Thursday, September 18, 2008

Asus Eee PC 900A review


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Details, News and Links for Eee PC 900A






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32 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great review... have you tried the new Elantech touchpad drivers yet available on asustreiber.de?

Anonymous said...

Thanks JKK,


Maybe, waiting for new notepads drivers, you can try a free new mouse gesture app, MAZZICK, available here :

http://devrexster.googlepages.com/home


Another way tio interact with Windows and apps.


Best regards

Schol

Anonymous said...

And what about a Fat32 SSD format instead of NTFS for quickest use ???

Anonymous said...

Hi JKK!

I'm using my 900a for 3weeks now and i also wondered, why theres noch superhybridengine icon. With the version 080717 from asus support you can doubbleclick it and it says the next mode on the screen. I don't know how to test, that it really under- or overclocks.

And with the Elantech driver version 7.0.3.8 you have more functions, but on my eee only tab, scroll and zoom works.

I've seen your review of the 16gb faster ssd, and i know, what you're meaning, because everything takes its time. I want a 8 or 16gb fast one too...

The speaker and the volume is realy good, i like it, i think its even better and louder than my other big asus notebook.

The cover is realy glossy and you can see each fingerprint.
What i really hate is the battery-led, wich is blinking all the time. charging red and discharging green. Why does it not shine all the time???

If you change yor keyboard, i would take your used one ;-)

JKK said...

Mäx, I can find superhybridengine from asus support.. could you post the link?

I tried elantech 7.0.3.8 but alt/tab and page back/forward are not working...

JKK said...

... can't find...

Anonymous said...

NTFS with the option to compress the drive is faster and better storage than FAT32.

Especially on drives with many small files.

Anonymous said...

i tested a 8gb sdhc from transcend with fat32 and ntfs and ntfs is much faster and stabel but without compression! and it is optimized for speed. sometimes i think the card is faster then the ssd inside.

Superhybridengine link will be great cant find too.

greets to jkk and chippy

Anonymous said...

Hi JKK!

So here is the link to the superhybridengine. Its version 1.04.
http://dlsvr04.asus.com/pub/ASUS/EeePC/EeePC904HD/SupHybridEngine_XP_080717.zip
(don't look at the 904hd, i can't find it anymore...)

With the touchpad i have the same problems. I can activate all movements, but rotation, drag-n-drop, page for/back doesn't work.

By the way: my 900a runs on a fat32 partition. my first installation was on ntfs and it took up to 3hours. in fat32 only half the time, what is even really hard work ;-)

Anonymous said...

Could that different touchpad firmware partly explain the buggy Xandros behavior? Two-finger scroll in Firefox does scroll, but also activates middle button when you finish. When opening menus and trying to navigate to an item in a submenu, the driver always triggers a sudden click event when you're still moving the cursor. Updates try to offer a 901-specific touchpad update, but I don't think it works. In fact quite a few things don't work on the 900A Xandros yet... and Asus still isn't offering *any* updates, no software or a new bios. They're wrecking the 900A's reputation if they don't get their act together.

I abandoned Xandros due to these many problems, but even Windows support apparently isn't fully there yet!

Anonymous said...

MMMMMMMM WOW... i know your password MUAHAHAHAHA!!!!

greetings from argentina

Anonymous said...

@Max

about the battery, in the user manual somewhere, it should mention that
blinking fast = 0-20% charge
blinking slow = 20-80%
on (no blink) = 80-100%

something like that. I'm not sure as to the exact percentages, but that's the general idea.

Anonymous said...

But i don't understand why. On other notebooks the LED turns from green to red, if its under 10% charge. Thats enough to display that you need to charge. And if you charge it is blinking, an when its always on the battery is full.
I hate this statuslights for everything on the net/notebook. All i need to know is shown in the traybar of every OS...

Anonymous said...

JKK, regarding your Touch Screen and with all the fuss we are having about the calibration issue.. you never told us how is your ? does it maintain calibration?

Anonymous said...

JKK, will you try lenovo s10 out?

JKK said...

I tested the superhybridengine 1.04.. it doest do anything... yes it shows power saving, super etc but clock rated etc. remains the same...

JKK said...

no issues with touch screens...

Anonymous said...

Hello JKK


Is the 900A screen far better than the 900 one ?

The first is LCD, not the second ???


Thanks a lot

JKK said...

900a and 900 and 901 screens are the same..

Anonymous said...

Hello JKK

Still no news about Buffalo SSD?

Thanks Diana

Anonymous said...

At most that side by side might be showing the slight loss in clarity and brighntess when a separate touchscreen panel is installed on top of the screen. However they may not have been at the same brightness setting, so it's only a rough indication at best. There are differences between those touch panels too.

