Can the Eee cope with XP?

I’ve grown very fond of my Asus Eee mini laptop, and it would seem I’m not alone.

The Eee sold out at Christmas to become the unexpected ‘Buzz Lightyear’ purchase of 2007, with desperate buyers searching everywhere for an unsold unit.

In case you’ve missed out, the Eee PC 4G measures 225x164x35mm, weighs 0.92kg, runs a custom version of Linux from a 4GB solid-state drive, and costs a mere £219.

I’ve been tweaking the Eee and have done the dirty: I've tried it out with Windows XP.

One of the reasons the Eee works so well and is affordably priced is because its custom version of Linux avoids both the licensing costs of Windows and its heftier hardware requirements.

Its 900MHz Celeron and 4GB solid-state drive may work just fine for Linux, but ring alarm bells for typical Windows installations.

Yet Asus makes it very easy for you to wipe clean its default OS and install XP on it instead. It supplies the Eee with a driver disc and even includes detailed instructions complete with optimisation tips. It’s a red rag to this bull, so I connected a USB optical drive and fired up XP’s setup process. Just one note – you will need an XP disc which already includes Service Pack 2.

The installation went smoothly and once the Asus drivers were in place, I had a fully functional Windows laptop which could squeeze into a large coat pocket. The default installation consumed roughly a third of the total capacity, leaving about 2.5GB to play with. This was also after fixing the virtual memory swap file to 256MB as recommended.

Windows felt pretty responsive on the Eee, although I should admit my test unit came with the 512MB of Ram upgraded to 1GB. It took about twice as long to start up as the default Linux installation, but less than a minute from cold to connecting to a wireless network isn’t bad.

Of course, unless you’re happy with the supplied Windows accessories alone, you’ll need to install some applications, and while Open Office would seem like a more sensible choice of suite, I tried out Office Ultimate 2007 just to see how the Eee coped. I went for a stripped-down installation of just Word, Excel and Outlook, which consumed almost 1GB, but again it ran surprisingly quickly.

The truly devoted can also claw back precious storage space by removing unwanted Windows components or even creating a custom package of their own using tools like XPLite or Nlite.

But even though XP can run surprisingly well on the Eee, why would you bother? Of course, for an enthusiast the answer is simply ‘because it’s there’, but does Windows really give you any advantages over the default OS?

It does if you absolutely need a certain driver, utility or file compatibility which isn’t supported under Linux. It certainly gives you greater flexibility. But after playing with Windows for a while, I used the supplied recovery disc to reinstall the custom Linux OS. The default user interface may be a little childish, but it handles quickly and behind those chunky icons lie familiar and powerful applications.

Ultimately the default Eee package does what I personally want from a laptop, and does so quicker than XP. Indeed I fear my new premium ultraportable Vista laptop may not be getting as much use as I intended.

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