Pseudotherapy

The other day I mentioned on Twitter that I have a new toy, an ASUS EeePC 901. I’ve had a few inquiries about it, and since it’s been consuming my spare time for the past two weeks, I figure it’s time for some show & tell. I’ve been wanting a laptop for quite some time, but every time we went shopping, I couldn’t commit. I liked the idea of being able to get online when I was out and about, or work on my novel while at the beach, but I just couldn’t see myself toting around a 10-pound piece of equipment to do so. I know myself well enough to know it would end up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere.

I wanted something lightweight and convenient, but with the features and functionality of a full-size laptop. And now I’ve got just that. At 9″x7″ and less than 2½ pounds, my Eee easily slips into my handbag. It’s gone everywhere with me since the day it arrived, even though I didn’t care much for the Linux operating system it came with. Eees running Windows XP are available, but they ship with smaller hard drives due to the cost of the XP license. Since Linux is open-source and free, your money gets you a hard drive that’s 8 gigs bigger. I bought the Linux version with the intention of trying it out, and if I didn’t like the Xandros OS, converting the Eee to Windows. And I didn’t like it. it was too basic, too similar to the Fisher-Price feel of an Apple OS, which always makes me feel like I’m using a child’s computer (no offense intended to you Steve Jobs followers). Big colorful animated icons are not my thing. I need the clean sleekness of Windows. I run my computer without a single icon on the desktop, preferring to access everything via a Start Menu that tucks away neatly when not needed. There are about a bajillion different Linux-based operating systems, but working in Linux to set them up is not in my skillset and I have no desire to add it. It seems very old-school, reminiscent of the DOS days when one little typo could wreak havoc in your system. I am intimidated by it. Not to mention the fact that my favorite programs are all Windows-based. The standard install of XP Pro (which we own), however, would gobble up the entire 4GB hard drive dedicated to running the Eee, leaving no room for upgrades and whatnot.

Yeah, that’s one negative about the Eees: For some reason beyond my understanding, ASUS choose to install TWO hard drives in them instead of one. The Linux version ships with a 4GB and a 16GB; the Windows one comes with a 4GB and an 8GB. Maybe they had a surplus of 4GB hard drives laying around, who knows? Anyway, the OS is installed on the 4GB, and the larger drive is for all your stuff. You can install an OS on the larger drive — in fact, some people run Linux on one and Windows on the other, booting into whichever they need at the moment — but for some reason, many people encounter a multitude of problems when doing so. I don’t know why. At any rate, the popular choice is to use nLite to create your own stripped down version of XP for installation on your Eee, and that’s what I did.

The basic instructions I followed didn’t work right. I later found out they were not for the 901, but for an earlier, smaller, less-functional Eee. It actually took me three attempts to get a properly-working nLitened version of XP Pro, because I had to learn by trial-and-error. If you delete this, then that won’t work. … Why didn’t I delete this — I hate that function! And so on. The version of XPn that I finally installed isn’t exactly right (it left in a few components I wanted to delete), but it’s good enough for now. At least it allows me to run my other Windows programs on the Eee. Those I did install on the 16GB drive, and they run just fine. Still, it pisses me off that, in typical shoot-themselves-in-the-foot fashion, Microsoft refuses to release to the public the scaled-down XP version they’ve licensed to the mini-notebook manufacturers. So if you change your mind about Linux as I did, you have three choices: exchange your Eee, bloat the second drive with a full XP install, or create your own mini-XP.

I’m completely infatuated with my little Eee. I’ve named it EeeMagic, which a few of you may recognize as coming from one of my all-time favorite geek flicks (but no, I’m not painting it avocado green). The Eees all have built-in wireless, but I wanted reliable access virtually everywhere, so I bought a mobile broadband card that plugs into one of the USB ports. So far, I’ve had outstanding wireless reception everywhere I’ve gone, even driving on the freeway (*I* wasn’t driving!). We took EeeMagic to dinner with us Saturday night, and it was the hit of Chili’s. Nothing like an unusually-small, beautiful laptop to bring the boys to the yard.

UPDATE: I got fed up with the limitations of the nLitened version of XP, so I wiped both hard drives, installed a full XP on the 16GB one, and hacked the BIOS to make the 16GB the boot drive. I installed all the programs I need onto the 16GB and am using the 4GB for music and my writing files. It’s running like a wet dream.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Technobabble. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.