- Joined
- Oct 13, 2004
Hi guys!
Thought I'd give everybody a nice review on this awesome new UMPC!
Firstly some well deserved pictures with comparisons:
Pictures
Initial Impressions
This would be my first small laptop, so to me, it seemed alot smaller in person! This is not a bad thing though! It just came as a surprise. Keys are pretty small and difficult to use at first. I am slowly getting more comfortable.
Stock OS:
The original linux operating system was fine, but seeing as I'm an overclocker and like to tweak alot, I felt that windows was a better choice especially as the default OS took 80% of the 4GB HDD's space.
Build Quality
The unit feels very solid and the screen hinges seem to be strong and will last a while. Unlike my dell laptop, it seems to have a solid beam that goes through it...so I believe the hinges for the screen should be good for some time, probably longer than my dell ones. There is a little bend towards the middle above the touch pad, but nothing major. The keys are about as quiet as any laptop keyboard, but the main mouse clicker is pretty loud.
Components
Comes with a 900MHz Celeron M (ultra low voltage 343) Processor(clocked at 600MHz though), 512MB DDR2 RAM(1 slot, 2GB Max), a 4GB SSD HDD, Intel GMA900 Integrated Graphics, a Wireless G WLAN Card, 3 USB ports, VGA output and a 7" LCD TFT Screen, 1x SDHC card slot (32GB max capacity). Be aware there is NO CD drive.
--The system boots very fast, even with XP and is pretty snappy. I was a little surprised that it was this fast.
Heat-wise, the laptop stays reasonable cool. The top feels warm under general use, and a little warmer under load. This is only to be assumed as the size of the laptop means that the heat must go somewhere even with a ULV processor!
Portability
Without a doubt this is about as portable as you can get! The laptop weighs under 2lbs and honestly you could carry it on a marathon and not even know it was there. Although I have not tested out the battery life yet, I understand it plays ~3hrs 20mins watching a DVD medium backlight, or close to ~4hours with backlight on low and typing an essay. The laptop is totally silent and I have not heard the fans kick in at all yet.
You won't find anything much more portable than this that offers this kind of performance.
Windows XP Installation
This was a little tricky, but I got it in the end. Firstly you will need to use nLite to create a windows that is more streamlined. After alot of tweaking prior to getting my Eee using VMWare Server (its free and very easy to use!) I managed to create a Windows XP Pro SP2 with all updates and functionality down to 612MB uncompressed! Next was the installation...
--Put simply, I had to create a DOS boot disk and remove all partitions from one USB drive, then once rebooting back into the DOS prompt(which the drive installed now on the fresh OS) I would run winnt.exe from my windows XP disk to start the installation. From there it was easy.
Once installed, I just popped the provided Asus driver CD in and installed all the windows drivers they supply.
The follow times are based on 3.5GB/3.7GB of the HDD used and the stock 512MB RAM:
Boot up Time: 50 seconds
Shutdown Time: 21 seconds
EDIT 03/11/08: Just wanted to state that with my improved nLite XP install the new times are:
Boot Up Time: 24 seconds
Shutdown Time: 12 seconds
Gaming
Sometimes we do things not because we should, but because we can. Of course I just had to install Warcraft III and see how it runs DotA. I simply ran a custom single player game with 5 bots and recorded the fps. Be aware this is with the stock supplied intel GMA drivers, I have heard the newer ones are much better, so I will update with the differences later.
--First to get Warcraft III to run at the correct 800x480 resolution, I had to run regedit and edit the height and width registry keys to make it 800x480.
All settings were on low, shadows and occlusion on.
As you can see below, I get between 20-25fps alone and 7-12fps in fights.
Conclusion: Playable, but the screen is pretty small and the fps is rather low in fights.
I will test out Counter-Strike 1.6 when I can install it onto an external hard drive.
The negatives of course...
No point reviewing something without also addressing its flaws.
1)The resolution has to be adjusted from 800x480 to 800x600 (its got an easy program to switch resolutions) to see some programs. You can see in some of the pictures at the top that the windows...windows do not fit entirely on the native resolution. Not a "huge" deal....but what do you expect from a 7" screen?
2) I had a funky problem that when my external CD drive was plugged in, the touchpad went all wild and shot all over the pad at the slightest touch in random directions. Once the USB was removed, it went away. Not sure if this is my USB CD drive doing this, or a general problem, but thought I'd mention it.
