Programming on the Asus EEE Pc in Visual Studio

Question

Has anybody tried programming on the EEE Pc in Visual Studio?

I'm considering buying one so I can show some apps on the fly, but also make small changes to them if necessary, without the inconvenience of a large laptop.

Some key points I'm after:

• How fast it is
• Would it suit the needs of a developer making small changes to code?

It sounds like the specs would get completely owned, but I've heard/seen strangely good things about the EEE Pc, like how it launches Word 2007 super quick on a nLite'd XP install. :)

Answer 1

I think the 700 series would just be a dog. The 900 series would be a far better choice with a bigger screen and faster RAM (but the same processor), but it's still not well-intended for Visual Studio 2008. I find VS cramped on my 12" tablet.

Take a look at the Dell Inspiron Mini.

Answer 2

I would recommend something other than the Asus EEE, they're too small of a "netbook" and the screen resolution is terrible.

The HP Mini Note has a nice 8.9" display, practically full size keyboard and best of all has a display that can do 1280 x 768, though you might need to bump your font sizes a bit. :)

You also have the option of the Acer Aspire One which appears to be a much better netbook with a low price point.

If you Google any other those netbooks you will find many reviews and if you hit up YouTube you can find lots of hands on video reviews.

Answer 3

I think it largely depends on the size of your project. A small project might not have too much trouble. But a large project would probably bring the thing to it's knees. I've seen my work project on VS.Net 2008 eat up to 350 MB pf RAM all by itself. Not counting loading the OS and actually running the project. Also, you might be using up a lot of hard disk space by installing visual studio on it. There isn't a lot of space on the EEE, unless you plan on using some kind of external USB hard disk.

Personally, I would recommend a more real laptop. You could get something cheap and small, and you'd probably be a lot happier in the end.

Answer 4

I own an eeepc 900 and have successfully installed Visual Studio 2008, the MSDN library and SQL Server 2005 developer edition.

The biggest issue was fitting it all in the 4GB solid state C Drive. In short, you can't. Therefore using the 16GB secondary internal flash drive is essential.

The utility nlite was all I needed to do this. In summary nlite lets you create a more compact version of windows XP with just the components you need. However most important for the eeePC was it allowed me to easily tell windows to use D:\ instead of C:\ as the destination for "Program Files" and "Document and Settings".

Then you re-install windows from the nlite windows image, with the required paths automatically set as required. (I strongly recommend this approach over trying to change the paths of an existing/running windows install due to numerous issues it may cause for application compatibility etc).

Unfortunately (on the eepc900 at least) the D:\ drive is slower in general use then the solid state flash drive. For Visual Studio this means the startup time can be slower than ideal (ie 30 seconds). But I have 2GB of RAM and have completely disabled the windows swap file, so once the data has been loaded into RAM, Visual Studio runs nicely.

Overall I use Visual Studio on my eeePC for smaller projects and it is ideal for creating proof of concept type apps while on the move. While it is never going to be ideal as a main development machine, I can completely recommend installing Visual Studio etc on it.

To help resolve possible confusion:

The eeePC 9 series (900, 901) have an 8.9 inch screen, resolution 1024 * 600 and a total of 20GB internal storage, RAM can be upgraded to 2GB.
The older eeePC 7 series have 7 inch screens with 800* 480 resolution and a total of 4GB built internal storage (RAM up to 2GB?). As a development machine, the 7 series are not really up to the job, however the 9 series certainly are.

[Update]

I now own an eeePC 900HA, 1.6Ghz Atom, 2G RAM, 160GB hard drive. Great little machine for proof of concepts and smaller programs. The biggest performance improvement is in the standard 160GB HDD, much better then a pretend solid state drive, much cheaper then an equivalent real SSD.

Answer 5

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1303682

It seems that other people have tried it, all have complained about the screen resolution, but surprisingly not the CPU. Needless to say, I didn't want to have all the panels open / want to use it primarily for a development machine, I just wanted the option to do so if possible.

I'm looking at a 700 series, if it works it's a bonus, if it doesn't, I'll just have to look into using SharpDevelop maybe (I'm a student without much money, so it really needs to be budget.

Answer 6

That'd cure my addiction to computers.

Answer 7

More or less like Ash, I have an EEE PC 901, installed with VS2008 without SP1, Resharper and MSDN library. I didn't install SQL Server as I use MySQL most of the time. I install all my "important" tools, which is VS2008 on C:, the rest of the stuffs in D:, as I prefer to have maximum performance for my VS2008. Like the others had mentioned, screen size is quite a limiting factor, so I use ProFont at 8, shrinked the default window's UI, not forgetting to turn off the theme too.

