People are always asking which Linux distribution is best for this device or that. And the truth is, it depends. It depends on what it is you want to do. And it often depends on whether you favor performance or ease of use or any number of other factors.

With that in mind, Phoronix has published a rather awesome article showing how the Asus Eee PC 901 performs on a series of benchmarks while running four different Linux distributions. The distros include Ubuntu 8.10 Alpha 4, Fedora 10 Alpha, Mandriva 2009 beta 2 and the custom version of Xandros that comes with the Eee PC 901. In other words, these are all pretty much bleeding edge operating systems and I’m not sure I’d recommend anyone use them as a primary OS unless you’re actively looking for bugs. But each distro includes the latest kernel and system updates and, at least in theory, should be able to use the Eee PC 901’s hardware to the fullest.

So how did they do? Well, it depends. When it comes to encoding media files, Ubuntu was the clear winner. But Fedora was almost twice as fast at compiling an application. Xandros trailed behind the competition in most tests, but seemed to do well with tests that involved reading data from the solid state disk. If you’re trying to pick a new distro for you Eee PC, you should definitely check out the full article. I was surprised at just how far apart some scores were. The moral of this story is that when it comes to performance, the software matters at least as much as the hardware.

While these tests only look at the Eee PC 901, the Eee PC 1000 and 1000H have very similar hardware so I’d expect somewhat similar results. It’s important to note, however, that the 1000 has a different solid state disk than the 901, and the 1000H has a hard disk. So I wouldn’t expect the results to be identical.

Asus Eee PC 1000H battery life in power saver mode

After speaking with Kevin Tofel about his battery tests with the MSI Wind, I decided to run Battery Eater a few more times to make sure we can get an apples to apples comparison. While I got 265 minutes of run time the first time I tried the test, I later realized that I forgot to disable Windows XP’s power saving features. So the display and possibly the hard disks shut down after about 15 minutes.

Odds are that in real world use, you’ll be operating your Eee PC with the display and hard disk on, so I ran the test again — twice. The first time, I set the Eee PC Super Hybrid Engine to high performance mode, which means the computer ran at 1.6GHz. The second time I set it to power saving mode (the same mode I used on the first test), which underclocks the PC to 1.2GHz.

In power saving mode with the display and hard disks constantly running, the battery died after 235 minutes, or just under 4 hours. When using high performance mode, that number dropped to 199 minutes, or about 3 hours and 19 minutes.

Keep in mind that Battery Eater is designed to stress the CPU a bit throughout the entire test. So if all you’re using your computer for is some light web browsing or document editing, you’ll probably get significantly better battery life, especially if you put it to sleep when you’re not using it for a few minutes or more. I’ve frequently gotten 5 to 8 hours of intermittant use out of my Eee PC without plugging it in.  That’s not to say that you can actually run the machine for 8 hours straight, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see you get 5 to 6 hours.

Kevin should be posting his numbers for the MSI Wind soon so we can see how these two netbooks with 6 cell batteries stack up against one another. We’ll also be getting together soon to compare notes on the two netbooks. We had planned to do that Saturday, but tropical storm Hanna had other ideas.

Update: After running the battery test a few more times, I’ve posted some different results. The morale of this story? Your results may vary depending on how you use the machine.

Following Kevin Tofel’s lead, I decided to run two sets of benchmarks on my Asus Eee PC 1000H this week. First up, I used Battery Eater Pro to gauge the computer’s battery life.

I put the Eee PC 1000H in power saving mode and started the test before going to bed the other night. When I woke up in the morning and rebooted my system, the program told me that the battery was virtually dead after 265 minutes or about 4.4 hours. If that seems a bit low for a 6 cell battery and an Intel Atom CPU, keep in mind the fact that Battery Eater Pro is designed to put a bit of stress on your system. Under real world conditions, I’ve been getting somewhere between 5 and 6 hours of battery life.

I also ran CrystalMark R3 to get some CPU, Memory, and hard drive benchmarks. As expected, the results weren’t very far off from those Kevin recorded on his MSI Wind laptop. The two notebooks feature very similar hardware. You can see a more complete pictures of my results after the break.

Kevin and I plan to meet up this weekend and compare the two notebooks in person, so we can tell you what really makes one stand out from the other. My guess is that there won’t necessarily be a clear winner. The Eee PC 1000H comes with 802.11n and a multi-touch trackpad, but weighs half a pound more than the MSI Wind. The Wind also has a larger right-shift key which is a deal-breaker for Kevin, but not for me.

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Chippy at UMPC Portal received some documents from the folks at Raon Digital that suggest the upcoming Everun Note mini-laptop will be fast. Like blazing fast. Like faster than most full sized notebooks fast.

This shouldn’t be particularly surprising, since the this will also be one of the first netbooks or ultra mobile PCs to sport a dual-core CPU. But some folks think the numbers are too good to be true. And you know what? There’s a good chance they are. Because while benchmarks are nice, I think it’s safe to say we should take them with a grain of salt when they’re recorded by the manufacturer of the laptop in question.

Raon Digital’s Everun Note has a 7 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel touchscreen display, and weighs just 742 grams. The company says it can get three hours of battery life, but I’m guessing you’ll only get that kind of juice if the PC is running in power saving mode. If you want to squeeze as much power as possible out of the dual core AMD Turian CPU, you’ll probably sacrifice battery life.

MSI Wind.Net forum member Doody has managed to get his hands on a MSI Wind prototype, and he’s been testing it out and running benchmarks for a few days.

For the most part, the Eee PC 900 is identical to the Eee PC 700 series, except it has a larger, higher resolution screen and more memory, right? Well, there are a few other significant differences under the hood. For example, Asus packed two solid state disks into every Eee PC 900. There’s a 4GB SSD for the operating system and program files, and an 8GB or 16GB SSD for extra storage (the 8GB disk comes with the Windows XP version, while you get a 16GB disk if you buy the Linux model).