[sclug] Asus minibook. was Re: Fujitsu

[David Given]

Bob Redknap wrote:
[...]
> I forgot to say it's an Asus minibook.

Actually, it's an Asus eee with RM branding. I bought mine off ebuyer 
for about 200 pounds. It's really good, although it's not entirely 
perfect: the screen *is* rather small, although beautifully clear and 
crisp; the battery life is low, about 3 to 3.5 hours; the SD card reader 
in the side is faulty and doesn't support SDHC cards properly; and the 
bastards have stuck a 'warranty void if removed' sticker over the RAM 
upgrade hatch.

(Inside the hatch is a SODIMM memory slot with a 512MB card in it, and a 
mini-PCIe expansion slot. Apparently only the early models, including 
mine, actually have the PCIe connector soldered on. [*] Black eees and 
the later white ones don't. YMMV. Check forum.eeeuser.com for the details.)

The wireless chipset is an exotic Atheros, but Asus have released an 
open-source driver (go Asus!). It works fine for me with Ubuntu, but I 
did have to compile my own madwifi. The sound hardware is Intel HDA and 
is a bit funky, as is the Attanasic (sp?) wired networking hardware. 
Everything else is fairly vanilla. Graphics are Intel and actually does 
have some 3D acceleration --- apparently it plays WoW at 15 fps, but 
when I tried EVE on it it was unplayable. (This was on Windows.)

I wouldn't touch the RM ones, TBH. If you want one, buy a real one. RM 
seem to have tinkered with theirs.


[*] Anyone know a source of interesting mini PCIe hardware?

-- 
David Given
dg at cowlark.com