EEE PC - Speed - BIOS

Have an EEE PC and want to use a Linux distro other than the tweaked Xandros that comes with it? Don't upgrade (replace) the original BIOS (version 401), if speed is of any concern to you.

Newer BIOS versions don't allow you to change the power saving scheme (and hence the CPU frequency) from the BIOS setup menu. It appears that with recent BIOS versions the only way to change the CPU frequency is for the OS to interact with the BIOS to this effect. As at the time of posting this BLOG entry stock linux distros are unlikely to support this BIOS feature (Fedora 9 doesn't support it for sure at this point), you will be stuck with the default 630MHz frequency.

The little thing is slow anyway already on account of the surprisingly slow SSDisks built into it. As SSDisks are based on flash technology, I had expected secondary storage to be at least as fast as regular HDisks -- if not faster. I haven't done any benchmarks, but my feeling is that the HDisks in EEE PC are about 3 to 4 times slower than regular notebook HDisks.