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My New eeePC 1001P

I have held off getting a new netbook for quite some time, ever since Matt got a netbook by signing up with the Royal bank, I’ve been feeling pretty tempted to get one.  They`re like a real computer (not just a smart phone) but they don’t burden a person like a full size laptop.  So with the most recent vacation the time arrived, to get one.  After some digging around, I decided to try the eeePC 1001P from staples.  Definitely, not the cheapest netbook in the choice of available models, but it had a few features that I really liked.

eeePC-1001P

eeePC-1001P

  1. Splashtop.  8 seconds to being ready to surf the web or talk on skype.  I like that.  Waiting to boot up is a bit of a bummer.
  2. Battery life is reportedly quite long.  They advertise 11 hours, but everyone who tests it says that you’re more likely to get 7.5-8.  still 8 hours is a ton and I like that feature.
  3. New processor and expandable RAM, Atom N450 for the processor and expandable to 2 GB of RAM with a 250 GB hard disk.  Honestly, I have no idea how they do it.
  4. Price, this turned out to be less important to me in the end.  I could have gotten something for $250 refurbished from futureshop, but I ended up spending my birthday money to get the eee, largely for the reasons mentioned above.

I’ve started tinkering already, and I’m working on installing Debian on the system so that I’ll be able to dual boot windows 7 and Debian.  Jo appreciates having a windows option for accessing some of the government sites that are built around IE and it’s handy to have windows around to do IE testing for work.  I’ll post my step by step update once I get the Debian install up and running, just need a little more time!

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 14th, 2010 at 4:53 am and is filed under Life and Times. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Responses to “My New eeePC 1001P”

  1. Christine Says:
    March 14th, 2010 at 6:12 am

    We have the same netbook (eeePC) but a slightly different model, and we took it traveling with us 4 months and absolutely loved it! The battery life was awesome, especially in places where there was no power for a few days. Great buy! :)

  2. Scott Says:
    March 15th, 2010 at 12:38 am

    That’s the one my mom got too. Loves it, and when it’s powering down Niki got it to say, “Turning off cutest laptop ever.”

  3. matt Says:
    March 15th, 2010 at 4:40 am

    welcome to netbook country!

    Check this out: http://moblin.org/community/blogs/imad/2009/moblin-v20-beta-netbooks-and-nettops-its-here

  4. Jeff Says:
    March 15th, 2010 at 8:02 pm

    so awesome!!

  5. Jeff Says:
    March 15th, 2010 at 8:03 pm

    glad to hear it worked so well for you. So far on this trip it has been a great addition!

  6. Hans Linkels Says:
    April 3rd, 2010 at 1:14 am

    Hi, I am considering buying either the 1001P or 1005HA. Options are limited, because I insist on a matte screen, and as it seems these two are the only choices. The 1001PX will be available too late, I have to order this weekend.
    I have seen some compatibility problems with the 1001P on Debian, while the 1005HA should work out of the box. However, it seems that the 1001P has better specs, at least I can buy it with bluetooth and it comes with a webcam. I am considering to install Debian Sid as I expect this contain the latest drivers.
    Any experiences yet?
    Hans

  7. Jeff Says:
    April 3rd, 2010 at 1:42 am

    Hi Hans,

    I have got Debian squeeze running on the machine as I type. The installation process was a bit painful as I used the netinstall iso and the wired and wireless interfaces didn’t come up as expected leaving me with a very limited system, but a bit of googling and I learned that the wifi interface is named wlan0 which allowed me to bring the wireless up using by adding that to my /etc/netowkr/interfaces file and then using the command line to bring it up. One I had that working the installation was painless.

    In terms of what’s working. Obviously wifi is working, the mousepad works. I haven’t tried bluetooth yet or the webcam although I expect them to work. Suspend worked out of the box that was nice. Brightness buttons are not quite working right. uh what else… The installation nuked the ExpressGate (quick on functionality), I haven’t really tried to fix this yet, I think that there must be some line that I can add back into grub to get it to work again… but haven’t explored that yet.

    Battery life appears to be 6-7 hours on a full charge, but that is strictly an estimate at this point.

    I’m really happy with the machine so far. If you do end up buying it let me know I’d love to have someone to trade secrets with once I’ve had a little more time to play with it.

    Speaking of partitions the computer starts with 3 primary partitions, so I

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