EEE PC 2G Surf - Full Review

My first reaction of this machine is wow, this is finally exactly what I have been looking for; a simple interface (Linux OS), small size (7 inch screen), and a great price (starting at $300), an un-beatable combo. Although I did happen to stumble upon a few issues when attempting to setup this machine. I will tell you exactly what happened.

I bought the EEE PC 2G Surf and I loved it. I was able to install the advanced desktop, so now I have a start menu and a background, and essentially the same simple usable interface that all Windows Operating Systems have.

Advanced Desktop:

As you can see here I have modified the background, as well as have he ability to have a nice start menu, with multiple desktops, the 1 and 2 on the bottom, are actually two different desktops that have different wallpapers and have the ability to run different applications on each desktop, almost allowing for the eee pc to have twice the room to work on. Great Linux Feature! Not on Windows...


After installing this I wanted to install my favorite game Continuum, and I tried to install it on the EEE PC using the instructions provided at http://wine.getcontinuum.com/ but to my surprise they did not have instructions specifically for the EEE PC. So I tried to install it following the instructions provided on the page.

I installed WINE using the synaptic installer and repositories; installation can be found here:
http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:wine

Now after I installed this I downloaded continum.exe and used WINE in the command line to extract the continuum setup file. I installed it and brought it to the correct directory, and attempted to run continuum but I kept getting a kernel32.dll.so error, and I tried to install a few different versions.

I was up till 3 am trying to get this to work, I tried three different kernels only to have my computer solid state drive become filled up from trying to install multiple versions of wine and continuum. So I uninstalled WINE and to my surprise system functionality stopped working, I started to become distressed and so I figured maybe a re-start would do the trick, well it certainly did, and the eee pc would not go back into the OS. It would not start up as it would normally...I had broken the eee pc, only after 24 hours of usage...what do I do now?

Well I went to bed, pissed off, and a little upset that I had broken my new treasured toy. I thought what am I going to do now? Return it? Fix it? I had no clue what I was going to do, and I finally fell alseep.

Next morning I thought what there must be a way to re-start the system, there must be a way to start off clean from scratch. I searched through the eeeuser.com site and found how to do it. Ureka the answer - http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=1845

The answer is in the F9 key, upon booting up the system hit the F9 key 3-4 times on the first boot screen, this will prompt a re-install of the Xanados OS and is very easy to do. I simply said yes, and it re-installed the entire OS in less than 5 minutes. I was in complete shock and dis-believe that this would so simply fix my problem, but to my happy surprise it did work!

Thank god! So I broke the EEE PC and fixed it in 24 hours of purchasing it.

Now I have bought a 4 GB flash memory card, and use that to store all of my files, and play games. I have only added videos, pictures, and music so far, but I am planning on installing some games, eventually.

- Tek-Min-Now Team