My first impresion on my Netbook ASUS 1015BX-BLK084W

I have one good news. Due to the nature of my new job, I was in an urgent need of a laptop. So, 11 days ago, after a lucky happening, I got the necessary money to buy one. Is not exactly a laptop, but a netbook. More exactly, is netbook ASUS 1015BX-BLK084W.

Till today I got the time to explore it, so I wont to give a feedback, now, while things are still fresh in my mind.

Speaking of fresh things, I still can't believe that I  have this mini-laptop. :)
For me, having this mini-laptop is really a big dream came true!

The laptop ASUS Eee PC Seachell series, came with FreeDOS installed on it as OS. The type of FreeDOS installed on the laptop was called something like Asus and Cloud something, and it was pretty spectacular despite its grey colour theme.

But, as I came to see easily, this FreeDOS is not really an operating system, but it gave me the sensation of a "ghost" OS. Out of curiosity, I have explored it for a short while before installing a Linux distro. I wonted to know if I can offer the basic. Unfortunately, I have no photo of that "OS", but I suppose that is it somewhere on the internet.

First thing that I have observed was that I could not find anywhere on the desktop something similar to the familiar "my computer". I simply could not access the partitions! More than that, when I have tried to download a small file from the internet, I have being prompted with a message telling me that the device is read-only. I could not find the logic behind this, but, it did not matter much, but, as I have already told, my intention was from the very beginning to install Linux.

This Cloud something OS (I did not memorized the name) comes with an image viewer, a player (but I could not hear anything on testing), browser (a very primitive version of Chrome) and, surprisingly enough, a pretty advanced word processor, similar to the common Microsoft Word.

When started, the word processor showed me an advertisement which I did not paid much attention. Apparently, the word processor, is part of an office suite, and is a shareware. Frankly, I don't know who would pay to buy an office suite just to use it on FreeDOS.

Well, after seeing all these, I have considered that I saw everything. I could chat, tweet or even see my FB account but I wasn't curious to try it. Anyway, it is pretty odd to see that Facebook received so much attention from the developers of the ASUS Cloud-bla-bla. It seems to me that Zuckenberg's "child" wants to et everywhere, even if it is useless, because FreeDOS is destined to be abandoned.

After this shallow exploration of FreeDOS, I have restarted the laptop with the intention to install Zorin from an USB stick. But I have soon discovered that making the laptop to boot from stick is the hardest and almost discouraging thing "thanks" to the new UEFI that "parasites" and alters BIOS of the newly build computers.

After about ten attempts and interventions in BIOS, I could finally, convince the laptop to boot from the stick. The installer initialised and, thus I could find out that the hard drive was already partitioned in 4 partitions! But, as I have already told before, I could not see any partition from the "ghost-OS"!

I have let Zorin OS to install automatically, and erase all the partitions in order to make just a big one. I know this is not a good idea to use just one big partition on a 360G hard drive, but, it is in my intention to partitionate it someday in the future to install other operating systems. For now, I'll let it be as it is because I have other priorities and, for my current job, Zorin Linux distro is just what I need.

I am convinced that the best way to use this laptop is to add an external cooler and and a mouse. This is what I did in my case. This way, the laptop will work better and with less problems. Unfortunately, I have a long experience with old slow second-hand or borrowed computers and I am tired of having to wait for a PC to execute a small command. As for the mouse, I think that its importance is too evident.

I was also informed that a way to prolong the life of the battery is to format it 5-6 times. This means to keep the laptop shut down and connected to the power for more than 8 hours. The battery should be used only if there is no electrical power. When I intend to use the laptop I am cautious to disconnect the battery before-wards.

That should be all for now. I write here the information from the label as a reference. Maybe it is useful for someone looking to buy a laptop.

- Next Generation Computing: AMD Brazos APU Fusion of Power and Visuals.
- Radeon 6290 Dual Core CPU Excellent Graphics Performance.
- HDMI Enjoy Full HD 1080p Movie playback
- Ergonomic Chiclet Keyboard