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Tips:a Small Collection Of Bios Entry Key Combos A

Since the first three parts of this series came out, (One, Two and Three) the beginning of May has seen the launch of the new EeePC 900 series; it's slightly larger and heavier, with a nine-inch screen and higher resolution. The Xandros OS is the same and therefore the tips and tricks in this last part should apply equally well. Yes, the E900 series has a larger screen but you make as well make the most of every available seven or nine inches. Other tips and tricks aimed at boosting performance should also apply.

Tips:a Small Collection Of Bios Entry Key Combos

Battery life

Battery life, and ways to preserve/extend it, are a hardy perennial of the laptop user's agenda. The EeePC is no different. You might expect that a machine with such a relatively low specification would be parsimonious in respect of power consumption, but the battery default is four cells (with an option to upgrade to a longer-life six-cell version) and the average charge gives approximately between three and three and a half hours. Your mileage will vary considerably depending on various setting and the power-draining external devices you have plugged in.

Tips:a Small Collection Of Bios Entry Key Combos

thankfully the designers have shipped this machine with easy configuration options right from the keyboard

The EeePC is best described as a miniature road warrior, the sort of device you take with you to catch up on e-mail, browse the web or perhaps do a bit of coding or word processing. For all of these things the default settings may be excessive and a drain on valuable battery life when you are out and about and far away from a power point. Thankfully, the designers have shipped this machine with easy configuration options right from the keyboard. Let's take a quick run through them.

Tips:a Small Collection Of Bios Entry Key Combos

The default screen is bright and you will soon discover you that can in fact manage with much lower backlight levels—ambient daylight conditions notwithstanding. Reducing the brightness levels down to conserve battery life is simplicity itself: press the Fn+F and the Fn+F key combination to increase or decrease the level respectively. You can, depending on the application you are running, find a level that is consistent with ease of viewing and power saving. The same method can be used for other settings too. If you want to automate brightness control (based on detecting battery/AC status) without manual intervention, fire up your chosen text editor and copy and paste the following scripts—courtesy of the good folk at the eeepc users' wiki.

Probably the most important saving you can make is to temporarily disable the Atheros built-in wireless card. This is one of the largest system power drains, so unless you need to be on the internet, disable it. Again, toggling Fn+F will do the trick. (If you forget the status of the card, the blue LED at the bottom right of the EeePC will indicate that it is on). The final feature that can be controlled easily and directly from the keyboard is muting the speakers. Fn+F does the trick. With all those features enabled easily from the keyboard you should be able to get the most out of your battery—and if you upgrade to the six-cell version (about £50) you should see some impressive road life in your EeePC before it starts gasping for an electrical outlet.

These keyboard-adjustable features discussed above are the Xandros default and the insanely massive popularity of this machine have ensured a rush of customised GNU/Linux distros which, inevitably, have endeavoured to mimic those features. For a list of feature/distro compatibility for them see Part Three of this series.

Webcam

The arrival of the E900 Series EeePC notwithstanding I would gladly have forgone not only the speakers but the webcam too, in order to free up some valuable screen space. However, the webcam also uses up valuable battery life, so it's well worthwhile configuring it too.

To enable/disable it on an ad hoc basis open a console on the Desktop and type the following:

echo 1 > /proc/acpi/asus/camera

To disable it change the 1 to a 0:

echo 0 > /proc/acpi/asus/camera

To hackers, overclocking the EeePC is irresistible

The EeePC is not exactly superfast as the spec. has been designed to keep costs down. The processor is rated at 900MHZ but actually runs at 630MHZ as the FSB (Front Side Bus) has been set at 70MHZ. Overclocking the FSB to 100MHZ will run the processor at the advertised 900MHZ. To hackers, overclocking is irresistible and if you are one them and want to extract the last piece of juice from the processor you can overclock it. Warning: that may consume more power (affecting battery life), produce more heat, may cause the fan to kick (thus consuming even more battery power) and may cause system instability/crashes.

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Tips:a Small Collection Of Bios Entry Key Combos

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