[Ric_Knight]

My wife and I were at Best Buy today, where they had one of those new EeePC 901s on display. This one had 512mb of memory, a 4 gig SSD and was running XP. I turned it on and it poped up and was ready to run in a snap and seemed to function just as snappily, but I really did start to wonder just how useful it would really be.

I looked at the stats on the SSD and it has 1.19 gigs still available for storage. Even after you remove all of the crapware that drive is not gonna have a lot of space for useful storage. I was wondering how useful people would find a computer, of any size, with that small of an amount of storage? I am interested in hearing openions.

[JackalsNose]

A productive answer would include basic text-editing and maybe even some HTML work. A non-productive answer would be XP pinball, solitaire and minesweeper!

You could store a little bit of music on it to listen to, but I think it would primarily serve as an interface for taking notes while people would utilize the USB and SD slots to keep the media off the limited hard drive.

Of course, maybe some time some one will be running DSL (Damn Small Linux) on it and it will have a good deal more room with XP gone.

[Ric_Knight]

It occured to me after asking the question that some kind of external storage method might be the trick. I have a Sony HI-MD sitting around that is not getting much use since I got an Archos 605 for Yule. The MD model that I have can be used for data as well as music files.

If I needed extra storage this might be the answer, a little old school, but it would work.

It was a pretty cool little computer that i would love to hear other peoples experience with.

[Bernardakins]

Originally Posted by Ric_Knight

It occured to me after asking the question that some kind of external storage method might be the trick. I have a Sony HI-MD sitting around that is not getting much use since I got an Archos 605 for Yule. The MD model that I have can be used for data as well as music files.

If I needed extra storage this might be the answer, a little old school, but it would work.

It was a pretty cool little computer that i would love to hear other peoples experience with.

I had heard somewhere that Best Buy was including 4GB SD cards with their Eees, but I guess not. XD
Since 16GB SDHC cards aren't really *terribly* expensive, that's an easy upgrade.
I don't think, with what this is aimed at doing, that you would really need much more storage than that. I mean, the target audience for this thing is supposed to be using it mainly to browse the web and write notes on the go. It's almost more of a super PDA/MID (Mobile Internet Device) than anything else.

[Ric_Knight]

There is also the "cloud" to consider. When Live Mesh becomes available to everyone I can see it being very useful for a device like these. Just about any one of these services would remove any storage need from the device and move it to the cloud or to a computer at home.

[uxevangelist]

Something like this would be great for a business who could leverage it. Keeping simple data portable, having something that's easier to carry around if you're perhaps an event coordinator, a journalist writing quickly on an in-progress conference, something snazzy to carry into an interview to take notes on, a writer working on their "best seller"... the sky's the limit but would the price justify any of the aforementioned? Subjective.

An interesting perspective may be one from a business standpoint in which something with storage like this would prohibit employees from storing or installing unnecessary content! My day job consists of me utilizing a corporate laptop and even with the harsh restrictions this company enforces, I've easily sapped up a good number of gigs in MP3's to listen to music! How could MP3's be a detriment? Subjective with plenty of ways existing but none-the-less, that may be one way to look at it!

-Stephen

[Larrabee]

I don't know this is correct, 4GB is not much, if Windows XP is installed you get almost nothing left.

However I read about the Eee PC 900 (not 901) and it has 20GB of space (not with SSD?)
The link: NCIX FORUMS - Dont buy! - ASUS Eee PC900 Pearl White Intel Mobile ...

Anyway you can always upgrade. But I think you will buy it because it's cheap but still a computer. Upgrading would cost you something and they you can buy a better notebook with the money.

Some computers have SSD and a hard drive. Maybe they have installed XP on the SSD because SSD is faster then a hard drive... don't know...

(uxevangelist who do you write all your posts in green?)

[uxevangelist]

Originally Posted by Larrabee

I don't know this is correct, 4GB is not much, if Windows XP is installed you get almost nothing left.

However I read about the Eee PC 900 (not 901) and it has 20GB of space (not with SSD?)
The link: NCIX FORUMS - Dont buy! - ASUS Eee PC900 Pearl White Intel Mobile ...

Anyway you can always upgrade. But I think you will buy it because it's cheap but still a computer. Upgrading would cost you something and they you can buy a better notebook with the money.

Some computers have SSD and a hard drive. Maybe they have installed XP on the SSD because SSD is faster then a hard drive... don't know...

(uxevangelist who do you write all your posts in green?)

Good points mentioned, Larrabee. Although, I would be curious to see what has been potentially stripped out of the XP install for the 4GB systems. A clean install of XP has the potential to weigh in at well under 1.5GB. Ah, now the tweaker is coming out in me, lol. I'd love to cook up an XP Embedded version to install, just to see how little I could get to run on that thing. I wonder if they've changed default settings for pagefile size, etc. 4GB really is quite limiting... I'd be interested in seeing what the manufacturer's original scope of the 4GB machine was. Goooooogle to the rescue (maybe)! =)

(I write all of my posts in green because I like green and being a little different. Some people just call me a dork, but I like to think of it as "being a little different." lol. )

-Stephen

[djeuro]

Originally Posted by Ric_Knight

My wife and I were at Best Buy today, where they had one of those new EeePC 901s on display. This one had 512mb of memory, a 4 gig SSD and was running XP. I turned it on and it poped up and was ready to run in a snap and seemed to function just as snappily, but I really did start to wonder just how useful it would really be.

I looked at the stats on the SSD and it has 1.19 gigs still available for storage. Even after you remove all of the crapware that drive is not gonna have a lot of space for useful storage. I was wondering how useful people would find a computer, of any size, with that small of an amount of storage? I am interested in hearing openions.

running xp? wow I havent seen those in a while on the shelves here where I live, at best buy, basically all of them come preloaded with vista

[FC1032]

I thought the EeePC ran on linux, I was interested in them for a while but i thought the keyboard and mouse pad was too small to work with. It gets annoying those little keys Sorry if I am a party pooper