Waiting on Snail Mail

I’m still waiting for the memory upgrade for my new 1015PN. I ordered the upgrade directly from Crucial Memory because of a few comments I’d read in the Amazon comments section. They’d indicated that the EEE is pretty picky about the memory it wants and that Amazon had shipped incompatible memory for the upgrade. Those that ordered directly from Crucial had nothing but good things to say.

I, however, don’t have anything good to say. Yet. Because the memory is still in transit. I got a tracking number which indicates that, on April 7th, the memory entered the USPS system and there are no further updates at this time. Apparently, the USPS is a black hole or something; and not just for taxpayer money.

So, in the meantime, I’ve been playing with Debian Live. Very cool stuff. I’ve been working up a custom version that, theoretically, I can just burn right to the hard drive of the EEE when I’m ready. In the meantime, I can use my desktop to build images that I burn onto a USB stick which, in turn, I can use to boot my 1015PN.

Now that I can run a Linux system on it, I can say that the 1015PN has not disappointed in terms of speed. It boots faster from the USB stick then my 900 can boot normally. In general, application launches are snappy and browsing is very well done. I have yet to verify the camera, bluetooth, or do anything related to the ion2 video, but the rest of the system is living up to expectation so far.

Looks like the kids will be getting their “own” computer soon.

UPDATE: HAH!

The memory showed up today: blogging +1.

I’ll note that changing the memory is a lot easier than I’d read. The main thing seemed to be getting the lid off the back to gain access to the memory. It takes 2 jeweler’s screwdrivers: a Philips and a flat-blade. The Philips is for the screw that locks the hatch in place. The flat-blade should then be used to pry up the lid near the screw and then slid it along the long edge toward the other corner. The lid will pop right out without and straining whatsoever. Simple.

There’s definitely a difference in speed with the extra memory. I’ll post a more thorough review after I’ve installed a more suitable OS onto this thing.