Hands on: Install and run XP on the Asus Eee

You don’t have to run Linux on Asus’ tiny PC – it can handle Windows XP too

The Asus Eee PC has deservedly become one of the most talked-about devices of recent times.

Despite being initially aimed at kids, this highly affordable, ultraportable laptop has won the hearts of many enthusiasts and road warriors, selling out over the Christmas period like the season’s hot toy.

It’s obviously far from perfect, but it seems churlish to complain when you’re getting a fully functional tiny laptop with stacks of applications, decent connectivity and a usable screen for about £220.

It has also quickly become the current darling of anyone who loves to tweak, and we devoted last month’s Hardware column to the basics behind getting to grips with the custom Linux OS and installing additional applications.

This custom OS is one of the reasons behind the Eee’s low price and nifty operation on modest hardware, but Asus also includes drivers for anyone who wishes to install Windows XP instead.

So we’re devoting this month’s Hardware column to installing XP on the Eee and seeing how it performs compared to the default Linux installation – and if you’re expecting the open-source version to thrash Microsoft, you may be in for a surprise.

Installing XP
Asus provides XP drivers for the Eee PC, but you’ll need to supply the Windows disc and an external USB optical drive to read it.

The Eee is only compatible with Windows XP Service Pack 2, and earlier versions will fail during the setup process – so you’ll need a disc that already has SP2 built in.

Asus also recommends some kind of additional storage to boost the limited internal capacity, while also minimising Windows’ negative impact on a solid-state drive.

To kick off the installation process, connect the USB optical drive and start up (or restart) the system, pressing F2 to access the Bios pages.

First check that everything’s enabled in the Onboard Devices Configuration section under the Advanced menu. Also under the Advanced menu, change the OS Installation option to Start, before pressing F10 to save and reboot. Now press Esc during startup to choose the boot device and select your optical drive.

You can now start the Windows setup as normal and when you get to the drive page, delete all the existing partitions (bearing in mind that this will wipe your Eee clean), then let Windows create a new partition, formatting it as NTFS – this won’t take long given the 4GB capacity of the standard 4G model.

Once Windows has completed its installation, restart and re-enter the Bios pages. Go back to the Advanced menu and set OS Installation to Finish. Then when you’re back in Windows you can use the supplied disc to install the drivers; if you lose the disc you can download these drivers from the Asus website.

Optimising Windows
Asus provides a number of tips for optimising the Eee for use under XP and starts by suggesting you fix the size of the virtual memory swap file to about 256MB.

The supplied setup disc should fix the size for you, but if you’re installing the system manually or would like to adjust the size, you’ll find the option to do so under the Advanced tab of XP’s System Control Panel.

This also gives you the chance to relocate the swap file to a different drive, such as a USB Flash memory key or, more conveniently, an SD memory card that’s been inserted into the Eee’s slot.

This not only frees up some precious space, but also saves your Eee’s solid-state drive from the constant hammering of the Windows swap file. That said, it simply transfers the problem to other types of Flash memory, and it goes without saying your XP installation won’t be happy if you subsequently remove the USB key or SD card that’s housing the virtual memory.

Since many people will also want to use the SD slot for reading memory cards packed with photos or media files, you may prefer to leave the swap file on the internal drive and keep your fingers crossed it doesn’t have too much of a detrimental effect. It is, however, a good idea to turn off System Restore, as recommended by Asus, as this will both consume resources and hammer the drive.

At this point, our Eee PC 4G with a fully operational (but unpatched) installation of XP SP2, a 256MB swap file and the Asus drivers consumed 1.22GB of the internal storage, leaving about 2.49GB free.

That’s roughly half the size of the default Linux installation that comes with the Eee, although of course the big difference is that the latter includes a load of applications, whereas our XP installation had just the basics, such as Internet Explorer, Media Player and Wordpad.

At this point it’s also worth comparing startup and handling times. This fresh installation of XP – again without any Update Patches – took 56 seconds to boot from cold and connect to a wireless network. The default Linux installation did the same in 27 seconds, which is almost half the time. The complete shutdown process was much quicker in Linux, taking just 1.5 seconds, compared to 15 seconds under XP.

While the Linux installation is undoubtedly quicker at these processes, the XP installation didn’t feel slow – indeed quite the opposite. Compared to many laptops and even desktop systems, it felt quite nippy.

But what was it like for running applications? We expected Office to cripple the Eee, but found it ran surprisingly well. We installed Office Ultimate 2007 with just Word, Excel and Outlook, carefully opting not to include sample or help files.

This installation consumed almost an entire gigabyte of precious space on the Eee, leaving 1.53GB free, but in use it was pretty nifty with Word, Excel and Outlook taking a mere two, 1.5, and three seconds to launch respectively. Admittedly Outlook didn’t have a big PST file to wrangle, but those times are still pretty respectable.

Feeling particularly ambitious we then tried to install Photoshop CS3, but it failed at the first hurdle, demanding XGA resolution as a minimum, whereas the Eee has just 800x480 pixels.

XP itself can also feel a little cramped in this space, with many Windows losing their confirmation buttons even with the taskbar set to minimise automatically. Asus does provide an alternative display mode of 800x600 pixels though, with a scrolling desktop which can prove handy in such situations – but it’s not ideal.

Going forward
While we’d probably recommend a lighter office suite for the Eee, such as Open Office, the biggest problem facing a Windows installation on this little system will be limited capacity.

If you’re happy to tweak, though, you can pare a standard Windows installation down to free up precious space. For starters, there are a number of Windows components you can delete from the Add Remove Programs Control Panel, although you’re unlikely to retrieve much more than 100MB here.

Asus suggests compressing the disk and relocating numerous folders, such as My Documents and Internet Explorer’s Temporary Internet Files, to an external location like an SD memory card – although again that does mean you’ll be leaving that card pretty much permanently inserted. A number of upgrade and sample files can be deleted relatively safely, but that’s not going to make a huge difference.

The biggest impact you can make is to use third-party utilities, which allow you to create custom versions of XP with only the components you’re after.

You could get rid of things like Outlook Express, Windows Movie Maker and Wordpad, not to mention a stack of other components if you never intended to use them on the Eee. Doing so could reduce your Windows XP footprint by 25 per cent or more without too much compromise. See LitePC and Nlite.

Windows or Linux?
An untweaked Windows XP installation can run on the Eee with about two-thirds of the drive free for applications, and the system itself can feel pretty nippy - albeit without the startup and shutdown speeds of the default Linux option.

If you’re happy with the default applications under Linux, we’d advise sticking with it, but installing Windows opens up opportunities to support other programs and devices. Maybe you’ve got a mobile phone or digital camera utility that only runs under Windows for example. Perhaps you’d sooner run a non-beta version of Skype for supporting video calls.

We also found that while the Linux media player was happy with our DivX video samples, Windows’ own Media Player was smoother with WMV files. There are also stacks of other third-party utilities that give you the opportunity to overclock the Eee so its mobile Celeron is running at the maximum 900MHz speed and not the 630MHz default setting.

The Eee doesn’t just have two OS options. There’s an Ubuntu installation designed specifically for it, and some brave souls have even hacked Apple’s OSX onto it. Vista is also possible, but a bit unrealistic for the hardware.

This is the joy of the Eee though – it uses standard PC hardware, so is eternally tweakable and great fun to play with. It will be interesting to see how many people decide to stick with an alternative OS once they’ve used it for a while.

While we were impressed by XP running on the Eee, we kept returning to the default Linux variant for its sheer usability as an ultraportable front end. If you’re running an alternative OS on the Eee, we’d love to hear from you.