Hands on: The speed of the wee Eee

Find out if size really does matter when it comes to the performance of tiny laptops

In this month’s Hardware column you’ll find a number of tweaks for the Asus Eee PC 4G mini laptop. This device runs a custom version of Linux from a 4GB solid-state drive, offering a multitude of options for tweaking and installing new programs.

That said, the stock Eee PC is also capable of a great deal in its default configuration.

It may only have 4GB of internal storage (two-thirds used by the OS and default applications), but three USB2 ports and support for external storage devices gives you plenty of opportunity to use it in the field as a media player or backup device for digital images.

The big question, though, is how well does this work in practice, and is it any substitute for a proper laptop?

External drives
Our test Eee PC seemed happy to connect to a number of external storage devices from USB keys to hard disks and optical drives. It was also happy to power an external Seagate Freeagent Go 160GB drive using the cable (supplied with the drive) that connects to a pair of USB ports.

With this connected, the Eee PC had access to as much storage as the biggest laptops (at the time of writing) - a combination that is both compact and affordable.

As discussed in the Hardware column, we successfully played a variety of media files from the external drive, along with the internal storage or an SD memory card. Some played more smoothly than others and of the video files we tried, the most reliable was the DivX format.

Material converted from a 16:9 original source also fitted the Eee PC’s 800x480 pixel screen with only very thin bars at the top and bottom.

In terms of backing up digital images, we took a folder of 168 JPEG and RAW images measuring 924MB and copied it onto a Sandisk Ultra II SD memory card.

Copying this back onto a desktop PC using a USB2 card reader took one minute and 33 seconds. To copy it direct onto the Seagate drive via the desktop PC took one minute and 49 seconds.

We then inserted the card into the Eee PC and used its File Manager program to copy the contents onto the internal solid-state drive - this took one minute and 57 seconds.

Next we connected the Seagate 160GB drive and copied the contents of the memory card directly, bypassing the internal storage, in two minutes and 40 seconds.

Out of curiosity, we then connected the same USB card reader (as used on the desktop) to the Eee PC, then timed the file transfer direct from the card to the Seagate drive.

This took two minutes and 43 seconds. Finally, since the Sandisk Ultra II card isn’t the fastest we had to hand, we inserted a top-of-the-range Lexar professional 300x Compact Flash card into the card reader and timed the transfer to the Seagate drive: this time one minute and 55 seconds.

So, in terms of copying the contents of a 1GB SD card direct to the Seagate drive, you’re looking at 109 seconds using a desktop PC and 160 or 163 seconds using the Eee PC, depending on whether the card was inserted directly or accessed via a card reader. While the Eee PC was clearly slower in this regard, most people would find waiting an extra minute for a 1GB backup acceptable.

Photo editing on the Eee PC
Why stop there though, when you could also use the Eee PC to edit your photos too?

The Eee PC comes with basic photo management software as standard, but it’s possible to install other Linux applications with a fair degree of success. Since the Eee PC OS is based on Xandros, it’s safest to download Xandros versions - there’s no guarantee they’ll work, but it can be worth a shot.

Following the guide in this month’s Hardware column, we added several common Xandros repositories to Synaptic and used it to download and install a copy of the popular Gimp photo editing program.

The installation itself required a few Alt-dragging of windows to access various confirmation buttons, but it ended up working fine on the Eee, albeit with little room for the various palettes.

While the Eee PC has a small screen, a relatively tiny drive and a custom operating system, it’s still possible to use it like a bigger laptop.

By connecting an external portable hard disk you can have gigabytes of backup and, with a careful choice of repositories, you could be enjoying the benefit of full Linux applications. See this month’s Hardware column or the excellent forums at http://forum.eeeuser.com for more details on the Eee PC.

This article appeared in the March 2008 issue of PCW.