Eee PC 901, 12GB SSD, Windows XP

General considerations:

For those that own such configuration it is well know that the computer can't survive long without serious intervention of the original set up. The computer comes preconfigured with WinXP SP3 without hibernation and paging (virtual memory) but the space left on the C: drive is not enough even for the Windows updates that inevitably should be applied. A "must do" action to save you laptop is to clean and free some valuable space: read this sticky post on the EeeUser forum How to clean up space on your C: drive in Windows XP. Without most of these tasks, your computer is useless.

BIOS:

I am still running the original BIOS version 1101 and I don't have any particular problems except the uneven brightness levels that does not bug me enough.

Audio:

The sound is a bit glitchy and I was not able to resolve the problem completely. I have tried an updated version of the drivers but then I lost completely the sound, so I was forced to downgrade to the original. After this driver shuffling the microphone start working better. A partial solution to the glitchy sound is to mute and minimize the sound level of the CD line.

Battery:
It deteriorates quite fast... 10 months later it charges only up to 88% (5% wear).
Perhaps my expectations are to high.

Power management:

I have found this article very helpful: Managing Power Options as a non-administrator

TouchPad:

I have upgraded to ElanTech Smart-Pad 7.0.3.8 to enable the multi touch features. Uncheck the "disable when keying" option (ElanTech/Options/Tapping) to fix the vertical scrolling in Firefox.

AntiVirus:
I have initially installed Avira and in the beginning it was working quite OK but frequently complaining of low virtual memory. Eventually, I was lock down without possibility to log in, that was related insufficient free memory. After the recovery, I have installed, and still using, AVG Free. It is slower but at least it has lower memory footprint.

Additional software:
I have found GOM player to perform quite well but I have also VLC and KMplayer that also are working fine. Firefox, Opera and Chrome - just fine.

Connectivity:

The wireless is sort of OK. It is not so fast but it does the job. Update: Unfortunately, I have noticed dramatically reduced speeds and quality of the connection with frequent hangs if there are many computers around using the wireless (also noticed that I am the only one affected in the situation). Partial solution is to alter the driver's settings "Power saving mode" from "MAX_PSP" to "CAM" - link. Another, also partial solution, update the drivers (rt2860) directly from the wireless vendor site. Unfortunately, changing the power scheme to "CAM" also keeps the wireless module quite hot and as result the fan never stops...

I have found some problems with the wired connection to some routers that apparently does not coupe very well - it connects/disconnects constantly. Somewhere, this problem was related to higher than usual power requirements on the side of some cheap routers in conflict with the lowered on the PC side.

Bluetooth works as expected.

Performance:

I have found a good improvement after disabling the NTFS last access time feature.

System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
Value Name: NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value Data: (0 = disable, 1 = enable)
more...

Additional hardware

I have bough an additional SanDisk 16GB SDHC Ultra II flash memory card to store most of the data and the cache folders for Firefox (link) and Opera. This way I can still use reasonably large cache that does not wear out the internal flash. This configuration leaves me with capability to unmount (remove) the flash and use the slot as usual (of course FF and Opera should not be running at the same time). I have also some portable software there.

I also experiment with an user profile that is located entirely on that flash: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/236621. Very convenient, does not take space on the computer disks, cache folders are automatically on the flash... Of course, this means that one cannot remove the card while using this account...

Linux on a stick:

I have tried EeeBuntu Base 2.0 on a external 4GB USB SanDisk flash memory (ext3 formatted). I have kept the minimal configuration, replaced Network Manager by WICD, NoMachine NX + some small utilities and that leaves me with 1.5 GB free. I have placed the MBR on the USB disk and kept the original intact (the very last step before installation you can select where to place the MBR). This way to boot Linux one needs only to select the boot device from the BIOS screen (press ESC during BIOS post). The GRUB generated configuration is really neat. It addresses the partition by ID and this way the mounting process becomes independent from the number and order of the connected disks and partitions!!! Brilliant! Here is how it looks:

title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-8-eeepc
uuid 4639c21c-585c-46b1-94ee-9662efc2ed0c
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-8-eeepc root=UUID=4639c21c-585c-46b1-94ee-9662efc2ed0c ro quiet splash clocksource=hpet
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-8-eeepc
quiet

Look on the last step of typical Ubuntu installation where you can select where to place the boot loader (link).

The performance is adequate. The only performance improvement I have done is to disable the access time feature (Add noatime to the flag list to the corresponding partition).

Links:
Drivers:

• The official ASUS drivers web page.
• Excellent unofficial source for Eee PC drivers on this address.
• Gentoo Linix wiki
• ArchLinux wiki