Larry
Mar 31, 2008, 04:00 PM
http://www.astraware.com/images/blog/92/larry_eeepc.jpg
Recently I bought a new laptop for email, surfing and general usage but this time I decided to go with something a little different. Ever since Asus (http://www.asus.com/index.aspx) announced the Eee PC (http://eeepc.asus.com/global/) I've been fascinated by the idea of a small, cheap laptop with long battery life and good connectivity so when I finally got the chance I went for the 4GB model.
In desktop terms it's not very powerful, with a 900MHz processor, 512MB RAM and 4GB storage, but it copes quite well with day to day use and rarely seems underpowered. With the addition of an 8GB SD card I've got plenty of storage for documents and the built-in WiFi makes it easy to get online at home or round the office. After a few weeks I can't imagine not having it around to fill in the gap between my smartphone and my desktop PC.
Of course being a developer and working at Astraware I couldn't just leave it at using the Eee PC for serious and useful jobs, I had to play too :)
After a bit of tweaking and following the guides from the excellent eeeuser.com (http://www.eeeuser.com/) I added the developement tools and was able to build software. Once I'd got that working I couldn't resist, so I tried building a couple of our games and after some tweaking I was able to get Astraware Solitaire and Astraware Sudoku up and running as tech demos. Obviously, they aren't ready for release and not everything works properly but it was a great feeling to see two of my favourite games running on a new device.
Once I'd got the games running I was curious to see if they would run on an unaltered Eee PC so after some quick negotiations with Paul S (/company/team/index.php?name=paul) and promises of death if I broke his 2GB Eee PC I copied the files over. Since he was still using the default interface which discourages this kind of thing, it required a little creative thinking, but I was also able to get the game running on his unmodified laptop.
At the moment that's where the story ends, but who knows, the Eee PC is a very popular device. If people start buying software and games for their new laptops then one day you could see your favourite Astraware games coming to a tiny laptop near you.
Recently I bought a new laptop for email, surfing and general usage but this time I decided to go with something a little different. Ever since Asus (http://www.asus.com/index.aspx) announced the Eee PC (http://eeepc.asus.com/global/) I've been fascinated by the idea of a small, cheap laptop with long battery life and good connectivity so when I finally got the chance I went for the 4GB model.
In desktop terms it's not very powerful, with a 900MHz processor, 512MB RAM and 4GB storage, but it copes quite well with day to day use and rarely seems underpowered. With the addition of an 8GB SD card I've got plenty of storage for documents and the built-in WiFi makes it easy to get online at home or round the office. After a few weeks I can't imagine not having it around to fill in the gap between my smartphone and my desktop PC.
Of course being a developer and working at Astraware I couldn't just leave it at using the Eee PC for serious and useful jobs, I had to play too :)
After a bit of tweaking and following the guides from the excellent eeeuser.com (http://www.eeeuser.com/) I added the developement tools and was able to build software. Once I'd got that working I couldn't resist, so I tried building a couple of our games and after some tweaking I was able to get Astraware Solitaire and Astraware Sudoku up and running as tech demos. Obviously, they aren't ready for release and not everything works properly but it was a great feeling to see two of my favourite games running on a new device.
Once I'd got the games running I was curious to see if they would run on an unaltered Eee PC so after some quick negotiations with Paul S (/company/team/index.php?name=paul) and promises of death if I broke his 2GB Eee PC I copied the files over. Since he was still using the default interface which discourages this kind of thing, it required a little creative thinking, but I was also able to get the game running on his unmodified laptop.
At the moment that's where the story ends, but who knows, the Eee PC is a very popular device. If people start buying software and games for their new laptops then one day you could see your favourite Astraware games coming to a tiny laptop near you.