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I 'struggled' to use a Asus netbook for about 3 months, trying to use it as my daily driver for work. I was OK for notes and writing docs but not much else. Eve

by ljf 7y ago

I 'struggled' to use a Asus netbook for about 3 months, trying to use it as my daily driver for work. I was OK for notes and writing docs but not much else. Even web back in 2012 was terrible on it. ANd the keyboard was lame. I started on windows, tried various Linux and ended up with Jolicloud on it, which was about the best I could hope for - but soon got a real laptop, and regretted wasting my cash on the netbook.

squarefoot 7y ago
11-12'' screen notebooks offer the best of two worlds: portability and performance. I wouldn't trade my X240 Thinkpad for anything else as it takes (bag included) less than half the space in my motorcycle topcase, and the dual battery runs it well over 8 hours. It has a nasty hardware problem though, as it completely freezes down to requiring a cold reboot if I grab it with my left hand in the empty space left of the trackpad, but it appears other Thinkpads share the same problem as well. However after some years I had absolutely no problems in normal use.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  I don't think that is a defect of thinkpads at all. something is clearly broken in your particular machine. Is your hard drive located in that spot, loosely connected, and perhaps not connected at all when you squeeze it right there.
Crinus 7y ago
I used a EeePC 701 for a few months. I found it perfectly fine with Window Maker, though the keyboard was awful - but it did work and i'm not a big keyboard snob anyway so i just went with it. I was able to play old games, chat on IRC and read the occasional web page (though only one page at a time) and even watch videos. That latter part was a bit annoying though since i had to transcode most videos to a lower resolution and simpler codec, otherwise the CPU wouldn't be able to keep up (i do not think there was any video decoding acceleration). This usually meant that if i wanted to watch a 30m video i'd had to wait around 2 hours :-P. But i allocated time for that, doing transcoding while sleeping or going out. Sadly one morning i destroyed the screen by stepping on it - i often used it at bed and left it at the side and one morning i stepped on it when i woke up. I later bought an Acer Aspire One as a replacement - that one was much faster (though some video still needed transcoding) and it had a much better keyboard. Sadly i lost it by forgetting it at a bus station. Recently i bought a used EeePC 701 from eBay for a few dollars. It is in almost mint condition and instead of Linux it comes with Windows XP. I find it funny that at startup the OS always complains about the resolution (800x480) being too low despite being the native one :-P.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  > Recently i bought a used EeePC 701 from eBay for a few dollars... That's the nice thing about those netbooks still - they're available used for a few bucks (a lot less than $100!) often in very good condition, and a mainstream Linux distribution will run fine on them, even booting from SD card storage (which a lot of modern hardware will fail at)! Sure, you do need 1GB RAM and quite a few gigs of storage space, so the original eeePC 700 series is a no go, but everything else in that class works reasonably well. We do see projects like pmOS that aim to do pretty much the same thing for modern mobile devices (tablets and smartphones), but the difficulties there are huge due to all the bespoke hardware - there's just no comparison.
  - squarefoot 7y ago
    I think older netbooks such as the 700 series could find a new use either as IoT or VoIP terminals and other non demanding tasks, by fitting them with just the bare minimum OS to run a single full screen application. Not that different from the LibreElec distribution whose motto is "just enough OS for Kodi". Example: a 701 paired with an external good quality audio card plus Jaaa [1] might become a small useful standalone instrument for audio alignment (generator + spectrum analyzer). [1] http://kokkinizita.linuxaudio.org/linuxaudio/ http://kokkinizita.linuxaudio.org/linuxaudio/ Jaaa is at about 75% of the page among lots of other interesting software.

by ljf 7y ago

squarefoot 7y ago

11-12'' screen notebooks offer the best of two worlds: portability and performance. I wouldn't trade my X240 Thinkpad for anything else as it takes (bag included) less than half the space in my motorcycle topcase, and the dual battery runs it well over 8 hours. It has a nasty hardware problem though, as it completely freezes down to requiring a cold reboot if I grab it with my left hand in the empty space left of the trackpad, but it appears other Thinkpads share the same problem as well. However after some years I had absolutely no problems in normal use.

michaelmrose 7y ago
I don't think that is a defect of thinkpads at all. something is clearly broken in your particular machine. Is your hard drive located in that spot, loosely connected, and perhaps not connected at all when you squeeze it right there.

Crinus 7y ago

I used a EeePC 701 for a few months. I found it perfectly fine with Window Maker, though the keyboard was awful - but it did work and i'm not a big keyboard snob anyway so i just went with it. I was able to play old games, chat on IRC and read the occasional web page (though only one page at a time) and even watch videos. That latter part was a bit annoying though since i had to transcode most videos to a lower resolution and simpler codec, otherwise the CPU wouldn't be able to keep up (i do not think there was any video decoding acceleration). This usually meant that if i wanted to watch a 30m video i'd had to wait around 2 hours :-P. But i allocated time for that, doing transcoding while sleeping or going out. Sadly one morning i destroyed the screen by stepping on it - i often used it at bed and left it at the side and one morning i stepped on it when i woke up. I later bought an Acer Aspire One as a replacement - that one was much faster (though some video still needed transcoding) and it had a much better keyboard. Sadly i lost it by forgetting it at a bus station. Recently i bought a used EeePC 701 from eBay for a few dollars. It is in almost mint condition and instead of Linux it comes with Windows XP. I find it funny that at startup the OS always complains about the resolution (800x480) being too low despite being the native one :-P.

zozbot234 7y ago
> Recently i bought a used EeePC 701 from eBay for a few dollars... That's the nice thing about those netbooks still - they're available used for a few bucks (a lot less than $100!) often in very good condition, and a mainstream Linux distribution will run fine on them, even booting from SD card storage (which a lot of modern hardware will fail at)! Sure, you do need 1GB RAM and quite a few gigs of storage space, so the original eeePC 700 series is a no go, but everything else in that class works reasonably well. We do see projects like pmOS that aim to do pretty much the same thing for modern mobile devices (tablets and smartphones), but the difficulties there are huge due to all the bespoke hardware - there's just no comparison.
- squarefoot 7y ago
  I think older netbooks such as the 700 series could find a new use either as IoT or VoIP terminals and other non demanding tasks, by fitting them with just the bare minimum OS to run a single full screen application. Not that different from the LibreElec distribution whose motto is "just enough OS for Kodi". Example: a 701 paired with an external good quality audio card plus Jaaa [1] might become a small useful standalone instrument for audio alignment (generator + spectrum analyzer). [1] http://kokkinizita.linuxaudio.org/linuxaudio/ http://kokkinizita.linuxaudio.org/linuxaudio/ Jaaa is at about 75% of the page among lots of other interesting software.