I just picked up a new Asus Eee PC 900a for $170.  Not a bad deal.  It has an 8.9” screen, Intel Atom N270 processor, 4G SSD, 1GB DDR2, Linux, and 802.11bg wifi.  I’ve heard these are pretty slow, unless you install a faster SSD and upgrade the RAM to 2GB.  So I did some research into these little netbooks.

Here is what I found.

As far as SSDs, you can run either PATA or SATA drives in these. The SATA drives will be faster. RunCore SSD drives are excellent, but pricey.

RunCore SSDs are the fastest.

RunCore PATA SSD Info

You can buy a 32GB PATA RunCore SSD from MyDigitalDiscount:
MyDigitalDiscount: RunCore 32GB Pro PATA SSD

The Runcore PATA drives have a 75MB/sec sequential read rate, and a 55MB/sec sequential write rate.

RunCore SATA SSD Info

You can buy a 32GB SATA RunCore SSD from MyDigitalDiscount:
MyDigitalDiscount: RunCore 32GB Pro SATA SSD

The Runcore SATA drives (< 32GB) have a 125MB/sec sequential read rate, and a 55MB/sec sequential write rate.

SuperTalent drives are not quite as good, but cost significantly less money.
SuperTalent PATA Info

You can order the PATA MLC 32GB drives from NewEgg here:
NewEgg: SuperTalent 32GB MLC PATA

The PATA MLC drives have a 40MB/sec sequential read rate, and a 15MB/sec sequential write rate.
The PATA SLC drives have a 40MB/sec sequential read rate, and a 28MB/sec sequential write rate.

SuperTalent SATA Info

You can order the SATA MLC 32GB drives from NewEgg here:
NewEgg: SuperTalent 32GB MLC SATA

The SATA MLC drives have a 90MB/sec sequential read rate, and a 55MB/sec sequential write rate.
The SATA SLC drives have a 95MB/sec sequential read rate, and a 90MB/sec sequential write rate.

I ordered a FPM32GRSE, which is the MLC version with a 2 year warranty. The SLC versions have a 3 year warranty.

Note you’re 900a needs to be at least BIOS firmware level 0703 to use the SATA SSDs.
You can download the 900a firmware here:
ASUS downloads

Be careful not to brick your Eee:
Updating the BIOS in a 900A Woot Special

A lot of people are using either Corsair or Crucial memory to upgrade their Eees.

Here are a couple of memory links:
Amazon: Crucial 2GB 667 Mhz CT25664AC667 DDR2 200-Pin SODIMM
NewEgg: CORSAIR 2GB 200-Pin DDR2 SO-DIMM VS2GSDS667D2

Also, a good community support site for Asus Eee PCs is here:
http://www.eeeuser.com

Finally, Linux for your netbook:
Easy Peasy
Ubuntu Netbook Remix

OSX:
Eee Mac Journey
ereinsch’s OSX Eee PC installation instructions
OSX on 900A

If you’re going to run OSX, you’ll want to change the wireless card in it. This is the one you want:
Mini Pci Wireless Card Dell Truemobile 1390 802.11b/g

OpenSolaris:
OpenSolaris Home OpenSolaris LiveUSB for Eee PC Creating OpenSolaris live USB sticks

Windows 7 RC (free download – works till June 2010):
Windows 7 RC Free download

Windows 7 preorder discount (good till July 11):
Windows 7 preorder

Too bad Google Chrome OS isn’t ready yet.
Introducing the Google Chrome OS

Might be fun to try. Its due sometime in the second half of 2010.
Expectations: Google Chrome OS download and release date

There are a few good tests you can run to test the speed of your browser is and how well it conforms to Web 2.0 standards.  I ran three tests on six popular browsers:  Camino, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari.  Descriptions and test results are below.

The Acid3 test “is the third in a series of test pages written to help browser vendors ensure proper support for web standards in their products.”

Here are the Acid3 test scores (100/100 is best):

• Camino 1.6.7: 53/100
• Google Chrome 3.0: 100/100
• Internet Explorer 8: 20/100
• Mozilla Firefox 3.5: 93/100
• Opera 10: 100/100
• Safari 4: 100/100

The SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark “tests the core JavaScript language only, not the DOM or other browser APIs. It is designed to compare different versions of the same browser, and different browsers to each other.”

Here are the Sunspider test scores (smaller is better, scores are in milliseconds):

• Camino 1.6.9: 14086.4
• Google Chrome 3.0: 640.8
• Internet Explorer 8: 7076.0
• Mozilla Firefox 3.5: 1586.8
• Opera 10: 6621.4
• Safari 4: 1312.4

The V8 Benchmark Suite version 4 is a “suite of pure JavaScript benchmarks.”

