ivc blog

The Asus Eee PC is a lot of fun. Mostly because of the size and the room for modifications.

It’s in the same realm as the OLPC/XO machine, sub-$400 market. By default the Eee PC sports a Celeron M 900 MHz processor, 512 MB memory, 7-inch 133 dpi 16:9 display, 4 GB Solid State Disk-drive, wireless networking, ethernet, webcam, SDHC card reader, 3 USB ports, and a 5200 mAh 4-cell Li-Ion battery.

Opening the machine reveals a exhaust fan, only mechanically rotating part in the machine, and an empty Mini PCI-Express expansion bay (header only installed on initial machines). The expansion bay can be used for internal upgrades like Bluetooth and flash drives.

I wanted to see how much and how far I could take the Eee PC. After a few weeks of planning and researching devices, I can up with a this list of internal upgrades:

• USB hub (2x)
• GPS module with gain antenna
• Bluetooth
• Internal card reader
• Fast flash drive
• FM transmitter
• Draft-N wireless adapter
• Switch for power management

Everything fitted and works perfectly after some initial tweaking. Although the battery time is cut with an hour when all the devices are powered on, I can easily disable the ones I don’t use through a DIP-switch in the expansion bay.

• Eee PC Wiki page

Update: During my trip to Newcastle I was checking Digg.com and noticed that my wiki page about the Eee modifications was promoted to the front page. That was a nefarious and cool moment. A week and a half later, Slashdot picked it up too. Found one of my favorite sites, Ars Technica, found time to post an article about the Eee modifications.

Two months ago we got around getting a couple of iPhones. Thanks to a nice fellow in the United States and the Apple Store for accepting international credit cards, I received the package after just a week after placing the order (that’s a pretty nice round-trip considering it left the factory in Shanghai, China, flew over to Texas, US, and last to Europe and Norway).

The phones came with the v1.1.1 software from factory and was at that point not ‘jailbreaked’. Downgrading to v1.0.2 was the only way to hack it, thus the GSM SIM unlock was not yet cracked. Luckly the next day after jailbreaking, activating, fixing Youtube and setting up the phone, the unlock for v1.1.1 was released.

Thereafter the firmware versions kept coming as they tend to do for popular products. And one after another they all were all cracked in less time than you want to through a fist at. Currently v1.1.2 is the latest and it’s working well, with incremental improvements for every release since v1.0.2. Can’t complain.

• iPhone Wiki page