ASUS Eeee PC 1000HD Win7 Install

[Allen Drake]

In Allen Drake typed:

They can clone exactly, but they don't have too. I don't know what
application you used for cloning, as they are all different. But some of
them might only clone one partition and not the others on the drive by
default.

I always use Seagate to clone and I see the two partitions present
like I did on the original HDD which I still have in case of an
emergency.

No it sets up part of the RAM as a fixed drive. It's the fastest drive
that you can have. It just looses everything once the machine is powered
down. But that is ok with the swapfile. Using a RAMDisk only makes sense
if you have more RAM than what your OS needs. I use the free Gavotte
Ramdisk.

I will have to check it out. Thanks.

Yes last time I checked Windows 2000 disc were reasonable on eBay.

I just searched for W2K and saw quite a few. So many that I am
wondering how many are legitimate. I would hate to get something that
I can't use or find to be something pirated. I saw some for as low as
around $60 which I would purchase if I were sure about it.

 

[BillW50]

In Allen Drake typed:

I have had my suspicions about windows updates for some time. I have
yet to see someone point to an example of a system being compromised
in any way do to a lack of a specific update. I have, however, had
windows update trash my system and needed to install a clone to get up
and running again. I have for the most part disabled WU and never
suffered any ill effects. The last issue I had was identical to the
one that killed a system, Net Frame something or other. It hung for
hours not allowing even allowing a cancel. Luckily I tried an install
of an application that recognized a partial update and offered to
remove it which it did. I found no way of doing that myself. Now I
wait until an application says it actually needs an update before I
like MS have it's way with me.

I completely agree with you Allen. In fact, it was this machine when I
have XP installed on it which forced me into not updating. As there was
no room on this 4GB SSD for updates. I thought I would have to restore
from a backup without security updates. But that was over 4 years ago
and it never got infected.

About three years I stopped updating about 6 other machines and they
didn't get infected either. Strangely enough, on February 7th on a
machine I do religiously update picked up a trojan. It didn't get a
chance to execute upon rebooting (that is when most of these things gets
installed) as Avast6 stopped it right in its tracks. So much for
religiously updating, eh?

 

[mechanic]

Well if you call such things as OpenOffice, Thunderbird, and
Firefox as high quality, I suppose. But those are the last
applications I would use. And GUI drivers are generally
featureless. Like if I want to use a larger desktop than 800x480
of this screen, it can't be done through the GUI. Instead I have
to use terminal to make that happen. Touchpad drivers don't have
all of the features of say of Synaptics Windows drivers do. Etc.

Most modern distros can change resolution in a handy GUI if the
right values are not set automatically. Were you using an up-to-date
distro? Which one? Many users familiar with Ubuntu, Debian etc.
would not recognise the kind of problems you describe. And
OpenOffice, Tbird and particularly Firefox are pretty high quality
(few bugs) but perhaps different in features from the Windows stuff
you are happier with.

 

[BillW50]

In Allen Drake typed:

I always use Seagate to clone and I see the two partitions present
like I did on the original HDD which I still have in case of an
emergency.

Seagate uses Acronis and that should work. My only beef with cloning
with Acronis is it doesn't save my RealFlight keys. Which having all of
the addons and expansion packs adds up to about 18 different keys.
Although if you are backing up and restoring (different than cloning),
Acronis could mess that up if you are not careful.

I just searched for W2K and saw quite a few. So many that I am
wondering how many are legitimate. I would hate to get something that
I can't use or find to be something pirated. I saw some for as low as
around $60 which I would purchase if I were sure about it.

EBay's Buyer Protection is very good nowadays (years ago it wasn't). So
worse comes to worse you would need to ship it back to get your money
back if one you bought was pirated.

I had Windows 2000 on this machine a couple of years ago for a few days.
Then I put XP back on it again. And a few days ago I just put Windows
2000 back on it again. So I am still learning what I can do and what I
can't under Windows 2000. And I am surprised how much of my stuff will
actually run under 2000 still.