Performance wise, CPU is doing ok, but the SSD read/write speed is a factor. I benchmarked and get around 30MB/s read, slightly more than 10MB/s write. When I try to load multiple apps, or when VS2008 is busy with something, it will take a much longer time to even load notepad, so I kinda practice to be patient and load 1 thing at a time (on my desktop, I can never wait to load everything in 1 shot). I had 2GB of RAM, had been trying to allocate more ram for disk cache, but still haven't achieve anything.

I used it to do onsite troubleshooting and minor touch up, or whenever I go outstation, plus watching my favourite CSI when I'm traveling :P. Anyway, the main reason I got this is because of it's battery runtime, 7 hours. I doubt you can find another decent notebook that can match it. It produce so little heat so it can play nice on my laps and the standby also quite seamless. I use the standby extensively and even leave it on standby for days. Battery only drop about 10% per day. I can be seated and working on my program and next minute close my notebook and move to the next location without worrying that it won't go into standby(even if it doesn't standby, it can still last until the next time it's opened up, and not burning the pouch along the way)

I did look into Acer AspireOne before I got the EEE PC, AspireOne did have a wider keyboard, much easier to type, but the touchpad and battery puts my off. I had been considering various 12" notebook too before decided on EEE PC, as I used to have a 12" for 4 years. But 12 incher doesn't have that much juice for me to work for more than 2 hours. Those that can run for 4 hours is just too pricey.

There's one time when I came into my client's office earlier then usual, in the morning at 9, started working on my notebook, left it on standby when I go for lunch, then worked until 5 in the evening, when everyone left, I still had 20% left on my battery. Knowing this, I can even leave the power adaptor in the hotel and just go around with a pouch. Way to go ASUS

EDIT: Sorry for the mis-information guys, I didn't realized that I only had VS2008 without SP1 on my Eee PC. Didn't realized the "difficulty" until Menelmacar as me about it.

Answer 8

I am just trying to install SP1 and it seems that I will not be successfull. So you think that pointing Program Files to the D drive will force the installer to use drive D: for service pack installation? Currently, I have 1 GB free on drive C but the installation needs 1,9 although Visual Studio is installed to the D drive. You can see details about the installation here: http://blogs.msdn.com/heaths/archive/2008/07/24/why-windows-installer-may-require-so-much-disk-space.aspx .

Answer 9

Wow, I've just installed .net 3.5 and the disk requirements dropped to 1090MB. Hopefully, I will be able to install SP1 without the reinstalling-and-changing-programfiles-path gymnastics.

Answer 10

Well, it works! So - if you are short of disk space (you need 1,9GB) while applying VS2008 SP1, try installing .net 3.5 first. I would also recommend to install it from the ISO package (ie., you don't need to download the installer files).

I was really surprised about the performance - I compiled a web site with five DLL projects and also started the SQL and developer web server and it was really good.

Answer 11

@faulty: How did you manage to install the Visual Studio 2008 SP1? I installed the Studio on drive d: (the one with 8GB). When I try to install the SP1, the installer always tells me there is not enough space on drive c: (required: 4.6 GB, available: 920 MB). I already tried to set the TMP and TEMP environment variables pointing to a drive on a SD card with enough memory, and I can see that the SP1 installer does use this directory for temp files. But the installer insists there is not enough space on c:, and cancels installation.

Is there any other environment variable or setting to change in order to persuade the installer to do its work?

Answer 12

I managed to install Visual Web Developer installed on the XP that came with my eee pc 901 and i've still got 1.3Gb left on the C Drive.

1. First I got the required 1.4gb free on the C drive that VWD needs to do the install, I did this by following the instructions here... http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=40356 (the 'creating junctions' step for the windows installer/microsoft.net directories saves a lot of space)
2. I downloaded the "Offline" Visual Studio ISO from (available at the bottom of the download page) here... http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/
3. I then installed VWD from this ISO, remember to choose a install location other than C drive!

Once the install complete it turns out only about 200mb-300mb is actually used on the C drive.

Answer 13

Just a thought or alternative suggestion that might be applicable...

I regularly use Visual Studio without any issues on my eeePC. The trick is that I simply access another machine running Visual Studio remotely in order to do this. This lets me have the convenience and portability of the netbook, along with the full-scale computing power of a real development environment.

Obviously this won't work if you don't have connectivity, but for me its an ideal setup..