Programming on the Asus EEE Pc in Visual Studio [closed]

Question

Has anybody tried programming on the EEE Pc in Visual Studio?

I'm considering buying one so I can show some apps on the fly, but also make small changes to them if necessary, without the inconvenience of a large laptop.

Some key points I'm after:

• How fast it is
• Would it suit the needs of a developer making small changes to code?

It sounds like the specs would get completely owned, but I've heard/seen strangely good things about the EEE Pc, like how it launches Word 2007 super quick on a nLite'd XP install. :)

Answer 1

I own an eeepc 900 and have successfully installed Visual Studio 2008, the MSDN library and SQL Server 2005 developer edition.

The biggest issue was fitting it all in the 4GB solid state C Drive. In short, you can't. Therefore using the 16GB secondary internal flash drive is essential.

The utility nlite was all I needed to do this. In summary nlite lets you create a more compact version of windows XP with just the components you need. However most important for the eeePC was it allowed me to easily tell windows to use D:\ instead of C:\ as the destination for "Program Files" and "Document and Settings".

Then you re-install windows from the nlite windows image, with the required paths automatically set as required. (I strongly recommend this approach over trying to change the paths of an existing/running windows install due to numerous issues it may cause for application compatibility etc).

Unfortunately (on the eepc900 at least) the D:\ drive is slower in general use then the solid state flash drive. For Visual Studio this means the startup time can be slower than ideal (ie 30 seconds). But I have 2GB of RAM and have completely disabled the windows swap file, so once the data has been loaded into RAM, Visual Studio runs nicely.

Overall I use Visual Studio on my eeePC for smaller projects and it is ideal for creating proof of concept type apps while on the move. While it is never going to be ideal as a main development machine, I can completely recommend installing Visual Studio etc on it.

To help resolve possible confusion:

The eeePC 9 series (900, 901) have an 8.9 inch screen, resolution 1024 * 600 and a total of 20GB internal storage, RAM can be upgraded to 2GB.
The older eeePC 7 series have 7 inch screens with 800* 480 resolution and a total of 4GB built internal storage (RAM up to 2GB?). As a development machine, the 7 series are not really up to the job, however the 9 series certainly are.

[Update]

I now own an eeePC 900HA, 1.6Ghz Atom, 2G RAM, 160GB hard drive. Great little machine for proof of concepts and smaller programs. The biggest performance improvement is in the standard 160GB HDD, much better then a pretend solid state drive, much cheaper then an equivalent real SSD.