It seems to me Flash v9 is the last one you can run under 2K. And I see
no .NET stuff here yet and I have a feeling that .NET won't run under 2K
either (which is perfectly fine by me). Two of the shocking things that
work are Avast6 and Trillian 5 (multiple IM application). And I thought
for sure Trillian 5 needs .NET to work. 2K did need KB816542 before
Avast6 would install.

 

[BillW50]

In mechanic typed:

Most modern distros can change resolution in a handy GUI if the
right values are not set automatically. Were you using an up-to-date
distro? Which one? Many users familiar with Ubuntu, Debian etc.
would not recognise the kind of problems you describe.

Xandros, Puppy, and Ubuntu 9.10. And using the native or less for a
resolution isn't a problem under Linux's GUI. The problem is using a
higher resolution than native. Under Windows this happens either two
ways and you can use either or.

1) The desktop becomes larger than your screen and you scroll around by
moving the mouse to the edges.

2) Some Windows drivers allow you to use compressed display. The Intel
915GM for example allows this. And you can actually see the whole larger
resolution desktop on a smaller screen.

Both tricks are handy for things that need a larger screen. I have never
seen any Linux to be able to do this under the GUI yet. Although I can
hookup an external monitor, use that higher resolution, than disconnect
it and now I can scroll around the larger desktop on the internal
smaller screen. So Linux can do this, but it should be there under
Linux's GUI but it isn't. I never seen Linux do the compressed trick
though, just Windows.

And OpenOffice, Tbird and particularly Firefox are pretty high quality

(few bugs) but perhaps different in features from the Windows stuff you
are happier with.

No these are not buggy per se. They are just very basic for my needs.
For example:

OpenOffice: Lacks converting case to title case. I use this one all of
the time under Word. Nor does OpenOffice know anything about text with
layout like Word does. Even 20 year old DOS text editors can do these
things, but OpenOffice cannot.

Thunderbird: It is fine for email, but for newsgroups it is terrible. As
you can set a rule to flag your posts as watched (so far so good), but
you can't flag replies to your posts as watched too. Plus while you can
view *only* unread watched threads. Why not both read and unread
watched? As how can you review what was said earlier?

Firefox: I've been using Firefox since 1.5. Although it never had that
warm spot in my heart. It has allows been just a basic browser to me and
pretty worthless without addons. And the more addons, the more unstable
Firefox becomes. Maxthon for example comes in three versions. And all of
them are far superior to Firefox any version.

 

[Wolf K]

On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 09:28:00 -0500, Wolf K<[email protected]> [...]

[LinuxMint] is a great way to extend the life of older hardware. I installed
LinuxMint on my wife's ancient laptop when I bought her a new one. It's
a lovely OS, well tuned to the average user. Yesterday I connected it to
the TV, it and the TV communicated automagically, it even resized the
display on the laptop so that it would be an exact match for what the TV
could display. Occasionally, I have to press the wi-fi switch on the
laptop to start the connection, that's the only glitch. BTW, I use the
Gnome desktop, no problems.

HTH
Wolf K.

How did you connect your PC to the TV? I have a USB TV device but I
have not tried it on my netbook.

My TV has a VGA plug input. It also has a DVI input, but I haven't tried
that. It's a 42" Sony Bravia, now getting on for 3 years old.

HTH
Wolf K.

 

[Stefan Patric]

In Stefan Patric typed:


Xandros and Ubuntu for netbooks both were awful for multimedia for me.
Very choppy and very low frame rates. Running XP all of these problems
disappear.

If you're talking about on the 701, that's one of the reasons I opted for
the 900. That, and the larger screen and keyboard. The 900 was a much
improved model. Asus seemed to have corrected most of the caveats of the
700 series. However, High Definition stuff like movies and TV shows
(streaming or DVD) is never played on the machine. So, I can't say how
well they would play. YouTube and the like stuff seems okay though.
It's a business travel machine.