Here are the scores from that test (bigger is better):

• Camino 1.6.9: 86.9
• Google Chrome 3.0: 2773
• Internet Explorer 8: 46.4
• Mozilla Firefox 3.5: 238
• Opera 10: 120
• Safari 4: 1573

In conclusion, only three browsers passed the Acid3 web standards test: Safari 4, Opera, and Google Chrome 3.  Of those three, Google Chrome 3 is about twice as fast as Safari 4, and about ten times faster than Opera 10.  Coming in last is Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, which had the worst Acid3 test score of any browser, and was by far the slowest browser of all.  As both a Mac and Windows user, I prefer Safari 4 as it works the same way in both Windows and OSX.  (I also run Linux and OpenSolaris, but neither Chrome nor Safari are available for those operating systems.)  However, if all you run is Windows, then you should consider switching to Google Chrome 3.0 if you haven’t done so already.

She was one of the best friends I’ve ever had.  She was loyal, loving, and quite intelligent.  She was my little love, and is pictured on the right.   She was our cat for 15 years.  She had renal tubular acidosis for 6 years, for which we gave her potassium supplements twice a day.  She had chronic renal failure, for which we gave appetite stimulants and subcutaneous fluids daily for almost two years.  What ended her life today was third degree heart block.  She was first diagnosed with heart block back in December 2007, but somehow recovered for 16 months until it came back with a vengeance late last month.  She lost her struggle today.  I shall always miss her in this life.  Rest in peace, Baba.  No more medicine.  No more vets.  No more pain.  Rest in peace.

Slackware Linux comes with LILO, which in most cases is just fine.  However, if you want to boot an operating system on a GUID partition LILO won’t work.  GRUB will.  You can download a Slackware package of GRUB from here:  ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-current/extra/grub/grub-0.97-i486-8.tgz

Every time I install a new version of Slackware Linux I get hit with the same problem: sound works for root, but not for other users.  Google for “ALSA sound” and you’ll see I’m not alone.  Its not just a Slackware problem, its a KDE problem, and more specifically it has to do with ALSA – the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture – which is used by KDE.

There can actually be a couple of problems at work here.

The first place to look is user permissions.  By default, the root user has all the permissions needed to do anything on the system,  but new users need to have permissions individually granted.

After creating a new user. edit (as root) the /etc/groups file.  Update the user’s permissions to belong to the audio group.  While you’re at it you might as well add other groups such as video, floppy, cdrom, plugdev, etc.. to the users that you want to have access to those resources.

If you still have no sound, then ALSA may be confused as to which device it should use as the default sound device.  You can fix that by setting up a resource file for ALSA to use when it starts up.

So, cat the /proc/asound/cards file.  You’ll get something that looks like this:

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root@io:/# cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [Intel          ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel HDA Intel at 0xf9100000 irq 22
1 [U0x46d0x8c9    ]: USB-Audio - USB Device 0x46d:0x8c9 USB Device 0x46d:0x8c9
                     at usb-0000:00:1a.7-2, high speed

In the user’s home directory, create a .asoundrc file like this:

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# use Intel as default device
   pcm.!default {
   type hw
   card 0
}
   ctl.!default {
   type hw
   card 0
}

Note that you can also do it this way specifying the name of the device instead of the number:

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# use Intel as default device
   pcm.!default {
   type hw
   card Intel
}
   ctl.!default {
   type hw
   card Intel
}

Thats it.  Restart the sound system & you should have sound.

I like Apple’s Safari, both when using my Mac running OS X and when using my PC running Windows XP.  I simply think it is the best browser out there.  However, I also like to have ads blocked, and Safari does not come with a built in ad blocker.  For that you have to download some freely available tools to add to Safari. For the Mac, Tiger has SafariBlock, and Leopard has Safari AdBlock.  But what if you want ads blocked when running Safari on your PC?  The solution is Ad-Subtract.  Its a CSS file which filters out ads for you.  It will work on any WebKit based browser such as Safari, and it is easy to install:

After you have downloaded it, extract it & then open up your Safari Preferences.  In the Style-Sheet drop-down under the Advanced tab, choose the AdSubtract.css file like this:

Thats it. Happy browsing!

Update: Since Snow Leopard came out Safari defaults to 64-bit mode. It isn’t possible to run AdBlock in 64-bit mode, so what can you do? Turns out that the AdSubtract project is being taken over by GlimmerBlocker. If you want to block ads in Safari 64, then use GlimmerBlocker.

Unfortunately it looks like this is an OSX only solution, so if you want to block ads in Safari for Windows – as far as I know – you’re still stuck with AdSubtract.