View Full Version : ASUS eee pc upgrade to Windows????
Spitoon
23rd Jan 2009, 23:28
I've got an ASUS eee 701 4MB - and I'm very happy with it. But....
I've seen what appears to be the same model on sale now with Windows XP. Now it's not the end of the world running it on Linux but there would be one or two advantages if I had Windows on it. Does anyone know if it's possible to get an 'upgrade' pack? A quick look on the ASUS site doesn't seem to mention it but I tend to trust PPRuNers more than geek websites.
Mind you, I had some Northern Rock shares so maybe my judgement isn't anything to shout about!
Yes - as far as I know, Asus only sold XP with the systems, never separately. There are instructions around that describe how to do it yourself, such as this (http://wiki.eeeuser.com/windowsxp).
I did an XP install on my eee 1000 back in August, tried it for a few months, but moved to Ubuntu Linux in December. The performance is much better, primarily (I think) because the SSD is a performance bottleneck in these machines, and with Linux you don't have many background services accessing the drive at all times. Unless you really need specific Windows applications, for which there are no Linux equivalents, I would not recommend putting any Windows on that system.
Air Soul
24th Jan 2009, 06:50
And if you do need something Windows specific ( like Jeppesen) try using Wine to run it in Linux - works really well for me.
twiggs
25th Jan 2009, 02:53
The version you are seeing released with XP has a SATA 160GB HD and as such, is slightly thicker to accommodate it.
There is no upgrade pack, primarily because XP doesn't work well in standard config on an SSD, so you will have to get your own version of XP and adapt it to work functionally.
With only a 4GB SSD, the key to installing XP successfully is to keep the installation size to a minimum, and then deal with the issues XP has on an SSD.
Here are some links to guide you.
i64X.com - nLite Windows XP Install on Asus Eee PC (http://www.i64x.com/eeexp.php)
Making XP pro SSD friendly - OCZ Forum (http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43460)
Solution : Core SSD's freezing and stuttering(WinXP) - OCZ Forum (http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=42487)
Spitoon
25th Jan 2009, 08:43
Thanks for the input and suggestions. I must be turning into a bit of a geek myself, I think I'm goint to try to get it running XP just for the heck of it!
What I saw with the SSD was that it's a bit of a bottleneck: fast seek times, but low bulk throughput. So, a priority is to minimise disk access. This includes disabling any extraneous servicesm such as the Indexer, and working with no swapfile at all, only the 512MB RAM.