Dafydd Posted May 6, 2008 Share Posted May 6, 2008 Does anyone have one? Has anyone here tried one? I'm interested in getting a small, portable, cheap, functional and silent laptop that runs windows XP (play games, watch movies, make music, do anything you'd normally do in XP but with lower performance than a normal machine). Now... I'm wondering whether I should wait. Is it possible that these computers will be made entirely fanless in the near future? Will the change to an Atom processor improve things considerably? Is there anything else I should think about when considering getting one, and when deciding whether to get one now or later? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueMage Posted May 7, 2008 Share Posted May 7, 2008 I've got one. 4G version. Black. Simply put, I love it. I don't have WinXP on it. I've got Xandros on the solid-state drive and I run Puppy Linux off of the SD card reader. Considering the specs, this baby flies and I've had nothing but joy from it. Now, they won't be made fanless any time soon simply because they use Celeron chips. Celerons, as you may know, have a few issues with extra heat generation compared to equivalent pentiums, and are terrible when compared to Core 2 Duos. However, if you stick with the Linux option, I guarantee you will not find this to be an issue. I would also point out that Asus is looking to discontinue the 7" range, and replace it with a 9" range (key difference will be a slightly-less cramped keyboard and a 1024*800 resolution, up from 800*480). That said, I'm a giant hulking male of 6'4" and I find the keyboard fine to use. The best part is I can literally take this thing anywhere - it weighs less than a kilo, so I barely even notice it's in my bag at times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dafydd Posted May 7, 2008 Author Share Posted May 7, 2008 I'm a half-inch taller than you, so the comment about the keyboard was very informative. The question about the fan was mostly noise concerned, so if the thing is silent, I guess I don't care much about whether it has a fan or not (though moving parts usually end up breaking sooner than non-moving ones). I'm not that well versed in Linux, I don't have anything against it but I'd like to use an OS that I can run my usual programs on. If you get the Linux version, can you still buy a copy of XP and install it on the thingy somehow? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kitty Posted May 7, 2008 Share Posted May 7, 2008 I'm a half-inch taller than you, so the comment about the keyboard was very informative. The question about the fan was mostly noise concerned, so if the thing is silent, I guess I don't care much about whether it has a fan or not (though moving parts usually end up breaking sooner than non-moving ones). I'm not that well versed in Linux, I don't have anything against it but I'd like to use an OS that I can run my usual programs on. If you get the Linux version, can you still buy a copy of XP and install it on the thingy somehow? Partition the hard drive and you can install each on their own partition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dafydd Posted May 7, 2008 Author Share Posted May 7, 2008 Cool. I won't have much hard drive space left though... hehe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueMage Posted May 7, 2008 Share Posted May 7, 2008 You probably can get a copy of WinXP with it. I personally haven't tried. The OS it comes with is easy enough to use, and unless you're using some very specialised programs, should have everything you'd need to start with. Skype works out of the box, webcam works out of the box, voice control is pretty good, OpenOffice Writer/Calc/Impress for your doc/xls/ppt needs. The big thing is the fact that the wireless works (practically) flawlessly. (I say practically because it still has a few hiccups with WPA2 and it can't handle PEAP authentication either, but for a home network that's overkill anyway). As for fan noise ... I personally haven't noticed it. If you are going to go for XP though, I'd recommend you look into a stripped down version (Embedded XP or XP Naked edition or something like that) as you'll get your main functionality without all the half-finished crap they forgot about until Vista. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dafydd Posted May 7, 2008 Author Share Posted May 7, 2008 Depending on what's been removed, yeah, a simpler version of XP might be interesting, unless it's missing something important. I don't think the .NET framework, Reason or most of my old games will run on Linux, that's why I'd want to run XP, but if Embedded or Naked XP has the same problems, I'm not too keen on that either. I'm aiming for the same functionality as a regular PC but sacrificing power for mobility. EDIT: I tried to find info about Naked XP but all I found was links to warez torrents, nothing else, not on wikipedia or anywhere else. I'm assuming it's a less-than-legit version... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlueMage Posted May 9, 2008 Share Posted May 9, 2008 Probably is. Also, there's a little beauty of a thing called wine - basically acts as an API layer between windows programs and the linux kernel. Interestingly, some benchmarks actually show that programs running through wine run faster (in some instances, up to 30% faster) than running natively on Windows. Can't comment on Reason, but I'm pretty sure there're a few decent audio creation programs that'll run on linux. It's all about choice, eh? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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