Windows 2000 uses 224MB at boot here. My Linux memory is about the same
as yours, my XP on many of machines use around 800MB. Although my
machines has 2GB and XP runs fine for me. The big difference between
Windows 2000 and XP on these EeePC machines is that I haven't seen
Windows 2000 ever get bogged down yet. As I can open up as many webpages
for example that I want and it keeps blazing through it all.

800MB!? Just to boot and run the OS? That's excessive even for
Windows. Something's amiss.

W2k has a published minumum of 64MB. So, I would expect it to work
better than XP (min 128MB) or your average Linux distro (128-512MB).

I've got 2000 Pro SP4 running on an 11 year old Thinkpad 240X--500MHz P3,
192MB RAM--along with a very customized install of Debian 4 (Etch) with
the lightweight XFCE desktop. Even when running on battery when the CPU
speed drops to 166MHz, both run smoothly. However, as with the EeePC, I
never play HD or rarely, if ever, any other kind of video on it. So, I
can't say how well it played them. I do know that with either OS,
regular Flash ads and YouTube stuff played fine. Although, I never
viewed them at full screen, which is only 800x600. It was for years my
"travel" machine for e-mail, Usenet, word processing, expense sheet,
etc. Both OSes use a smidgen over 100MB to boot to the desktop.

Stef

 

[BillW50]

In Stefan Patric typed:

If you're talking about on the 701, that's one of the reasons I opted
for the 900. That, and the larger screen and keyboard. The 900 was
a much improved model. Asus seemed to have corrected most of the
caveats of the 700 series.

Well I use both 701 and 702s. Not a big difference except the 702s the
SSD is replaceable and comes with 8GB instead of 4GB on the motherboard
(the 701SD is replaceable too, but comes with the less impressive MLC
SSD). And I never owned a 900, but it isn't really better than a 702
IMHO except for two SSD and a larger screen.

However, High Definition stuff like
movies and TV shows (streaming or DVD) is never played on the
machine. So, I can't say how well they would play. YouTube and the
like stuff seems okay though. It's a business travel machine.

I would say the 700 series can handle 700bps without a problem. So most
youtube videos plays fine under 2000/XP. And most DVDs plays at 1500bps
plus. And I do this from an USB DVD drive. And no it isn't perfect.
Better than half of the time it is perfect, but not good enough. Blame
it on the USB port, the EeePC or whatever.

This is under XP and if I really wanted better results I believe I could
get 20% better performance easy without thinking about it from stock.
Under Linux, it is totally different. As Linux is so much slower for
this stuff that a 700 series machine or any Celeron 900MHz there just
isn't much hope for.

800MB!? Just to boot and run the OS? That's excessive even for
Windows. Something's amiss.

Well that isn't stock, but all of my favorite stuff to make XP useable.
Not a problem since all of my XP machines have 2GB anyway (I think they
all have anyway, I have many). I haven't done a fresh install of XP in
years so I don't remember what that takes.

W2k has a published minumum of 64MB. So, I would expect it to work
better than XP (min 128MB) or your average Linux distro (128-512MB).

XP also can claim of working under 64MB. Although every comment I have
ever heard is that it is so painfully slow (I never tried it myself). I
run Windows 2000 for years on a Toshiba 2595XDVD maxed out with 192MB of
RAM. Sure it had a Celeron 400MHz CPU. But the CPU wasn't the problem,
just the 192MB of RAM was just too low and it swapped most of the time.

I've got 2000 Pro SP4 running on an 11 year old Thinkpad 240X--500MHz
P3, 192MB RAM--along with a very customized install of Debian 4
(Etch) with the lightweight XFCE desktop. Even when running on
battery when the CPU speed drops to 166MHz, both run smoothly.
However, as with the EeePC, I never play HD or rarely, if ever, any
other kind of video on it. So, I can't say how well it played them.
I do know that with either OS, regular Flash ads and YouTube stuff
played fine. Although, I never viewed them at full screen, which is
only 800x600. It was for years my "travel" machine for e-mail,
Usenet, word processing, expense sheet, etc.

