ASUS Eee PC Seashell Series (1015PEM)

Hardware Build a PC
1

I've inherited an old ASUS Eee PC from my aunty and thought that it might make a nice little linux netbook for those times when lugging around my Macbook Pro is not required.

Without changing anything I installed Elementary OS Freya and it runs... okay. If I run from tty it works okay, but browsing is a pain (using Midori) and just running Chrome maxes out the RAM. I understand that I could run a lighter distro in place of Elementary, but I was curious to see how it would go.

There are two big problems with this machine that I can change: the RAM (it's currently only carrying 1GB), and the hard drive (it's a slow POS that chugs incessantly after a decent life with it's prior owner). The thoughts are, replace the 1GB with 2GB (this is a hardware limitation of the N550 Atom) and replace the HDD with an SSD.

My question is: has anyone done this with the 1015PEM or a similar device? Is it worth doing in 2015? If I'm going to spend ~$150AUD I want to know that it's going to be worth it.

2

I had the Asus EEE PC 1001PX-EU27-BK about 4 years ago. The upgrade to 2GBs of RAM wasn't really noticeable - the CPU was just too weak. IMO, not really worth it to upgrade.

3

Thanks for replying. That's exactly what I needed to hear.

4

I agree with Some_Tech_Noob on this. It's a very limited system.

I used to use these also, they are still great for certain tasks, like driving a 3D printer, or acting as a router, or other specific applications. They are pretty low power and run great on a really slim distro, like one without a DE or with something like LXDE or even XFCE, but unless you're really into those, they're just not as satisfying as full blown graphical DE's like Gnome or KDE or even Unity for most workflows and user requirements.