EeePC 701

Preamble

I got lots of good memories tied to the EeePC 700 - back when it just got released. For several months (if not more) it was essentially my only machine, I squeezed everything I could from that tiny laptop and Debian.

This 701 I got dirt cheap thinking of replacing the internals with some arm64 SBC, but after disassembling realized that a) there is not enough space b) I can’t demolish perfectly working laptop. So I ended up installing an OpenBSD onto that cramped disk drive it has and used it occasionally to test stuff on i386.

Hardware

┌─────────────┬────────────────────────┐
│ CPU         │ Intel Celeron M 900MHz │
│ GPU         │ yes                    │
│ RAM         │ 2GB DDR2               │
│ Display     │ 7" 800x480             │
│ Storage     │ 4GB SSD                │
└─────────────┴────────────────────────┘

It is notable that the laptop technically outperforms another netbook of mine despite being tad older, and this Celeron supports SSE properly.

My biggest grief with this model is a soldered down SSD. I’ve read that it is possible to hack this properly but didn’t try as of yet.

Software

Using OpenBSD here for a while, in fact since I didn’t touch the laptop for a while it still rocks version 7.4 that I cannot run sysupgrade on because /home lacks necessary space :D

There are 3 USB 2.0 ports (still better than modern macbooks pro), 100mbit ethernet and a VGA port.

Overall performance is just fine for an underpowered netbook of that era, it is well supported by a bunch of operating systems and can be used as an ’emergency’ computer of sorts or just ultra-portable one to keep in the car or something.

Photos