Jake Ludington's Digital Lifestyle

The new ASUS EEE PC packs some great features into a small package and overall I'm impressed with what it can do so far. If you want better audio and video performance, for both multimedia playback and minor audio and video editing tasks, the ASUS EEE PC needs two things: More RAM and greater storage capacity. Storage capacity is reasonably unlimited because you can plug any USB drive into the EEE PC and get extra space, but I want self contained, silent storage, which means the biggest SD card you can afford in the SD slot. More RAM is a little tricky, because you have to be willing to void the warranty on your EEE PC in order to add it (the Warranty Void if removed sticker is conveniently blocking access to the panel on the back where the memory unit is housed. Because this is a budget priced computer, I want to double the RAM in the EEE PC and get the biggest SD card I can buy for under $100. Here's how to do it:

Double the EEE PC RAM
You can double the EEE PC RAM for under $30, by ordering a 1GB 200-Pin SODIMM DDR2 stick for $28 from Crucial. I've used Crucial memory exclusively for every upgrade I've ever done and never had a bad experience. They have great prices and their memory calculator makes it easy to figure out what you need.

Here's a video showing you how to upgrade the EEE PC RAM:

Note: Upgrading the RAM voids the EEE PC warranty.

Triple Your Storage with an 8GB SD Card
Solid state storage is one of the things that attracted me to the EEE PC. It's super quiet and no moving parts helps increase battery life. You can triple your storage by adding an 8GB SD card, which currently runs about $65 on Amazon and other online stores (you might find one cheaper through a rebate program). This gives me plenty of room for DVD quality movies, some music, and any files I need to get real work done. It also offers enough storage space for small video editing projects and any amount of podcasting work I might want to do. You may also want a 150GB pocket sized drive for serious storage, but for most tasks, that extra 8GB will get you what you need.

Cost of 1GB of RAM: $28
Cost of 8GB SD Card: $65
Total Upgrade Cost: $93