Asus Budget Ultraportable Notebook Sold Sans OS 263
EconolineCrush writes "Tired of paying the Windows tax on notebooks? Asus's Eee PC 1201T budget ultraportable comes without a traditional operating system and sells for only $380. The 12-inch system has promising specifications, sporting an Athlon Neo processor, Radeon HD 3200 graphics, Bluetooth, and 802.11n Wi-Fi. It weighs just 3.2lbs with a 6-cell battery and can even handle light gaming duties. However, battery life in Ubuntu is considerably shorter than it is under Windows. Are there any better options for would-be laptop Linux users?"
Re:"Traditional Operating System" (Score:5, Informative)
Hi, you must be new. Welcome to the interweb! When you see underlined text on a "web site" you can "click" on the words to get more information. In this case if you clicked on "comes without a traditional operating system [techreport.com]" you would have learned that "Asus ships the Eee PC 1201T with only its ExpressGate instant-on OS". Isn't that neat? Have fun!
Re:$380? (Score:4, Informative)
Probably because the $380 NOTEBOOK in question here isn't a netbook. It's got a 12" screen. It's got a full keyboard. It's got much better integrated graphics. It's light.
We're talking more in the range of a 12" MacBook here rather than a netbook.
Yes there are more Linux alternatives for these... (Score:4, Informative)
Gentoo Eee [eeeuser.com]
EasyPeasy [geteasypeasy.com]
Ubuntu Of course Ubuntu has a Eee flavor of the kernel, I chose to go a full blown Hardy Heron install on my netbook. I was given mine by a friend who was gonna throw it away. I removed the Xandros that was on it and installed Ubuntu and other than a bit of fun hacking around with it, it's quite useless other than using the terminal. Firefox on the web with it is crap, no memory whatsoever so if you have more than 1 tab open it takes forever to do anything. Forget about compiling something while websurfing cause that won't happen. My advice to people thinking about getting these, for the price if you double it, you get a pretty kick ass laptop these days. Go for the laptop, more power, more space, more ram, more CPU, more functional!
Re:When will netbooks... (Score:1, Informative)
Dude, $10 4GB SD card from NewEgg. ReadyBoost. LEARN.
ReadyBoost has been around since Vista and makes my 2GB Netbook fly.
IDE, Firefox/Thunderbird, Notepad++, Pandora, etc at the same time? No problem.
For Linux I think there's a way to use a card as a RamDisk, which is the same idea.
Re:Yes there are more Linux alternatives for these (Score:4, Informative)
If lack of RAM is the problem, then install more RAM. I upgraded my Eee 901 to 2GB of RAM and that brought total cost up to $300. It allows me to use RAM for /tmp which makes it not nearly so sluggish. Firefox is still problematic. I think it does a lot of disk writes and that causes unacceptably long freezes on the Eee so I use Chromium (on Ubuntu.)
I don't do compiles and I certainly would not recommend it for a desktop or laptop replacement, but when I travel it meets my needs for browsing, email, loading podasts on my Sansa and occasional word processing and presentations.
Re:$380? (Score:1, Informative)
Agreed.
I purchased a similar machine around christmas for about $300: Gateway LT3103u - Athlon 64 Ultra low Voltage L110 processor, Radeon x1200 graphics, 11.6" 1366x768 display, 2 GB RAM, 160 GB HD, 6 cell battery, WiFi, Bluetooth, and it came with Windows 7 Pro...
So how is paying more $ to not have the OS included a benefit for me?
It has Splashtop (Score:3, Informative)
Even Asus' Splashtop would have been good.
From the article:
The impression that I get from this Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] is that Splashtop and ExpressGate are one and the same.
Which Ubuntu? (Score:2, Informative)
The article says they used Ubuntu, but doesn't say whether they're using regular desktop Ubuntu or the Netbook remix [ubuntu.com]. They admit that they haven't optimized the kernel: it's entirely possible that battery life could be improved by recompiling the kernel with different flags or some equally esoteric maneuver. Of course normal users shouldn't have to optimize their kernels, but installing the netbook edition shouldn't be that esoteric. The article doesn't say if they did that or not, but if they had, I suspect that they would say so.
I haven't installed plain Ubuntu in a while, so I don't know if it offers to optimize for netbooks at install time. It would be nice if it did that.
Asus Budget Portable (Score:2, Informative)
xf86 ATI Video Driver is the culprit (Score:5, Informative)
Cheap cellular data in the United States? (Score:4, Informative)
cheap cellular access
I happen not to live in such a country. Instead, I live in the United States, where "3G" is how much one would have to spend over the course of four years for mobile broadband service at $60 per month, capped at 5 GB per month. (Right now, my Virgin Mobile phone bill is $80 per year.) Business managers can justify the expense, but I can't, especially when I have to pay another $60 per month for cable Internet at home.
Better Battery Life with Windows7? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:When will netbooks... (Score:3, Informative)
It's actually both:
http://www.itexaminer.com/microsoft-adds-to-atoms-restrictions.aspx [itexaminer.com]
Re:Used laptop (Score:3, Informative)
That's true, especially in this economy. Find the company that gets all the now-useless hardware from companies that have outsourced their IT. Hardware up to three years old, but still good by today's standards.
Re:When will netbooks... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:$380? (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft convinced the manufacturers that they needed to run Windows, so any kind of ARM support was dropped with that, along with the likelihood of a cheap netbook.
It would be more truthful to say that when the Atom netbook running Win XP hit the shelves, sales of the Linux netbook tanked.
Re:$380? (Score:2, Informative)