The Asus HDP-R1 (or as the official name goes, “Asus O! Play HDP-R1″) will be the first HD Media Player I’ll review. Basically, you plug it into a TV or display, and it plays content it finds on a connected hard drive or storage device. Here’s what comes in the box:

The player
Remote with batteries
Composite A/V Cable
AC Adapter
Quick Start Guide
CD (User Manual)

At the back of the player are ports for the component cable, S/PDIF, HDMI, Ethernet, and of course, for the AC adapter. On the side is one USB 2.0 and eSata port. It would’ve been nice if the HDP-R1 had …read more

According to research by warranty firm SquareTrade, you really get what you pay for, with premium-priced laptops lasting longer than their cheaper counterparts on average. Good news for those who’ve spent money for specs, bad for buyers trying to eke by on affordable netbooks; from the survey of 30,000 portables, netbooks have a 5.8% chance of failing within the first year.

Another notable trend becomes clear when comparing brands. Here’s the list of nine different brands, ranked from most reliable to least, in terms of malfunction rate:

Asus
Toshiba
Sony
Apple
Dell
Lenovo
Acer
Gateway
HP

Looks like Asus‘ marketing department have a new talking point to advertise, while Apple has …read more

Super Talent has recently come out with what’s probably the world’s first thumb drive fully compatible with the USB 3.0 standard. Thus the RAIDDRIVE has the potential to transfer data at 4.8GB/s—under ideal conditions of course—promising transfer rates up to ten times faster than USB 2.0’s 480MB/s. Just for reference, that’s 4.8 gigabits and 480 megabits a second respectively.

Capacities are currently 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB. No word yet on pricing, but El Reg has shared a December debut date. The RAIDDRIVE is of course backward compatible with USB 2.0 ports, but will only achieve USB 2.0 speeds. The only motherboard …read more

So don’t start squeeing yet, Linux lovers: a list on Amazon Germany (amazon.de) is hardly a sign of widespread adoption of the “alternative” OS, especially since the German market isn’t visible for the US-centric English-writing tech media.

It’s still worth scoping out both stellar performers. The 400 euro (around $568) ASUS X5DIJ-SX018L (second) features a 250GB hard disk, 2GB of RAM, a 2GHz Pentium Dual-Core CPU, and a 15.6″ screen. The 300 euro ($426) Acer 5235-571G16N (fourth) holds its own with a Celeron M575, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and a 15.4″ display.
Both laptops use the Intel GMA …read more

In the video below, you can see the Android OS—originally designed for mobile phones—boot up relatively quickly and take full advantage of the laptop’s built-in HSDPA. Yes, you heard that right, a laptop:
Featured at the recently concluded Computex, it’s obvious that Google needs to change at least one thing: you don’t tell a laptop owner to turn of his or her “phone”. Interesting though how the apparently unvarnished version of the OS automatically adapts to a laptop’s larger-than-mobile resolution. According to the video’s uploader, Asus was publicizing their own Android-based laptop, but reportedly chose not to showcase a demo unit.
Compal, …read more

Wow, Asus was really active last year! According to the Wall Street Journal, Asus released a new Eee model every six weeks. A little too much you might say? Asus chairman and founder, Jonney Shih agrees with you:

“We might have offered too many models because of our competitive engineering culture,” Mr. Shih said, adding that the company won’t repeat this mistake. This year, Asustek plans to release three new versions.
Aside from competitiveness, another reason cited for this rapid pace of release makes sense: Asus realized that customers weren’t really going for the original Eee’s relatively miniscule keyboard and lack of …read more

The man behind Liliputing put an Asus Eee Top ET1602 through its paces, especially detailing what was possible through the touch-sensitive display, and coming up with the following conclusion.

The Eee Top is an interesting machine. It looks like an iMac, but runs like a netbook — with a touchscreen display. I think it’s plenty powerful enough for day to day use if you spend most of your time on a computer using web browsers, editing office documents, making Skype calls, and other light weight tasks. If you need a machine that can play video games, handle high definition video, or …read more

“I got the game running (sic) on my small 10″ 1.6Ghz Intel Atom based laptop with GMA Intel 945 Chipset.”
Thus began the interesting—but unverified—account of Steam user “The Neighbor”, who describes the results of his tweaks as instructed by a Steam forum thread (which apparently details how to run games on the dreaded integrated Intel GPU).
More of an experiment rather than a desperate penny-pincher trying to get the popular multiplayer shooter running on his basic netbook, the tweaks hardly produce an optimum gaming experience. Neighbor warns that framerates drop to as low as 10 per in outdoor environments, and that …read more

That’s right folks! An enterprising member of the eeeuser forums has found a way to give the Asus Eee PC 901 HSDPA.
The instructions, stripped down for the layman, involve opening up the netbook, installing a HSPA or EVDO miniPCI-E card, and setting it up properly in the OS. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, can we expect an add-on kit from Asus? (And how does this mod affect the Eee’s battery life?) While you’re waiting though, feel free to check out the complete how-to here.

A pretty simple—if somewhat overused—premise. Why not hack an Asus Eee PC 1000H so that it can run on supposedly the best OS around, Mac OS X?
Easier done than said. The staff of The Cult of Mac is probably going apeshit over their newest toy, an Asus Eee PC 1000H that runs on Mac OS X. Interesting how those dock icons practically fill-up the entire low-resolution screen. And what about performance?
“Performance is on par with my MacBook,” says Gilbertson. “Benchmark-wise, I think it comes in around the equivalent of a G5.”
Ha Apple! Expect mass defections as people decide to go …read more