23 Jul 2013

Asus EeePC 4G Surf revival

Update: Consider running the x86 port of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) on your Asus EeePC 4G Surf. Download the android-x86-4.0-RC2-eeepc.iso here and follow the instructions for installation.You won't believe how slick it will make your old EeePC!

I recently dug out my old EeePC from the back of my closet and tweaked it to better than new. The improvement is mostly thanks to a fresh installation of Zorin-OS 7 lite which I think is a totally awesome Linux distro for this netbook. It's a shame that Asus didn't use something more like Zorin-OS with the initial 2007 release of the EeePC, but it's only been around since 2009. I never imagined I could be running Chrome 28 on my EeePC and I easily re-installed Frozen Bubble and Extreme Tux Racer from the Ubuntu repositories - It's so much easier to install software  than it was using Xandros and everything is up to date!


During my investigations into upgrading the OS, I also came across suggestions that the EeePC uses standard laptop RAM (DDR2), this was a nice find as I had a spare 1GB DDR2 laptop module lying around. It was no mean feat to get to the RAM slot as the white version of the EeePC doesn't have a door underneath (apparently the black one does). I'm not going to document the full process (you can watch a video here), but I can confirm that if you carefully dismantle a white 4G Surf, you will find a standard laptop RAM slot on the back side of the motherboard. It was worth the effort as my 1GB module is working great and more RAM is always better!

I deleted all the factory drive partitions during installation (from a USB stick) and assigned the full internal 4GB drive to Zorin-OS. In the spirit of putting redundant hardware to work I slapped in an old 1GB SD card as well and set this up as the swap partition. I've got a full 1.3GB of free space on my 4G now which I didn't even dream of previously and while the 4G Surf remains well past its use by date I think I have actually made mine fairly useful again.

22 Jan 2013

Vodacom LTE/4G performance during every day mobile use

I conducted a few ‘every day’ type tests to pit Vodacom LTE / 4G against Vodacom HSDPA / 3G because LTE was up to 46% faster than HSDPA on the Vodacom network in my initial speedtest.net results. However, I wanted to see how this speed difference translated to typical real world use such as browsing, downloading apps, using apps, and watching videos.


Internet Browsing
I set my Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE to load the desktop version of Facebook.com and then refreshed a bunch of times using both Vodacom LTE and Vodacom HSDPA while keeping track of the time it took for the Vodacom page to finish loading…. The fastest load time I clocked on Vodacom LTE was 17 seconds, while the fastest load time I clocked on Vodacom HSDPA was 20 seconds.


Twitter
I could not tell the difference between Vodacom LTE and Vodacom HSDPA when I was using Twitter as timelines refresh and new tweets are loaded very close to instantaneously on both technologies.


YouTube
I was able to watch YouTube videos in HD using both Vodacom LTE and Vodacom HSDPA without any stuttering and the time it took for videos to start playing was short on both as well.


Downloading Apps
It took 22 seconds from the time I clicked ‘Accept & Download’ on the Skype app in the Google play store to the time that Skype had finished installing on Vodacom LTE. The fastest download and install time I could achieve for Skype on Vodacom HSDPA was 24 seconds.


Final verdict
The faster speeds on offer by Vodacom LTE do translate into increased performance in real world usage scenarios, however the performance of Vodacom HSDPA is already superb and the difference between LTE and HSDPA may go unnoticed in average every day use on a mobile device (apart from the fact that LTE may drain the battery faster than HSDPA). 

Power users who routinely download large chunks of data should notice a marked performance difference between the 2 technologies as LTE gets more of a chance to ‘stretch its legs’.  Another area where LTE performance should outshine HSDPA more readily is in scenarios where the connection is being shared by more than just one user / device.

Both HSDPA and LTE performance depend greatly on signal strength and you can check Vodacom coverage in your area here.