Guest blog by puff I recently purchased the
Asus Eee PC 1000 HA in Ebony black. My previous laptop sort of broke and it was either dish out a couple of hundred dollars to fix it or spend double that and get a new one. I obviously decided on the latter and why not?
I was still running on last millenium's Pentium 3 and the 512mb of ram could hardly give me enough power to play
YouTube videos. I've been trying to save money, but with the economy the way it is today, I felt that I should contribute to it as much as I can--hence dumping approximately $445 for this laptop.
My Dell was small, light and compact--12" screen and weighing in at a little more than 3lbs. It was exactly what I wanted in a laptop; something I could carry with me on the many trips I make every year and use around my apartment.
I wanted to keep my next laptop small and light. Someone suggested the Asus to me and I began reading up on it. I decided on the Asus 1000HA because of a couple of things:
- 10" screen instead of the smaller 8.9" the other netbooks have.
- Pentium Atom 1.6ghz processor with up to 2GB of memory.
- Windows XP
- 160gb Hard drive space.
- Up to 7 hours of battery life.
I bought this laptop on eBay and paid $415 shipped. I could've gotten it for less had I bought it earlier with Microsoft Live, but I wasn't really sure back then when they had 30% off. I paid another $30 for a 2gb ram since the laptop only has 1 slot for memory and it comes with 1gb standard.
Design and Build--The Asus measures 10.5" x 7.5" x 1.0" and weighs a little more than 3lbs. The bigger battery adds to the weight a bit, but there isn't much of a weight difference between 3lbs and 3.2lbs. It's the difference of two slices of bacon so it's not really an issue. It has 3 USB slots, VGA out, Ethernet, headphone and microphone jacks. It was a good design for them to not put all the USB slots all on the same side.
It's so glossy that you can see the reflections on it.
The Ebony Black is really glossy and looks really nice when you take it out of the package. Unfortunately, that also means it's a magnet for fingerprints and always needs to be wiped down. As you can see from the pictures below, it's really glossy and reflective. I especially like that the hinge for this laptop is really sturdy versus the previous Dell I had that had a much flimsier hinge and eventually broke.
Keyboard and Touchpad--The keys big and wide enough that it doesn't feel like a huge difference in size as compared to a conventional laptop keyboard. The keys feel very "plasticky" and sort of cheap, but it's not really a problem for me since I don't care for such things. Some people complained about the feedback, but I have no issues with that either since mine didn't have the "clicking" sound that they had.
The touchpad is very big. It's supposed to be one of the biggest and for a laptop of this size. I'm glad that they didn't try to make it smaller. Anyone who uses laptops know how annoying it is if it took more than one stroke to get the mouse pointer from one side of the screen to the other. You can move around the entire screen without lifting your finger.
Most reviews I read had some major complaints about the design. The one major complaint was the right Shift key. Somehow, the designers thought that it would be best to put it to the right of the Up-arrow cursor key. Since they wanted to make the keyboard slightly bigger than the smaller netbooks, it seemed to make sense to arrange it that way. However, for people who use the right Shift key very often, they will often press the Up-arrow instead. I didn't think it would've been an issue since I thought I rarely used that Shift key, but apparently, I type a lot of question and quotation marks and I keep on hitting the Up-arrow. I'm still getting used to it now, but it is a bit annoying.
Misplaced Shift KeyAnother negative review is the touch pad left/right click. Virtually every review said it was hard to press down on but there was ONE review that pointed out the reason. The touchpad was designed for a more natural feel and your thumb naturally rests to the edge of the notebook versus on top of the notebook when you use the touchpad. If you press down on the right/left click on the keyboard, it will be stiff. But if you rest your thumb naturally on the edge, it clicks normally. In fact, after using this touchpad, I thought about how stupid all the previous designs were.
vs.
Thumb on top versus thumb on the edge. Latter is more comfortable.--
The resolution is 1024 x 600. In order for it to fit on the screen, the desktop space actually splits into two parts. Moving up and down with the mouse pointer will bring you to the part of the screen that you need. I thought it would be annoying to always do that, but after a couple of hours, I didn't even notice it at all. To keep it all on the same screen, you can change the resolution with just a push of a button conveniently placed at the top of the keyboard. You can switch it to 1024 x 768 or 800 x 600, whichever you prefer.
Not too shabby for screen size.The sound comes from under the laptop, unlike to the side or around where your palms would be like some other laptops. Since it is slightly elevated, the sound comes out unmuffled unless it's resting on your lap. I never expect much from the laptop speakers but surprisingly, it's pretty solid and loud. As I am typing this now, "Life Goes On" is booming from the speakers. I think everyone in my apartment hears it pretty clearly.