3) With the 4GB SSD, if you are planning on putting any music or office programs, you almost certainly will want to buy at least a 2GB SDHC card for storage, or an external HDD if you require bigger. I am going to get an 8GB SDHC card. With my XP, openoffice, firefox, paint.net, AVG, spybot, ccleaner and a few other programs, I had 2.1GB left (with pagefile turned down off). So with my very small XP install, I only have 2GB left and after installing Warcraft III, 600MB Left. As you can see, no full blown XP install will fit nicely. nLite is a must.
4) Installing XP will be complicated and frustrating for anybody who has no clue about DOS boot disks or basic DOS command's such as COPY, CD, etc...The lack of a CD drive obviously is the cause, but a USB one can make life easy and you don't have to worry about any of it.
Summary and Closing Thoughts
I am very impressed by this laptop. It is very light, feels tough and best of all, costs $400 for the 4GB version. If you intend to use this as a bigger laptop replacement, or a desktop replacement, you may want to reconsider as the keyboard is pretty small and you won't be finding yourself typing as fast as you would on a full size 14"+ size laptop or regular size desktop keyboard. This is perfect for college students who need something portable to take notes with or browse the web in between classes.
I would give this laptop 8.8/10 and a ps2cho's recommended!
Hope you enjoyed this and I also hope it can help make some people's last minute decisions as to whether it will be right for you.
I will be very willing to do anything you wish to see with the laptop if you require any more information (par smashing the thing, or its warranty)
EDIT:
Overclocking
The processor comes underclocked at 603MHz by stock (70x9) but the Processor is rated for 900MHz. With the processor overclocked by 200MHz now yielding 800MHz, I saw a significant increase in FPS!
For Warcraft III, I moved to the same spots as the first screenshots and I was now getting 29.6 FPS Starting -- 14 FPS in the Battle <--- That's a big increase! It's move from playable, to totally playable now!
For Counter-Strike 1.6, running stock settings didn't make the game playable as when you shot the gun, it would stutter and lagg, and when playing online it would go down to a slideshow in gun fights with more than 3 people. The average was 8-15fps
With it overclocked now, it runs very smoothly and I get a solid 20-30fps!! Excellent!
Bear in mind too, this isn't at 900MHz, which is the stock frequency yet so there is still performance to be gained. Also when I put 1GB of RAM in too, it should speed things up.
Thought I'd give everybody a nice review on this awesome new UMPC!
Firstly some well deserved pictures with comparisons:
Pictures
Initial Impressions
This would be my first small laptop, so to me, it seemed alot smaller in person! This is not a bad thing though! It just came as a surprise. Keys are pretty small and difficult to use at first. I am slowly getting more comfortable.
Stock OS:
The original linux operating system was fine, but seeing as I'm an overclocker and like to tweak alot, I felt that windows was a better choice especially as the default OS took 80% of the 4GB HDD's space.
Build Quality
The unit feels very solid and the screen hinges seem to be strong and will last a while. Unlike my dell laptop, it seems to have a solid beam that goes through it...so I believe the hinges for the screen should be good for some time, probably longer than my dell ones. There is a little bend towards the middle above the touch pad, but nothing major. The keys are about as quiet as any laptop keyboard, but the main mouse clicker is pretty loud.
Components
Comes with a 900MHz Celeron M (ultra low voltage 343) Processor(clocked at 600MHz though), 512MB DDR2 RAM(1 slot, 2GB Max), a 4GB SSD HDD, Intel GMA900 Integrated Graphics, a Wireless G WLAN Card, 3 USB ports, VGA output and a 7" LCD TFT Screen, 1x SDHC card slot (32GB max capacity). Be aware there is NO CD drive.
--The system boots very fast, even with XP and is pretty snappy. I was a little surprised that it was this fast.
Heat-wise, the laptop stays reasonable cool. The top feels warm under general use, and a little warmer under load. This is only to be assumed as the size of the laptop means that the heat must go somewhere even with a ULV processor!
Portability
Without a doubt this is about as portable as you can get! The laptop weighs under 2lbs and honestly you could carry it on a marathon and not even know it was there. Although I have not tested out the battery life yet, I understand it plays ~3hrs 20mins watching a DVD medium backlight, or close to ~4hours with backlight on low and typing an essay. The laptop is totally silent and I have not heard the fans kick in at all yet.
You won't find anything much more portable than this that offers this kind of performance.
