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Big Memory For The Little Computer

Asus has decided that upgrading the memory in its tiny Eee won't void the warranty. But the press release fails to mention a couple of key pieces of information. Hackers, who love the machine, have filled in the gaps.

The Eee I bought back in November came with 512 Mbytes of system RAM. I know because I scratched off the "Warranty Void If Removed" sticker and checked. It's a standard-issue 667-MHz SODIMM module.

So (1) the upgrade I need is a 1-Gbyte or 2-Gbyte DDR2 667-MHz SODIMM package. Easy enough. (For more on that, check NotebookReview.com's Asus Eee PC Tweak Guide.)

The other necessary piece of information: (2) while the Eee's chipset supports 2-Gbyte SODIMM modules, the Xandros Linux build that comes installed on the machine does not, so in order to take advantage of any memory upgrade I'd have to recompile the operating system.

Fortunately, that's possible, too, because Asus recently released all the required source code, correcting an oversight and complying with the GPL. (For more on that, check Ultramobile Geek's how-to.

And while I'm tossing out Eee links, here's a couple more: James Kendrick is fascinated by the Eee, and his jkOnTheRun blog has a lot of coverage of the device -- and he pointed me to eeeuser.com's tutorial on replacing the oversimplified Eee user interface with the standard K Desktop Environment (KDE).

There's some Linux geekiness to deal with here, but the Asus Eee may be the best reason I've seen yet to be a Linux geek.

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