Wish you could add a start menu, customize your taskbar, add a weather module to the taskbar, or install VLC media player to your Eee PC without editing a bunch of Linux configuration files? Tweakeee can do all that and more.

Here are just a handful of other features bundled in Tweakeee that give you more control over your Eee PC running the stock Xandros Linux distribution:

• Toggle the webcam on and off
• Restart the X server without restarting your PC
• Adjust what happens when you close the lid
• Adjust your screen brightness automatically when you plug or unplug the power cable
• Install programs from non-Asus repositories

[via Eee PC News DE]

I'm running Windows XP and eeeXubuntu on my Eee PC right now, so I can't offer a ton of details, but members of the EeeUser forums are reporting that Asus has added a bunch of software updates to the Eee PC repositories. So if you're still running the Xandros operating system that came with your Eee PC, you should be able to access the updates using the Add/Remove program tool. If that doesn't work, you can try opening the Synaptic Package Manager by hitting Ctrl+Alt+T to open a terminal and typing "sudo synaptic."

There are apparently updates for Firefox, OpenOffice.org and other applications. That's the good news. The bad news is that you'll lose a lot of disk space if you install these updates unless you've removed the UnionFS file system that the Eee PC uses out of the box.

In a nutshell, the Eee PC has two main hard drive partitions. There's a read/write partition where all of your settings are stored. This is also where any applications you install are saved. And there' s a read-only partition that contains the operating system files and all of the software that came with your computer. So when you install an updated version of OpenOffice.org, which is a fairly large program to begin with, you're not replacing the old version. Instead, you're installing a fresh copy to the user portion of your hard drive, which means you basically have two versions of the same large program taking up space.

I'd definitely recommend installing any updates you need, but beware that you will lose storage space when you do so.

A French technology site is claiming that they have official word from Asus that the upcoming Eee PC 900 will only be available with Windows XP. If true, this would drive up the price a bit, and it would also mean that Asus is dropping the custom version of Xandros Linux it spent months developing specifically for the Eee PC.

On the one hand, the move makes a bit of sense. The Eee PC 900 will sport a larger, higher resolution screen than the 700 series, so why use an OS designed specifically for a small screen? But on the other hand, part of the appeal for many geeks was that the Eee PC is cheap and uses open source software, while part of the appeal for non-geeks was that it's easy to use even if you don't know the first thing about computers.

I'm going to take this report with a grain of salt for now, especially since Asus is showing of 8.9-inch screen models that are clearly running Xandros at CeBIT.

[via Blogeee]

The Asus Eee PC's unique interface is designed to make it feel less like a computer and more like a consumer electronics device like a PDA or phone. But if you actually want to use your Eee PC like a computer (which after all, is what it is), it can be a bit of a hassle. For example, if you install programs that aren't supported by Asus the icons won't show up in the Easy Mode interface. Or if you want to rearrange or rename your program launcher icons, you'll need to muck around with a bunch of configuration files.

Luckily a member of the EeeUser forums has designed a utility that takes a lot of the hard work out of tweaking your Eee PC's easy mode interface. The appropriately titled Easy Mode Editor lets you add or remove programs to your program launcher, rearrange the icons, or rename application shortcuts.

[via EeeUser]

Want to trick out your Eee PC with a virtual high resolution screen, but don't want to install Windows XP? Jaffa at the EeeUser forums has figured out a neat trick that works with the stock Xandros installation.

In a nutshell, what you need to do install a VNC server and then run a script that will open your localhost in a VNC window, allowing you to scale the resolution. Now keep in mind, the Eee PC's screen only really supports 800 x 480 pixel and lower resolutions. So there's no way to actually display a higher number of pixels. What's happening is that you're telling your VNC software that the computer it's connecting to has a higher resolution, and you'd like to see it all on your small screen.

The image above shows the Eee PC's interface at 1280 x 976 pixels, but you should be able to tweak your settings to show other virtual resolutions.

The results look pretty good, but your system might be a bit more sluggish when running this hack. For applications that aren't particularly CPU or graphics-intensive, like web browsing, this trick could work well.

[via EeeUser]

I stopped by J&R Electronics this evening and got a good look at a couple of Eee PC 2G Surf models. They have three on display, one with a white lid, one with pink, and another with green. I didn't have my 4G model handy, but fortunately there was a black 4G demo unit handy, so I was able to compare the different models side by side.

First up, the 2G Surf lacks a webcam, as we knew it would. But surprisingly, it still seems to have a spot in the front panel for one. When you look at the screen from the front, it looks exactly like a 4G unit with speakers on either side of the display, and a little grated area for a webcam at the top. The only difference is that you don't see a camera lens.

When you flip the units over, you'll notice the other main hardware difference: There is no RAM access panel. If you want to upgrade the RAM, you'll have to disassemble the case. The plastic case also has a different feel to it. While my 4G unit has a smooth polished plastic feel, the 2G units (and the black 4G at the store) had a rough plastic finish. It probably makes it easier to grip the Eee PC and make sure the tiny computer doesn't fall off your lap, but I didn't really like it.

