My own home-built Eee PC?

J

j-dawg

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 26, 2005
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465
My old Thinkpad X-series is on its way out, but I'm going to get a new laptop before I go off to college next year. I love the idea of the new Asus Eee PC ( http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/laptops/0,39030092,49293507-1,00.htm ) but I don't think I would spend another $250-400 buying an Eee PC if I'm just going to buy a new laptop next summer. How hard would it be to build my own?

I'm thinking one of these:
http://www.memory4less.com/m4l_itemdetail.asp?rid=fd_01&itemid=27208117 [memory4less.com]

combined with Xubuntu or some similar lightweight operating system in my current Thinkpad X24, and I would have a relatively quick machine that uses little power and weighs less than 3lb (actually, it already weighs something like 2.8lb). In other words, most the advantages of an Eee PC in a slightly bigger package without the full investment.

I'm willing to tolerate only 4gb of storage space, but I don't know if something like this is particularly practical.

Any suggestions? I'd really like to give this a shot if it were possible. It would be a simple project with useful results.
 
So are you just looking at putting a flash drive into your X24?

I have an x20 and it is a great little machine, I even have windows XP (with all the graphics stuff turned off) running great on it.
 
Well..yeah. I've got XP running nicely, like you said, but I'd like to try something different.

Maybe I just want to fool around with an SSD, but it would be nice to extend my battery life and improve boot and response times. Plus it would be cool: unique, capable of doing all the stuff that I do with my laptop anyway, low-power, quiet.

I'm just wondering about feasibility.
 
I don't think there's really a point ditching the hard drive. Idle, typical 4200 and 5400 rpm drives use under 1/4W. During R/W or seeking, about 1/2W. With typical use, you might buy yourself 20 minutes of extra battery life by going with a SSD. Not worth the cost, IMO (~$120 for a 1.5GB module with a 44pin laptop IDE connector built in).

It is relatively inexpensive to make your own SSD using an IDE to CF adapter and 40 to 44 pin laptop drive adapter. The IDE to CF adapter needs to be powered too, so the power savings will be slightly less than a true SSD.
 
I guess I didn't really state my goals too clearly. The advantages of the Eee PC are speed, power consumption, size, and price.

Size is immutable with this plan, so I'm not worried about changing it. I don't expect the Thinkpad to get a whole lot lighter by adding a solid-state disk to it, but it's already pretty light, and I don't mind the size.

Price is also not really a concern. If I get a 4gb SSD for $100 and somehow transform my computer into an Eee PC-like thing with it, I've saved $250.

I'm also not extremely worried about power consumption. Although it would be nice to get more than the hour or so I get with my current, worn-out battery, the only reason I haven't bought a new one is because I'm compulsive about bringing my cable with me everywhere and plugging the computer in. So it would be nice to get a boost in taht department, but it would be cheaper to just buy a new battery.

That leaves speed, which is my primary concern. At present, it takes about thirty seconds to boot to the Windows desktop from sleep mode, and maybe ninety seconds from a cold boot. Something is gunking up my system at present, but on fresh installs it's not much faster. It's also not much faster in Xubuntu. I figure that since I don't use the laptop for much besides internetting, document-writing, and other basic tasks, an SSD wouldn't limit me. but I wanted to know about the performance qualities of SSDs a little more before I spent the money on one. Will it improve my boot and load times?
 
pxc said:
It is relatively inexpensive to make your own SSD using an IDE to CF adapter and 40 to 44 pin laptop drive adapter. The IDE to CF adapter needs to be powered too, so the power savings will be slightly less than a true SSD.
Click to expand...

Regarding this--will I have trouble with memory deterioration? Regular flash memory breaks down after a few hundred thousand read/write cycles. It's an attractive idea--the prices run about forty to fifty dollars cheaper to make an SSD out of an IDE to CF adapter--but I don't want to deal with memory dying on me.
 
that adapter is cool. If you get that, get a 4GB Extreme III CF for around ~$50 and you have a much faster HD than your stock one.
 
j-dawg said:
I guess I didn't really state my goals too clearly. The advantages of the Eee PC are speed, power consumption, size, and price.

Size is immutable with this plan, so I'm not worried about changing it. I don't expect the Thinkpad to get a whole lot lighter by adding a solid-state disk to it, but it's already pretty light, and I don't mind the size.

Price is also not really a concern. If I get a 4gb SSD for $100 and somehow transform my computer into an Eee PC-like thing with it, I've saved $250.

I'm also not extremely worried about power consumption. Although it would be nice to get more than the hour or so I get with my current, worn-out battery, the only reason I haven't bought a new one is because I'm compulsive about bringing my cable with me everywhere and plugging the computer in. So it would be nice to get a boost in taht department, but it would be cheaper to just buy a new battery.

That leaves speed, which is my primary concern. At present, it takes about thirty seconds to boot to the Windows desktop from sleep mode, and maybe ninety seconds from a cold boot. Something is gunking up my system at present, but on fresh installs it's not much faster. It's also not much faster in Xubuntu. I figure that since I don't use the laptop for much besides internetting, document-writing, and other basic tasks, an SSD wouldn't limit me. but I wanted to know about the performance qualities of SSDs a little more before I spent the money on one. Will it improve my boot and load times?
Click to expand...
As for your battery, you could try following this metacafe video about "hacking" your battery http://www.metacafe.com/watch/479447/laptop_battery_hack_dont_buy_a_new_one/ I tried to do the same as the video but I could not open my battery easily (old compaq presario laptop battery)

For the SSD, if I were you, I'd go with the adapter and a 4 GB CF card that is relatively cheap. Not sure if 4 GB would be enough for you if you're going to install XP but if you don't load a crap load of music/videos, it should be ample.
 
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