Weird. I have two Toshiba 2595XDVD with 192MB of RAM and 400MHz Celeron.
One has Windows 98SE on it and the other Windows 2000. Back then I used
the Windows 2000 one more often than not. No today I think it takes
likes 8 minutes to boot. Can't play DVDs well at all (it can handle
about 100pbs streamed videos and that is all). But what it did do better
and why I used it more often was it could handle the resource problem of
W98 hands down. So I could open up an application after application and
I didn't worry about Windows becoming unstable or crashing. And it ran
most applications just as fast as Windows 98 did

The Windows 98SE one I rarely used. But it would boot very fast (I dunno
like 30 seconds or something), play DVDs nearly perfect, and handle
streaming video better than 700bps. All great and everything, but
couldn't handle opening one application after another like Windows 2000
could.

Both OSes use a smidgen
over 100MB to boot to the desktop.

Huh? I never see Windows 2000 or higher or any Linux use just a tad more
than 100MB. I am really interested how this could be done. I don't know
what the minimum is for Windows 98, but I am pretty sure that anything
over 64MB doesn't help much. As adding more didn't improve much at all
for me.

I also freely admit that Linux needs less RAM than XP does. But in my
experience it needs more than Windows 2000. And when comparing Windows
to Linux, what Linux really stinks at is it needs a lot more processor
power. One might not notice until you start using multimedia. Now Linux
needs tons of processor power to compete with Windows.

 

[Gordon]

Do you realize that I have many other machines? Like Windows XP, Windows
7, and Linux machines?

Then why specifically mention W2K in your sig?

And do you realize that security updates is a
poor way of keeping a system secured? A far better way is to have a
real-time AV. That way any malware that ever gets on the machine through
a security hole, dumb user click, or whatever gets stopped in its tracks
anyway when it tries to execute and can't do anything to your system.

Still head in sand. Real time AV is only PART of your defences.
You also should have a fully patched and up to date OS - which you
cannot possibly do with W2K....

 

[Allen Drake]

On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 09:28:00 -0500, Wolf K<[email protected]> [...]

[LinuxMint] is a great way to extend the life of older hardware. I installed
LinuxMint on my wife's ancient laptop when I bought her a new one. It's
a lovely OS, well tuned to the average user. Yesterday I connected it to
the TV, it and the TV communicated automagically, it even resized the
display on the laptop so that it would be an exact match for what the TV
could display. Occasionally, I have to press the wi-fi switch on the
laptop to start the connection, that's the only glitch. BTW, I use the
Gnome desktop, no problems.

HTH
Wolf K.

How did you connect your PC to the TV? I have a USB TV device but I
have not tried it on my netbook.

My TV has a VGA plug input. It also has a DVI input, but I haven't tried
that. It's a 42" Sony Bravia, now getting on for 3 years old.

HTH
Wolf K.

Oh, so then you connected your TV to your PC. Now I get it. I
thought you connected your PC to your TV. It's the OC that outputs the
signal to your TV. I have been doing just that for some years now. I
also have the same Sony. I am now using a 42" Vizio for my main
computer monitor. Five HDMI inputs allows me to switch from TV to 4
other computers one being an ASUS 73SW but I pulled out the TV cards.
You really should try your DVI and HDMI inputs. They are much better
quality. Some of the Youtube videos are in HD and look rather nice.

 

[Allen Drake]

In Allen Drake typed:

I completely agree with you Allen. In fact, it was this machine when I
have XP installed on it which forced me into not updating. As there was
no room on this 4GB SSD for updates. I thought I would have to restore
from a backup without security updates. But that was over 4 years ago
and it never got infected.

About three years I stopped updating about 6 other machines and they
didn't get infected either. Strangely enough, on February 7th on a
machine I do religiously update picked up a trojan. It didn't get a
chance to execute upon rebooting (that is when most of these things gets
installed) as Avast6 stopped it right in its tracks. So much for
religiously updating, eh?

