Asus Eee PC

[AF6FH]

Is anybody using an Asus Eee PC (a tiny $299 to $399 Linux based laptop) for amateur radio stuff? If so, what do you think of it?

Eee PC at NewEgg.com (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220244)

Thanks,

Sarah AF6FH

[k3wrv]

Sarah-

I haven't played with that box, but have tried Linux in the shack and stuck with WinDoe$ down there. (Run exclusively Linux fer everything, but in the Shack, I run Win$ because I mostly do SSTV and have had issues with QSSTV and haven't figured out WINE. But there's a lot of good Linux general / digital (RTTY/PSK /logging) software out there.
But a colleague brought one to Court the other day, and it looked like a nice machine (Tho she had the Win$ vcersion). There was another thread about using the OLPC fer hamming a few weeks back that might be of interest.

Hope the Road Trip went well.

de Bob

[AF6FH]

Someone on a mailing list I'm on (Elecraft, I think) posted a link to a new discussion forum for hams and the Asus Eee:

http://www.zerobeat.net/smf/index.php/board,24.0.html

While I'm still trying to get a "shack computer" set up, I'm expecting that you're right, k3wrv, and I'm expecting to need to run Windows, despite the fact that I'd rather not!

But now that Steve Jobs has let me down yet again (sigh), I can start to think about getting an Eee to try out for ham stuff. I think I'll wait a little bit, though, and see what other people report...

Sarah AF6FH

[ve3sre]

I just bought an EeePC a couple of weeks ago (I'm using it to write this message!). I haven't yet used it for any ham radio applications so thanks for the info on the ham Eeepc group...think I'll sign up.

It's the fastest booting machine that I've ever seen. I paid C$350 for the version I have. They're sold in Canada at "The Source" stores (what used to be Radio Shack.)

There are no serial or parallel ports...so you'd need USB adapters for any ham radio application that needed them.

For what it is (and the price)...it's a great little machine...small and light as a feather...(2 pounds) about the size of a portable DVD player. The cramped keyboard does take some getting used to though.

The modified version of Xandros makes it very easy to use "out of the box". Some folks have put together a specialized version of "Xubuntu" for the EeePC...still a little "beta" though...but looking forward to seeing how it develops over the next year.

73

[k4avl]

My only concern for that type of unit is how many millions of "writes" the flash drive can handle. They have a limit, probably less than a hard drive, unless the technology has improved. And there are always a lot of processes going on as well as caching. I wouldn't leave it on except when you are actually using it.

[ve3sre]

That's probably a wise precaution to take.

Although for the most part, this is going to be a portable machine and I don't plan to load it down too much anyway. The keyboard is much too small for day to day usage...I wouldn't recommend it to anyone with "big fingers" ;)

73