Asus Eee PC 900 and HP Mini-Note Linux boot comparison

Most of the HP Mini-Note reviews and writeups have focused on its performance with Windows Vista or XP. And while I ordered the version running SUSE, I installed Windows XP within a few hours of opening the box. So I never got the chance to compare the out of the box Linux experience on the HP Mini-Note with the out of the box experience you get from an Eee PC. Fortunately, Mini-Note User has posted a video comparing the startup times on each machine.

As is stated in the video, the comparison isn’t really fair. The Eee PC 900 loads a simple user interface in just a few seconds while processes continue to load in the background, while the Mini-Note loads a full desktop environment. But the net effect is that the Eee PC is usable about 20-25 seconds after you hit the power button, while you have to wait up to 90 seconds to get a usable desktop on the Mini-Note running SUSE.

While it’s not clear from this video which Mini-Note we’re looking at, SUSE only comes on the $549 and $499 models, which means this unit has either a 1GHz or a 1.2GHz processor. If it’s the $499 unit, it might also have the 4GB SSD option instead of a hard drive, which would actually speed up the boot a bit.

Posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008, 5:24 pm by Brad Linder

Korgmeister

Also not a very fair comparison because ASUS actually put a modicum of effort into the Linux OS on their ultraportable.
(But then, this is meritocratic unfairness, which is the best kind of unfairness)
Garamond

The comparison is fair enough to frighten me away from the Mini-Note. I greatly admire style of the Mini-note and its keyboard. But I own a Eee PC 701 and have gotten quite spoiled by the speed of its boot time. By the way, I run the full Xandros desktop (not the even quicker default one) and the full Linux desktop is up and ready to use in 30 seconds. This is now the standard I use for assessing ultraportables: an I-want-to-use-it-now computer which is what the EeePC with its SSD and optimized Linux distro is. 90 seconds seems an awful long time to wait when I am standing in a hallway and want information about a class schedule or check to see if my students have emailed me a cancellation. An ultraportable for me should replace both a laptop and PDA. I may still get a Mini-note but it will have to fill a different niche in my computing life than the one the Eee PC does.
Garamond

The comparison is fair enough to frighten me away from the Mini-Note. I greatly admire style of the Mini-note and its keyboard. But I own a Eee PC 701 and have gotten quite spoiled by the speed of its boot time. By the way, I run the full Xandros desktop (not the even quicker default one) and the full Linux desktop is up and ready to use in 30 seconds. This is now the standard I use for assessing ultraportables: an I-want-to-use-it-now computer which is what the EeePC with its SSD and optimized Linux distro is. 90 seconds seems an awful long time to wait when I am standing in a hallway and want information about a class schedule or check to see if my students have emailed me a cancellation. An ultraportable for me should replace both a laptop and PDA. I may still get a Mini-note but it will have to fill a different niche in my computing life than the one the Eee PC does.
Garamond

The comparison is fair enough to frighten me away from the Mini-Note. I greatly admire style of the Mini-note and its keyboard. But I own a Eee PC 701 and have gotten quite spoiled by the speed of its boot time. By the way, I run the full Xandros desktop (not the even quicker default one) and the full Linux desktop is up and ready to use in 30 seconds. This is now the standard I use for assessing ultraportables: an I-want-to-use-it-now computer which is what the EeePC with its SSD and optimized Linux distro is. 90 seconds seems an awful long time to wait when I am standing in a hallway and want information about a class schedule or check to see if my students have emailed me a cancellation. An ultraportable for me should replace both a laptop and PDA. I may still get a Mini-note but it will have to fill a different niche in my computing life than the one the Eee PC does.
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The Eee PC 900 loads a simple user interface in just a few seconds while processes continue to load in the background.

Asus Eee PC 900 and HP Mini-Note Linux boot comparison

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