As for the software, I'm sure this isn't a comprehensive list, but I did get a sense of what Asus removed in order to fit the OS and applications into 2GB while leaving users with a little bit of room to play with.

The Eee PC 2G Surf has:

• 1876MB of storage
• 1466MB are used by the system
  
• On the in-store units 31MB of the user storage as already used
• That left just 379MB free space for installing applications or storing data. That's 20% of the total disk space.

I went through the tabs in Easy Mode and found the following applications that are available on the 4G are missing from the 2G Surf:

• eBook (Internet tab)
  
• World Clock (Internet tab)
  
• Mail (Work tab)
  
• Notes (Work tab)
  
• PIM (Work/Accessories)
  
• Science (Learn tab)
  
• Language (Learn tab)
  
• Crack Attack (Play/Games)
• Sodoku (Play/Games)
• LTris (Play/Games)
  
• Voice Command (Settings)
  

Overall, I'd say they made the right choices. If I didn't value the quick-restore feature that comes with the Eee PC, I'd think about deleting the UnionFS file system and removing most of those applications from my 4G to save a few MB of space.

While it's possible to install Windows XP onto an SDHC card or a USB flash drive, odds are your Eee PC won't be happy running XP that way. Windows will boot faster and have fewer driver issues if you install it on your built-in memory. But in order to do that, you'll have to wipe out the cutsom Xandros distribution that comes with your Eee PC. You can always restore it using the restore DVD. But that doesn't help if you want to be able to switch back and forth between Xandros and Windows without losing data.

AaronL at the Eee User forums reports that he's found another solution: move your Xandros installation onto a flash drive. The process isn't for the feint of heart. For example, it involves rebuilding your kernel. But the end result is a working Eee PC that can run Windows from the internal solid state disk and Xandros from a USB flash drive. AaronL says it does take longer to boot from an external flash drive, so say goodbye to your 20 second startup times. But just think how impressed your friends will be when you show them that you can dual boot a tiny PC with just 4GB of internal storage space. (Your friends really need to get a life. Or maybe I do).

Wow. I've forgotten how much work it can be to restore a Windows PC to factory default settings.

In the two weeks since I brought home my Eee PC, I've done a complete system restore about 3 or 4 times. This is the price you pay for running through a ton of experiments. Sometimes it seems easier to start from a clean slate than to undo all the damage you've done.

And it only takes a few minutes. Because The Eee PC uses the Unionfs file system, most of the base Xandros operating system is hiding in a protected part of your memory. You can't easily touch it and mess it up. So doing a system restore means wiping the user portion of your data, but you don't have to format the whole disk or reinstall your operating system.

So you just hit F9 while rebooting, and a few minutes later your machine is as good as new. Since I only run a few third party apps like GIMP and Audacity, it takes just a few minutes to reconfigure everything the way I like it.

Now, after spending the better part of a year with my Toshiba laptop, I'm noticing that it's significantly less responsive than it was the day I brought it home. And I've been having odd glitches in my Skype calls which I wasn't experiencing using the much slower Eee PC. So I decided to do a system restore using the discs provided by Toshiba this morning.

An hour and a half later, I've almost got my OS back up and running. It will probably take me days to reconfigure all the software. In the meantime, I'll probably be using my Eee PC for a lot of day to day tasks.

Update: For a list of apps I loaded onto my Windows Vista PC right after doing a fresh install, check out my writeup at Download Squad.

One problem with the Asus Eee PC's non-standard 800 x 480 pixel screen is that some applications just don't fit on the screen. For example, sometimes when you go to add programs using the Synaptic Package Manager, the "OK" button will actually pop up below the taskbar, where you can't easily get to it. Or when you install a Firefox add-on with a particularly long list of customizable preferences, you might not be able to click all of the check boxes.

Up until yesterday, my solution was to plug in an external monitor with a higher resolution whenever I needed to see what was on those windows. This works fine if all you're doing is installing and customizing programs. How often do you need to do that when you're out at a coffee shop?

But Digital Home reader Aaron sent in a much easier solution: Hold down the Alt button and then click anywhere on the window you want to move and you can drag it around the screen.

This works better than just clicking the top of the window to drag. You'll notice that when you do this, the bottom of your window will still look cut off, but you can fix that by moving your mouse over to the edge of the window to resize it.

When Asus first announced it was developing the Eee PC, the company said there would be two ways to use the device. First was an innovative new "easy mode" that would replace the typical start menu with six easy to use tabs labeled internet, work, learn, play, settings, and favorites. And for more advanced users, there would be a full KDE-based desktop.

But now that the Eee PC is shipping, it looks like Asus has disabled the full desktop mode. Sort of. It turns out that you can toggle back and forth between easy and full desktop modes, but you need to install a few packages first. This isn't very advanced hacking. You don't need to add any repositories, for example.

