 70% or so. It's rather unfortunate that Asus took this step. Personally, I love my Eee PC. Though, it could really sue some modding. Also, it's troublesome that Asus was so deceitful with their tactics. The original wasn't even completely open-source. A lot of the ACPI had to be implemented through trial and error and some reverse engineering. I think there are still one or two features left to implement on even the most well-developed distributions for it. Though, I'm too lazy to go double-check this. : ) Also the original kernel was compiled to not allow more than 1 gig of RAM to be seen. This is easily fixed with a recompile. Again, it's rather unfortunate that Asus prefers to view this as an appliance rather than a laptop.