I am glad I finally found someone that has some sense.

 

[Gordon]

I am glad I finally found someone that has some sense.

Sheer luck more like. I take all the critical updates for whatever OS I
am running when they are released and I have only had ONE infection
ever, in over 20 years, when I accidentally connected a pre-SP1 XP
machine to the internet, when Windows Firewall was turned off by default.
Why do you think that there are hardly any viruses for Linux in the
wild? One reason is because when a vulnerability is identified the patch
is released almost immediately and people UPDATE!
I've never heard so much balarney about reasons NOT to update.

 

[Gordon]

I have had my suspicions about windows updates for some time. I have
yet to see someone point to an example of a system being compromised
in any way do to a lack of a specific update. I have, however, had
windows update trash my system and needed to install a clone to get up
and running again. I have for the most part disabled WU and never
suffered any ill effects. The last issue I had was identical to the
one that killed a system, Net Frame something or other. It hung for
hours not allowing even allowing a cancel. Luckily I tried an install
of an application that recognized a partial update and offered to
remove it which it did. I found no way of doing that myself. Now I
wait until an application says it actually needs an update before I
like MS have it's way with me.

You are comparing apples with oranges. WU trashing a system is a
COMPLETELY different issue to that of SECURITY.

 

[choro]

Sheer luck more like. I take all the critical updates for whatever OS I
am running when they are released and I have only had ONE infection
ever, in over 20 years, when I accidentally connected a pre-SP1 XP
machine to the internet, when Windows Firewall was turned off by default.
Why do you think that there are hardly any viruses for Linux in the
wild? One reason is because when a vulnerability is identified the patch
is released almost immediately and people UPDATE!
I've never heard so much balarney about reasons NOT to update.

It is NOT sheer luck but a matter of places you visit. One chap looking
for a hooker bargained one down to $20 but ended up getting crabs from
her. Next time he saw her, he complained about this and she responded:
What did you expect for $20? Lobster?!
-- choro

 

[choro]

You are comparing apples with oranges. WU trashing a system is a
COMPLETELY different issue to that of SECURITY.

Sorry, I am not really following this conversation but I would have
thought that systems and security were closely involved. You can't
divorce one from the other.
-- choro

 

[Gordon]

Sorry, I am not really following this conversation but I would have
thought that systems and security were closely involved. You can't
divorce one from the other.
-- choro

Of course - but a Windows Update making a system unstable is a
completely different issue from a system becoming infected because a
Windows Update is or is not applied....

 

[mechanic]

OpenOffice: Lacks converting case to title case. I use this one
all of the time under Word. Nor does OpenOffice know anything
about text with layout like Word does. Even 20 year old DOS text
editors can do these things, but OpenOffice cannot.

Version 3.3 apparently can:
http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.3/#More_Options_for_Changing_Case
- and of course it's entirely free!

 

[Gordon]

OpenOffice: Lacks converting case to title case. I use this one all of
the time under Word.

AFAIK Libre Office has had this ever since it's inception.....but it's
not called that.

Nor does OpenOffice know anything about text with
layout like Word does.

What exactly do you mean by that?

 

[Wolf K]

Oh, so then you connected your TV to your PC. Now I get it. I
thought you connected your PC to your TV. [...]

Ah, now I get it. When you meet a car, you are driving towards it, but
it's not driving towards you.....

;-)

The ancient laptop has only a VGA plug. I'll have to try the new laptop,
I guess. If my wife will let go of it long enough to allow the experiment.

Wolf K.

 

[Char Jackson]

Oh, so then you connected your TV to your PC. Now I get it. I
thought you connected your PC to your TV.

In common parlance, you always connect an output to an input. In this
case, the laptop has the output and the TV has the input, so we would
say the laptop is connected to the TV rather than saying the TV is
connected to the laptop.