Asus EEE Pc + WoW?

[MrGlobe]

I know there are others out there that are as excited as i am about the release of the Asus EEE pc, and in my anticipation i've been running through the specs over and over, and am just wonder whether or not it will be up to the task of playin WoW on the go.

I would assume it wouldnt run on the stock OS, but if i installed a stripped down copy of XP, do you think it would work?

Another major concern is going to be the hard drive space, how many GB does WoW require?

Thanks

Globe

 

[Tekara]

Well, as long as your not expecting flawless performance, it should be fine. The eeepc is speculated to use an Intel integrated graphics chip and WoW has been known to run adequately on them.

The big concern I would have is the lack of hardrive space, the base model is something like 4GB and the $300 version is expected to have only 8GB.

 

[444]

here's hoping that they use a real Pentium and not the cacheless 900mhz one that's out right now.

 

[Skarth]

The asus EEE PC should be able to run wow at low settings just fine, it should be using intel's GMA900 onboard, which is just enough to play wow. The main concern is whether the processor ends up having L2 cache or not, which would impact performance quite a bit if it has no cache on it. Theres alot of debate as to whether of not it will, so that's the only thing that I can't confirm.

Also, Wow, with BC installed, is a tiny bit under 8gb (wow alone is 5gb I believe), so I'd recommend you just buy a 12gb (future patches will suck up more space) flash card or USB thumbdrive.

 

[officernogun]

It will also most likely have a 800x480 screen, so it depends if it can scale the game down to that, or if WOW supports that resolution

 

[Dangman]

Looks like the price of the EEE PC has gone up according to this first look:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3829

But at least we get an 8GB drive now. Hmmm I wonder if I can use my Pentium M 1.6Ghz Dothan in this laptop?

 

[INYNN]

Bought one for my GF.

http://eeepc.asus.com/en/product.htm

Eee PC 4G - 512MB DDR2, 5200 mAh battery, Webcam + Mic. [Cost: $450 cdn. After Tax]

I have Win XP MCE Installed with a basic Office 2007 Install. (Word, Excel, Power Point)

Its for her school. With windows installed, and with office installed there is only about 300MB of space left over for anything on the system drive. So WOW is a no go.

My solution for the lack of harddrive space space is to pickup a:

SanDisk Extreme III 4GB SD Card

http://www.sandisk.com/Products/Item(2348)-SDSDRX3-4096-901-SanDisk_Extreme_III_SDHC_4GB.aspx

Perhapps not the biggest SD card on the market, but it is one of the fastest cards out there to my knowledge.

Overall I'm impressed with the preformance for such a tiny system. Its important to keep in mind that this system is designed to be ULTRA portable. Its not designed to run games really, it seems to be targeted for the work/school environment where small size and long battery life is important. The system WITH battery only weighs roughly 2.0 LBS.

I have observed about 3.5 - 4 Hours of battery life with the screen set almost to full brightness.

Sorry in advance for the craptastic camera phone pics.

I have a pic with a penny placed on the computer to show those of you who have not seen it before how small it truly is.

 

[RangerXML]

You could get a 8GB HCSD, 16GB flash or a portable external HDD like a passport, that be pretty sweet.

 

[INYNN]

The only reason I wanted to go the route of the SD card is because the card reader is built in, and I dident want anything protruding from the laptop.

 

[liquidtrance123]

http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=635

Yes WoW runs just fine as do other games. You will not be able to install any of these games on the onboard SSD however and will need to 'ninja' some settings to get them to run off a seperate HD.

EDIT: I've also heard that the SSD's are soldered onto the boards so a HD upgrade seems out of the question

 

[pxc]

EDIT: I've also heard that the SSD's are soldered onto the boards so a HD upgrade seems out of the question

One of the slots on the bottom, next to the SODIMM slot is a internal flash upgrade bay to expand beyond the 4GB built in. http://www.hothardware.com/articles/Asus_Eee_PC_Full_Retail_Review_Showcase/?page=3 (see the last picture on that page)

In addition, there is a spare bay and socket area here that we are told is for installing an additional flash upgrade of 2 - 4Gigs beyond the 4Gig that is already built on board for this model.

Yeah, too bad the SSD wasn't an ExpressCard, or even removeable from the motherboard. Hopefully the Eee PC can partition both SSDs as one volume, but i'm not holding my breath. I wanted to get one to run Windows XP.

 

[Skids1]

I ordered mine off the Egg last night at midnight... Hope it arrives tomorrow.

 

[Skids1]

It showed up right on time today... looks great, and Im really digging the size and the OS, although I will be trying to put XP Pro on it over the weekend

 

[iqwertyi]

This is such a noob question, but how do you install XP without a CD drive?
Are you using a USB cd?

 

[RangerXML]

Just get a simple IDE/SATA to USB adaptor $10-$20 bucks and borrow your desktop or notebooks ROM to install XP.

 

[INYNN]

First thing to remember when you upgrade to XP is that you MUST have a SP2 XP CD. There is stuff the SP1 CD's dont have. I learned this the hard way.

As said above use a IDE -> USB adapter for the external CD Drive. The one I got even has support for SATA and Laptop Drives as well as IDE. It also came with a cool little single-molex power supply to run whatever external device your connecting. See pics below (sorry for shitty camera phone)

Adapter

Power Supply

That adapter only cost $30.

One other thing you will see is there are 4 exsisting partitions. One of theese partitions is an 8mb partition labled BIOS. You need to blow away ALL the partitions for it to work properly. Make sure you clear them all out and just make one large NTFS partition.

Choose NTFS non-quick format you'll laugh how fast it goes!

Good luck with your upgrade!