Introduction
Reviews for the new ASUS EEE PC 900 UMPC are coming in thick and fast, but none of them seem to go into the sort of depth that the forum members here at eeeuser.com would like. With that in mind, and with my new 900 sitting on the dining room table waiting to be unboxed, I decided to attempt to answer some of the more technical questions that people have been asking on the forums, and to compare the 900 with the 701 machine I already own.
About this particular EeePC.
This machine is an official UK Eee PC 900 model, supplied by Clove Technology (www.clovetechnology.co.uk), running the Xandros Linux operating system.
UPDATE : A note about the performance measurements.
Since writing this review, I found out that setting the 900 to Power Saving mode has no effect if the machine is connected to the mains supply. To get the BIOS to actually do this means pulling the plug and running it on battery power alone. So when I saw no difference in performance between Performance and Power Saving modes in my review, I was being mislead – it was all effectively in Performance mode, since the machine was plugged into the mains. I’ve since added some more results in real Power Saving mode, and they seem to indicate little or no gains over the 701 (obviously the Performance mode does give a real boost, though).
Unboxing the EeePC 900
Before we get to the nitty gritty, let’s take a very quick look at what is in the package.
