General Tips

1. Although the hard disk space on the Asus Eee PC 4G 701 is 4GB, the actual usable space is 1.39GB. Many websites have recommended enabling Full Desktop Mode by installing kicker and kmserver, but IMHO, there's no need to waste the precious disk space on that. The Easy Mode GUI is good enough. Get a 4GB or 8GB SDHC Card and leave it inside the SD slot, acting as a 2nd hard disk. Store your documents there and leave your SSD for programs.
   


2. The resolution on the Asus Eee PC 4G 701 is 800 x 480. Sometimes you will find that certain windows exceed the screen, especially program settings, options and preferences. To move the window around, press and hold the Alt button and use your left mouse button to drag it around.
   


3. You can switch between English and Chinese input by clicking on the Input Method icon in the system tray. It is only enabled when you are in a text editor program or in a browser.
   


4. You can access the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del, Fn+F6, pressing the Power button upon which a menu will appear, or clicking on the green squarish SOS icon in the system tray. It comes in useful when you need to kill off apps that have hanged.
   


5. A convenient way to shutdown is to press and hold the Power button for about 6 seconds.
   


6. Press Ctrl-Alt-T to bring up the terminal console. It is like the DOS command prompt and starts in your $HOME directory, ie. /home/user.
   


7. When using File Manager, press Ctrl-T to bring up a shell. It is like the DOS command prompt and starts in the directory opened in the File Manager.
   


8. To save power, adjust your LCD Brightness, mute or lower your speaker volume and turn off your wireless when not in use. You can disable the webcam via the BIOS during startup. This will save some power also. The Webcam utility and Skype will automatically switch it on when needed. Currently my Asus Eee PC can last about 2 hours when I'm surfing the Net with it.
   


9. The operating system on the Asus Eee PC is Xandros, which is a fork of the Debian distribution of Linux. It uses XTerm and KDE. In the event that you have messed up the whole operating system, you can press F9 during the bootup and restore all the factory settings. This is possible as the original programs and OS have been hidden on the SSD, which also explains why you will not recover any space on the SSD even if you remove any of the original programs. Note that if you have installed Windows XP, the hidden image would have been deleted.
   


10. Last but not least, bring it around and have fun! There's no limit to what you can do with the Asus Eee PC. Explore the possibilities!
    

(^ v ^)