Article: Making your EEE PC 701 experience better

So, you got the EEE 701 netbook real cheap. Now, this article is for the people who’ve installed windows XP on their device and want to make the overall experience with their EEE better.

Resolution:

EEE 701 users will find the WVGA resolution(800 x  480)  a bit challenge to work with when using some of their standard applications. Fortunately, there are solutions to most of the problems.

1) Astray+: The more I say about this application, the less it would be. This application is just plain fantastic! It lets you change between different resolutions in a breeze. It lets you increase the resolution to 1000 x 600 and even 1024 x 768! This lets you use some of the applications which looked impossible to be used on EEE due to its resolution constraints.

Click on the above screenshot to view the original size picture

Heck, there are some applications which would look absolutely fine on a 800 x 480, but, the installer just refuses to continue and yammers about the resolution. The developer is a forum member of EEEuser.com has released it for free to the public, but, I request every single EEE user to donate money to him.

2) Firefox 3: This application is a god-sent for the EEE users, especially the ones with 701s. It now incorporates the excellent zoom feature. Web-pages that used to look awful on a 800 x 480 display(and even less usable with toolbars and taskbar) look quite nice now! Want more? It even remembers the zoom level you made to a particular page!

3) Opera 9.5: This was released just before the release of Firefox 3. It offers similar zoom features and other enhancements which were done in Firefox 3. This is for those who don’t want to be a part of the firefox stable.

Reduce size of Page File:

The users who are still using the factory-fitted 512MB RAM should reduce the page file to 300MB. I used it for several days and even under heavy usage, I didn’t face any problems.

Those who have upgraded ram can even reduce it further although I won’t recommend it. Also, make sure you do not choose “No paging file” as some applications require some amount of page space to execute themselves.

Steps to reduce page file:

1. Right click on “My computer”, select “Properties”
2. Go to “Advanced” tab
3. Under “Performance”, click “Settings”
4. Go to “Advanced” tab
5. Under the “Virtual memory” area, click “Change”
6. Choose the desired “Custom size”. I chose 200MB as initial size and 210MB as maximum size.
7. Click “Ok” and restart the unit

nLite the XP:

We need to chew it, “XP certainly was not made for EEE.” On an EEE, we’ve storage as-well-as memory contraints. But, nLite-ing the XP is the way to go. You can choose what system components must not be installed. For example: I removed the “system restore” utility; help files(CHMs) and other miscellaneous services from the original installation. The result was a snappier XP.

In my case, I do ASP.net programming on-the-go, so I went ahead and incorporated IIS into the install. Final size of the ISO was 450MB! That was quite an achivement.

Boost performance on-the-go using EEECTL:

A guy named, Anthony from Moscow, Russia made this wonderful application to overclock your EEE PC! Not only that it features a Fan control; Temperature monitor; FSB control and many other exciting features. Top of all that, it lets you do all that without going into BIOS. It runs on XP only however.

Protect your baby:

Last, but, certainly not the least, protect your ASUS EEE PC. True, you bought it cheap and it runs SSD to survive those bumps, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t protect it. I have invested in a computer..umm, netbook and I should better protect it in a case.  I carry a slip-in case to protect it. But, I’m thinking to buy one of the carrymobile cases to protect my EEE further.

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