At the top of the screen is a 1.3 mega-pixel webcam. I haven't used it yet so no review on it. I doubt I would ever use it, but it's definitely convenient for those who would such a feature.
Performance, Storage, Battery Life--This laptop sports an Intel Atom 1.6ghz processor as mentioned earlier, which means that it has enough power to run things pretty smoothly. The 1gb of ram it came with was more than sufficient and in hindsight, probably didn't need to get an extra gb of memory since I would probably not run so many programs on this. Even with all the programs on at the same time, everything loaded smoothly and there was no lag.
Something interesting about the laptop is that there is a button that allows you to overclock or underclockthe CPU power. You can bring it down to 1.2ghz or up to 1.8ghz if you need more power. I haven't noticed a difference in power, but like I said, I'm not running an heavy-duty programs that need that much power/memory.
The 160gb of hard drive space came standard on this model (the original comes with 80gb), partitioned into two 80gb drives. I loved that it came partitioned because having your drive split into two means that you can backup all your stuff into the second drive. If you ever needed to reformat for whatever reasons, you won't lose anything important except windows. It definitely saved me the time of partitioning it myself, which would mean wiping out the pre-installed Windows (XP with SP3), and putting my own version in since the laptop doesn't come with a Windows CD.
Running at 54,000 rpms, it's not the fastest you would get, but it's more than adequate for normal day-to-day use. I didn't experience any lag transfering things over or loading up any large files.
The battery life is excellent. With WiFi on at the lowest setting (1.2ghz), it is said to be able to run a little over 5 hours, but with WiFi off (like when you're on a plane), it can last up to 7 hours. That's more than enough time for any trip around the US on a plane. I've been on the computer for over 4 hours now with the music on and there seems to be another hour left. Pretty damn good if you ask me.
Other notes--The 1000H and the 1000HA models are different. I think the 1000H model comes with a smaller hard drive (80gb). It also has wireless N and Bluetooth. I thought it was more important to have more hard drive space. I wouldn't use the N since my wireless router would need N as well and Bluetooth is overrated. Altogether, I believe the HA is about $50 cheaper than the H so it worked out to my advantage.
Conclusion--I love this laptop for all the pros. It looks nice, small and light enough to carry around, large enough so that my hands don't get cramps from typing, performs well with no lags and has strong battery life. If your preference is for those exact same things as me, I would highly suggest that you go to the nearest Electronics store and see it for yourself. Ordering it online saves you a lot more money. Even the prices on Amazon are very good.
As for all the cons like the misplaced right Shift key, it would be something I have to learn how to deal with myself. It does get a bit annoying and getting used to, but it's a small speed bump. Other complaints like the left/right click buttons being stiff are just because they didn't use it correctly. Like in my pictures, if you place your thumb on the edge, it works great. It's also refreshingly natural and comfortable.
Verdict--buy this if you are looking for something affordable, portable and to be used for day-to-day things like surfing the web, basic office needs, watching videos, listening to music and all that jazz, this would be something you might want to look into. If you are looking for something to game or run heavy-duty programs, this would definitely not be for you.
Have you been searching for a new laptop? Does this fit your budget and need?
mancouch.com
It's so glossy that you can see the reflections on it.
Comments (6)
pretty nice sized laptp. seems like a slow processor though.
I've had my Acer Aspire 5315-2153 for a little more than a year now. It came with Vista Home Basic, and I downgraded it to Windows XP Pro. It was only $330 for the laptop at Wal-Mart, and the XP disc, free, lol. I have never been happier with any computer than I am with this one. If I had to deal with only a 10 inch screen, I think I might die. I like the small and lightweight aspect of netbooks, but I've heard you can't install new programs or software, and that there's not a CD-ROM? I'd be terrified of breaking something that small as well. I fear that sometimes with my own laptop with a 16 inch screen.
@kmiahali@healthkicker - It's definitely not for gaming or graphic design, but packs enough power to just surf the web, watch videos and do whatever basics you need.
nais.
not much processor, but as long as it serves your purposes--the overclock/underclock button is pretty cool. have you looked inside the laptop to see how, exactly, that is done on the MB?I think that it's excellent....for what it's targeted for ((students)). I'd never bother gaming or doing photoshop on it, but for lugging around and making notes on, it's perfect. I'm very tempted to get one myself, but I'm waiting for now.
@kmiahali@healthkicker - the processor actually isn't too bad. Besides it isn't like something you'd want to use for gaming (obviously). It's pretty much meant to be mobile internet. Really the biggest downfall is the tiny keyboard and the weird shift key. I have a 900A with the same processor and it works fine, actually faster than my brand new desk top. But, I also run Linux on mine, not windows.