The BIOS. It's a staple of PCs. Almost every PC has one, though that is changing these days with EFI, and Macs used Open Firmware back in the day. Regardless, its function remains the same- recognizing and handling the various essential components of a computer (the CPU, disc drives, video card and so on)- and helping to boot the Operating System. The BIOS used to be unalterable, destined to stayed the way it shipped. Only later did the BIOS earn the ability of update. Where before either it worked or it didn't, now manufacturers have the ability to issue BIOS updates which correct errors or allow new features or compatibility. This was the case with my Asus 1001P. It is known to have issues with screen brightness, among other things, which the newest BIOS update supposedly mended.
The BIOS was usually updated via a floppy disk. Obviously for a netbook without such an antiquity this is not an option. Therefore, Asus provides an updater program that can be run from within Windows instead. Except that I don't run obsolete operating systems either. Asus does provide a Linux utility for updating the BIOS. Nevertheless, updating the BIOS is a potentially precarious process, as a failed update can magically transmute your machine from a modern twenty-first century technological marvel to a primitive Mesopotamian brick (well not really, but it *can* render your machine inoperable).
There is another way that takes the operating system and all the variables that come with it, out of the immediate equation, and this is how I opted to proceed. We still need to use an OS prior to the actual updating process however, and unfortunately, it can be a little tricky if you're not using the pervasive Windoze OS, so I've documented how to do this entirely under Linux as well as partly under Mac OS X in case the system on your netbook is mangled and you happen to have a Mac around.
The first step no matter what the OS, is to actually download the BIOS update. These are small files, measured in the kilobytes. Go to support.Asus.com and follow the prompts to get to the BIOS file. This link should take you directly to the 1001P support page. As far as I can tell it makes no difference what OS you choose on the site. It will present you with the latest BIOS updates regardless. As of this writing, the latest is "BIOS 1202". Download and unzip the file.
The best way to go about updating the BIOS is by using either a flash drive or an SD card. Most netbooks can boot from either. In the following two articles we will go through the process of preparing such a flash device and ultimately updating the BIOS on an Asus netbook. The first one will explain how to prepare the flash device using Mac OS X and the last one will explain the process using only Linux.
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