I bought a subsidised Windows EeePC 901 and stuck Ubuntu Netbook Remix on it. Much more useable. Windows was laughably bad. It limited the number of open applications! There was also a EeePC specific https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyPeasy which was even better. Since then I have installed various things for amusement, including a cut down Chromebook OS and the OLPC Linux. The limit was always the tiny root partition (4GB SSD). I had some limited success joining with the second SSD (16GB) using btrfs. I think the albeit tiny SSD was this machine's saving grace compared to HDD models, in terms of speed.
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In 2008 I was fascinated with justin.tv, which would later essentially become Twitch. The communities that sprang up around streamers and content creators on that site would foreshadow the double-edged sword of parasocial relationships which have now become commonplace on especially image and video-centered social media like YouTube. I had built a portable live-streaming setup with an Asus Eee PC 901 with a Logitech USB webcam, and would record to the internal SD card. It was surprisingly capable and shock-proof due to the early internal SSD. I had the Linux variant because it had faster flash storage, but was weirdly partitioned between a fast 4GB and slow 16GB dual-SSD setup. I somehow managed to trim my Windows XP Pro install down to fit in the 4GB partition with nLite and used no swap file but switched to a fixed size swap on a RAM drive from system memory. I was able to get modded BIOS and system tray utilities that allowed for dynamic under- and overclocking and formatted my SD card to appear as internal storage to workaround some issues. In the end I didn’t reach my goal of a fully mobile livestream setup due to the lack of fast enough mobile data, but it worked serviceably on WiFi of the time. I had a lot of niche interests and strong opinions loosely held, and desired to use such tools to find my tribe online, as I had not yet moved to SF, and my world travels had so far been to relatively out of the way areas. Its almost quaint to look back on that project, as all o…
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>>I loved my eee but I can't imagine going back to that platform these days I really miss my old eeepc901 some days but I agree. Going back to those slow atom processors is really a nonstarter. But the size and form factor (with exception of the nonstandard screen aspect ratio) was just about the perfect 'take anywhere' laptop. I used Ubuntu on it and if I had to do it again in this day and age I'd try to see if I could make Ubuntu-Mate to work on it. Being able to set the font sizes and the icon sizes made that nonstandard screen aspect ratio work far better than it ever did in Windows XP.
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I had both of those. I think I got the most use out of the 701. I took that thing everywhere and used it as my primary laptop. You can probably find pictures of me using it to give conference talks, sitting around at hackathons coding (with a HHKB attached), etc. I used Debian, and even had working WiFi. The 901 I bought later since it seemed like more specs would be better, it was big and cheap feeling. I do remember getting a WiMax stick for it and reading RSS feeds in Google Reader on my commute. That was so novel at the time!
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I regularly use an EEE PC (901, I think?) when I don't want to deprive my wife of the MacBook. Runs Debian Linux with MATE just fine, only browsing is a bit slow. The programs I use are configured to have a minimum of toolbars and such to save on screen space. There's also a Pentium 4 PC that I've installed a time-appropriate stack on - Windows 2000, Visual Studio 6, etc - to see if I was wrong to assert Wirth's law. I wasn't, the thing flies.