Anonymous said...

This is not a spam article

I'm not a seller of this device, just an old-skool enthusiast - I just wanted to direct your attention to a UK based company which is about to launch one of the best handheld devices for years, this company is small founded by games enthusiasts and really needs some good local press.

The GP32 was the fore runner to these devices, it was manufactured by Gamepark Holdings, from which a split off company called Gamepark produced the GP2X.

Well Gamepark died a death earlier on this year and the UK suppliers/developers who distributed the GP2X device in Europe took over the mantle

The GP2X WIZ was born, more information here:
http://gp2x.co.uk/go.pl?A216
This handheld console is aimed at not just the homebrew crowd, but non-gamers as well - its well specced, a little bigger than a mobile phone but with an awesome OLED
touchscreen, and 10hours battery life. Uses a linux based OS,a and will run thousands of old skool, Amiga, Atari ST, Mega-Drive, SNES, Playstation, NES, Master System, BBC B,
Electron, C64, Vic 20, Spectrum, Amtstrad, Dragon, You name the console, this baby has an emulator for it.

If just taking over the mantle of an established linux based homebrew console was not enough, the boys went a step further

Much further, they developed the Pandora, a hand-held unit which just will blow anything out there current well out of the water - literally

They originally hoped to develop this device in conjunction with a far-eastern supplier - but found they were lacking in conceptual ideas, Texas Instruments stepped in with a

new OMAP chip which they helped develop for this device, which sports a custom 900MHZ chip with custome graphics - this unit will run all GP2X emulators plus shed loads more

Imagine a Nintendo DS shaped device - with the touchscreen on the top half of the screen - then Then take away the bottom half of the unit (i mean where the existing ds

touchscreen) place a normal d-pad, add in a analouge joystic AND add in a keyboard - WOW

Imagine a unit capable of playing playstation 1 games at full speed, as well as full-speed emulation of SNES, Mega-Drive, PC-Engine, Neo-Geo AVS, and coming soon N64,sega

dreamcast emulation - This is one Awesome combination of Devices, with a whole community behind it - check out these links from forums and you-tube videos - then decide for

yourself:

http://www.openpandora.org/
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?showtopic=41897
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYJhYQLyJ2U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYR1gRuLTdc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WOMFrOCti4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7sx8CrVLW8
http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?s=81616ee40a6b3d9c71ffccb76bd18c53&showforum=62
http://www.gp2x.co.uk/aboutit.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7sx8CrVLW8

This will be a hell of a unit - linux based open source, capable of running a multitude of emulators and even different flavours of linux - view the open pandora data here

Imagine a unit capable of playing playstation 1 games at full speed, as well as full-speed emulation of SNES, Mega-Drive, PC-Engine, Neo-Geo AVS, and coming soon N64,sega

dreamcast emulation - This is one Awesome combination of Devices, with a whole community behind it - check out


AT THE VERY LEAST THERE COULD BE AN ARTICLE IN THIS ABOUT HOW A PRE-DOMINANTLY UK BASED LINUX COMMMUNITY IMPLEMENTED A NEW DEVICE TO MARKET - THIS COMMUNITY PRE-DATES THE EEE
PC BY SEVERAL YEARS!!

Anonymous said...

Hey, very nice review. I am really curious, which program you are using for measuring current consumption from battery on eee?
Thanks ;)

Anonymous said...

Why couldn't they just have released without the glossy lid...black matte is always more classy. Im not sure what to buy now. The 900 has the celeron which is outdated, but the case is the best.

Every eee atom pc has glossy case :( Who ever said it was good to have glossy. What's wrong with peoples taste? It's like every computer today wants to be the drag queen! Look at me, im so beautiful!

Anonymous said...

How is the fan? As loud as the 701?

Anonymous said...

was a solution found to the touchpad (getting back and forth working)?

Im waiting to see if it works as it should on 900ha, then its a sure buy :)

Thanks for reviewing jkk

JKK said...

sorry, no solution yet.. just tested more yesterday...

Anonymous said...

SupHybridEngine_V1.07.zip is now available at ASUS downloads and it works. Tray icon is there and Power Save limits the speed to 1.2GHz. There's also a BIOS update for the 900A, version 0607.

Anonymous said...

Do you know of a dial-up external USB modem that will work with the 900 A running Linux?

Anonymous said...

the 900A I got at best buy only came with 4G SSD... is there any way to upgrade it yourself? Thanks.

Anonymous said...

JKK,

What program do you use at 19:15 to determine watt useage?

Anonymous said...

Great review, thanks.

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