The folks at EeeUser have been working on this problem for the last few days, and user Kiteless has written up the easiest to follow tutorial I've seen so far. To make it even simpler, I'm going to skip a few of his steps.

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T to bring up a terminal
2. Type "sudo bash" to gain root access
3. Type "apt-get update" to make sure you download the most up to date packages
4. Type "apt-get install kicker" and answer "y" when asked if you want to install
   
5. Type "apt-get install ksmserver" and answer "y" when asked if you want to install
6. Type exit twice to leave the terminal

When you hit the power button, you'll notice a new option that says Full Desktop next to Task Manager.

Select Full Desktop and your system will reboot into a complete KDE environment. Unsupported applications you've installed will show up in the start menu. And you'll have access to more advanced utilities, like the Control Center:
Best of all, the upgrade only eats a few MB of memory. I had tried doing something similar earlier, but it ate up a few hundred MB. I think that's because I had an alternate Debian repository enabled, so kicker and ksmserver may have tried to download far more packages than I needed.

Note that when you power up your system, you will always boot into easy mode. But it takes just a few seconds to change into full desktop mode.

Related posts:

• Unboxing the Asus Eee PC
• Add a start menu to the Asus Eee PC in easy mode
• Photos of the Eee PC next to other stuff
• Installing Audacity on the Eee PC
  

My primary plan for my Eee PC is to use it a mobile blogging tool. But I just had to see if I could install some audio editing software. It turns out the answer is yes. Yes I could.

Color me a little bit shocked that I managed to do this on my first day with my new toy. I had kind of sworn to myself that I wouldn't install any new software until I had played with everything the Eee PC had to offer out of the box. But where's the fun in that?

When you first power up the Eee PC, there are about 40 programs installed. One is a sound recorder, but that won't get you very far if you're editing podcasts or radio stories. Ardour might be pushing it a bit, so I figured I would try to install Audacity. There's a simple add/remove programs dialog included, but right now there are only a handful of programs that you can download and most of them are actually just updated versions of the applications that ship with the Eee PC.

While working to connect the Eee PC to my home network so I could play some music off of a shared drive (it comes with Amarok, and does a pretty decent job of playing music through headphones or the built-in speakers), I noticed that there was an option to "Open Console Window" in the File Manager. Ah hah! For some reason this option is grayed out when you're in some directories. But when you're browsing attached storage devices or shared network drives, it shows up.

So I fired up the console and typed "apt-get install audacity." Nothing happened. Actually I got some error message or other. I forget what it was. I wasn't surprised. I figured I'd have to add some repositories. To make a long story short, here is how to install Audacity, and presumably a bunch of other programs on an Eee PC:

1. Open that console window by going to File Manager and clicking Tools/Open Console Window
2. Navigate to //etc/apt
1. You do this by first typing "cd //"
2. Then type "cd etc"
3. And finally "cd apt"
3. Now it's time to edit your source list using the vi text editor
   
1. Type "sudo vi sources.list"
2. User the arrow keys to put your cursor just below "deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701/en p701 main
3. Hit the "i" key to enter insert mode
4. Type "deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ stable main"
5. Hit the "esc" key to exit insert mode
6. Press "ZZ" in order to exit and save
4. Now you should be back at the console
5. Type "sudo apt-get update" to get an updated list of available packages
6. Type "sudo apt-get install audacity" to install audacity.
   
7. Select yes when it asks if you want to continue
8. When Audacity is done installing, type "audacity" to launch the program.

And you're all set. Don't expect Audacity to be a speed demon on a 900MHz processor. And by default, sound files are larger than your screen so you'll need to do some resizing of your windows to make everything fit. This is a common problem on the Eee PC, but it's not insurmountable. Usually.

Also, there doesn't appear to be an easy way to create a desktop shortcut for launching Audacity. That means you'll need to fire up the terminal every time you want to run this or any other unsupported program you install. If you can live without audio editing for the time being, you might want to wait and see whether Asus offers Audacity or other programs you may be looking for in future updates.

If you're not familiar with Linux, this procedure can be a bit dangerous. Here's a complete list of instructions for using the vi text editor. It could save your life if you wind up hitting the wrong buttons and deleting the Eee PC official sourc list. And here's a list of safe repositories to try if the Debian repository I mentioned above doesn't work.

If you do accidentally wind up deleting your Eee PC repositories, just open up sources.list agan and make sure you enter these two lines:

• deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701 p701 main
• deb http://update.eeepc.asus.com/p701/en p701 main

Update: Notebook Review points out an easier text editor than vi. Novice that I am, I used the first text editor I could think of. But instead of typing "sudo vi sources.list" try "sudo nano sources.list." The nano text editor is much easier to use. And more importantly, it includes instructions at the bottom of the screen.

Update 2: And for an even easier method, try using the hidden Synaptics Package Manager.

Related Posts:

• Unboxing the Eee PC