Windows XP Installation
This was a little tricky, but I got it in the end. Firstly you will need to use nLite to create a windows that is more streamlined. After alot of tweaking prior to getting my Eee using VMWare Server (its free and very easy to use!) I managed to create a Windows XP Pro SP2 with all updates and functionality down to 612MB uncompressed! Next was the installation...
--Put simply, I had to create a DOS boot disk and remove all partitions from one USB drive, then once rebooting back into the DOS prompt(which the drive installed now on the fresh OS) I would run winnt.exe from my windows XP disk to start the installation. From there it was easy.
Once installed, I just popped the provided Asus driver CD in and installed all the windows drivers they supply.
The follow times are based on 3.5GB/3.7GB of the HDD used and the stock 512MB RAM:
Boot up Time: 50 seconds
Shutdown Time: 21 seconds
EDIT 03/11/08: Just wanted to state that with my improved nLite XP install the new times are:
Boot Up Time: 24 seconds
Shutdown Time: 12 seconds
Gaming
Sometimes we do things not because we should, but because we can. Of course I just had to install Warcraft III and see how it runs DotA. I simply ran a custom single player game with 5 bots and recorded the fps. Be aware this is with the stock supplied intel GMA drivers, I have heard the newer ones are much better, so I will update with the differences later.
--First to get Warcraft III to run at the correct 800x480 resolution, I had to run regedit and edit the height and width registry keys to make it 800x480.
All settings were on low, shadows and occlusion on.
As you can see below, I get between 20-25fps alone and 7-12fps in fights.
Conclusion: Playable, but the screen is pretty small and the fps is rather low in fights.
I will test out Counter-Strike 1.6 when I can install it onto an external hard drive.
The negatives of course...
No point reviewing something without also addressing its flaws.
1)The resolution has to be adjusted from 800x480 to 800x600 (its got an easy program to switch resolutions) to see some programs. You can see in some of the pictures at the top that the windows...windows do not fit entirely on the native resolution. Not a "huge" deal....but what do you expect from a 7" screen?
2) I had a funky problem that when my external CD drive was plugged in, the touchpad went all wild and shot all over the pad at the slightest touch in random directions. Once the USB was removed, it went away. Not sure if this is my USB CD drive doing this, or a general problem, but thought I'd mention it.
3) With the 4GB SSD, if you are planning on putting any music or office programs, you almost certainly will want to buy at least a 2GB SDHC card for storage, or an external HDD if you require bigger. I am going to get an 8GB SDHC card. With my XP, openoffice, firefox, paint.net, AVG, spybot, ccleaner and a few other programs, I had 2.1GB left (with pagefile turned down off). So with my very small XP install, I only have 2GB left and after installing Warcraft III, 600MB Left. As you can see, no full blown XP install will fit nicely. nLite is a must.
4) Installing XP will be complicated and frustrating for anybody who has no clue about DOS boot disks or basic DOS command's such as COPY, CD, etc...The lack of a CD drive obviously is the cause, but a USB one can make life easy and you don't have to worry about any of it.
Summary and Closing Thoughts
I am very impressed by this laptop. It is very light, feels tough and best of all, costs $400 for the 4GB version. If you intend to use this as a bigger laptop replacement, or a desktop replacement, you may want to reconsider as the keyboard is pretty small and you won't be finding yourself typing as fast as you would on a full size 14"+ size laptop or regular size desktop keyboard. This is perfect for college students who need something portable to take notes with or browse the web in between classes.
I would give this laptop 8.8/10 and a ps2cho's recommended!
Hope you enjoyed this and I also hope it can help make some people's last minute decisions as to whether it will be right for you.
I will be very willing to do anything you wish to see with the laptop if you require any more information (par smashing the thing, or its warranty
)EDIT:
Overclocking
The processor comes underclocked at 603MHz by stock (70x9) but the Processor is rated for 900MHz. With the processor overclocked by 200MHz now yielding 800MHz, I saw a significant increase in FPS!
For Warcraft III, I moved to the same spots as the first screenshots and I was now getting 29.6 FPS Starting -- 14 FPS in the Battle <--- That's a big increase! It's move from playable, to totally playable now!
For Counter-Strike 1.6, running stock settings didn't make the game playable as when you shot the gun, it would stutter and lagg, and when playing online it would go down to a slideshow in gun fights with more than 3 people. The average was 8-15fps
With it overclocked now, it runs very smoothly and I get a solid 20-30fps!! Excellent!
Bear in mind too, this isn't at 900MHz, which is the stock frequency yet so there is still performance to be gained. Also when I put 1GB of RAM in too, it should speed things up.
Last edited:
