Hands on: Inside the Eee

Asus’ new mini laptop has caught people’s imagination, so what’s the fuss about?

Every so often a new product comes along that fires up almost everyone who sees it.

Such products quickly gain a cult following among early adopters who try out an array of modifications, comparing notes and results on internet forums.

Then as the product becomes mainstream, the less gung-ho among us can pick and choose from the various tweaks, which by then are well known and documented.

The latest product to earn this kind of cult status is the Asus Eee PC 4G, a mini laptop that stole the show at Computex 2007 and has since set numerous forums ablaze with countless tips, tricks and tweaks – and it’s not hard to see why.

The Eee PC 4G is small, light, affordable and runs a custom version of Linux that supports a wide range of applications and external devices. At £219, it’s not only the cheapest ultraportable laptop around, but also a dream gadget for enthusiasts.

The Eee PC OS
The Eee PC runs a custom version of Linux, based on Xandros. Having a relatively standard OS behind the scenes is what gives the Eee PC its flexibility, as there’s a wealth of software that should run on it without too many issues.

First things first, though. Asus has created a custom front end to operate the Eee PC, called the Easy Mode. This separates the various pre-installed applications and utilities under six tabbed menus – Internet, Work, Learn, Play, Settings and Favourites, with a Help option at the end.

On each page you’ll find big friendly icons with generic descriptions – for example, the web browser and email clients are actually Firefox and Thunderbird, but they’re simply referred to here as ‘Internet’ and ‘Mail’.

Asus offers certified updates to these pre-installed applications in its ‘Add/Remove Software’ control panel under the Settings tab, so if you’re looking for a new version, this is the place to start.

If there’s no update shown, but you know there’s, say, a beta version you’d like to try, then you can download it manually or use Linux-specific tools to install it, of which more later. You can also, of course, use both techniques to install other programs too, but sadly they won’t appear in the Easy Mode menus. Luckily there’s a way around this, which we’ll describe in a moment.

Asus has been careful to pre-install applications that work well on the 800x400 pixel display, but you will come across windows from time to time that infuriatingly extend below the height of the screen, thereby hiding crucial confirmation options; specifically, this happens when installing new applications.

The trick is to hold the Alt key while you drag the pointer. Doing so in effect treats the entire window as a title bar, allowing you to grab and drag it from any area.

Networking
The Eee PC is equipped with both wired 10/100 Ethernet and wireless b and g connectivity, but it’s not obvious at first how to connect and remember a set of preferences.

Under the Internet tab you’ll find icons labelled ‘Network’ and ‘Wireless Networks’, and it’s the former you should use when setting up a brand new connection, whether wired or wireless. The latter icon is instead just used to browse available wireless networks and choose which you’d like to connect to. It is possible to configure the unit to attempt always to connect to the same one when it boots.

In terms of security, at the time of writing the Eee PC supported hidden SSIDs and both Wep and WPA, although not WPA2. The Wireless Networks utility can also indicate the signal strength.

The File Manager icon under the Work tab allows you to browse networks including standard Windows workgroups. We successfully accessed files on a Windows workgroup with shared folders under both XP and Vista without a hitch, and it’s also possible to connect to printers.

Storage
The Eee PC uses a solid-state drive rather than a spinning hard disk and the 4G version has a 4GB capacity.

Our 4G model, upgraded to 1GB of Ram, booted up in 27 seconds with wireless enabled and shut down in 1.5 seconds.

The Open Office Writer application and Firefox browser took 11.8 and 4.5 seconds respectively to launch.

The default installation of OS and applications consumes about two thirds of the available storage, leaving you with about 1.2GB of formatted space to play with.

That’s fine for accommodating a few more applications and a number of documents and emails, but if you’re after a portable media collection or a backup for your photos, you’ll need alternative storage.

Luckily, the Eee PC is fitted with an SD memory card slot and three USB2 ports that seem happy to work with a variety of peripherals.

We successfully connected a bus-powered Seagate 160GB Freeagent Go hard disk while on battery power, along with a mains-powered DVD drive and a number of USB memory keys.

Video playback
The Eee PC can be used as a portable video player with varying degrees of success. We found it could open and play compressed WMV and even DV-encoded AVI files from an external hard disk, albeit with unwatchable video lag.

The supplied media player could also play DVDs either directly from a drive, or from a folder (naughty!). We tried an external AC-powered DVD drive but could only play non-commercial movies, perhaps due to either copy protection or regional coding.

Non-commercial or home-made DVDs generally worked fine, but again there could be stuttering on the playback.

The best video experience came from DivX-encoded files stored on SD memory cards or the internal drive. These tended to play back fine on the Eee PC, and with wireless networking switched off, a fully charged battery was good for just under three hours of viewing. The 800x480 pixel wide aspect display also accommodates 16:9 material quite nicely.

Installing other applications
As mentioned earlier, Asus presents the pre-installed applications and utilities with a friendly front end and a separate program for installing certified updates. Underneath the hood, however, is a version of Linux based on Xandros, which opens up the possibility of installing a wider range of programs.

For those with little Linux experience, one of the easiest ways to install programs is through a list of ‘repositories’, and to see what’s available, simply press Ctrl, Alt and T to open a command prompt before typing ‘sudo synaptic’. Synaptic is a graphical front end for browsing repositories. Once you find a program you want, mark it for installation and the program will download required files.

Asus offers a repository of certified programs, but for a wider selection you’ll need to add more repositories to Synaptic, and the safest bets for compatibility are those for Xandros – a web search will reveal a number of addresses you can enter, although bear in mind there’s no guarantee that any programs you install will work on the Eee PC’s customised Linux.

Annoyingly, you won’t find an icon for anything you install on the Eee PC from its Easy Mode, although right-clicking files in the File Manager allows you to choose which program they’ll open with.

A more flexible approach for anyone who intends to install other programs involves enabling the Eee PC’s ‘Full Desktop’ mode.

To do this, press Ctrl, Alt and T and type ‘sudo apt-get update’, followed by ‘sudo apt-get install kicker’, then agree to the installation. Next type ‘sudo apt-get install ksmserver’ and again agree.

Finally, type exit to close the window and click the Power button as if you were going to shut down. You’ll now see a new option for Full Desktop, which boots into a more familiar Linux desktop complete with a nested Launch menu containing all your applications.

Just the start
We’ve only just scraped the surface of the Eee PC here and will cover it in more detail in future columns, including how to install Windows XP. In the meantime, visit the excellent community for this little laptop here.

The Eee PC range in detail
The Asus Eee PC 4G is the first of several models whose major differences are their amount of storage, Ram and whether or not they feature a built-in webcam.

The number in the name refers to the size of the built-in solid-state drive, so the standard 4G model is equipped with 4GB of storage, of which roughly two thirds is used by the operating system and pre-installed applications.

The 8G, 4G Surf and 2G Surf models feature 8, 4 and 2GB drives respectively. In terms of Ram, the 4G and 4G Surf models come with 512MB installed using a single DDR Dimm located behind a panel on the underside of the machine. The 8G and 2G Surf models are equipped with 1GB and 256MB respectively.

The 8G and 4G models come with webcams and 5,200mAh batteries good for three and a half hours of use, while the 4G Surf and 2G Surf versions have lower-powered 4,400mAh batteries, good for 2.8 hours, but no webcams.

All four models have the same 900MHz Intel Mobile processor and 7in 800x480 pixel screen. At the time of writing only the 4G was available, but all are expected by the time you read this. Rumours of a future model with a bigger 10in screen were recently denied, but it would certainly be a popular option.