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Omega
12-25-2008, 08:02 PM
So... I managed to land myself one of these for Christmas, and it is sweet.

1. Size, Weight, Portability & Ergonomics
This thing is small. I have one with a 10" screen and I still can't believe how small this thing is. Were it any smaller (and they do make smaller ones, at 8.9" screens), I could probably put it in my back pocket and walk around with it.

It's also very light, at a svelte 2.65lbs, which, considering it's main purposes -- web browsing and note-taking (for me anyways, as a student), is astonishing, because short of my Art notebook, I can replace all of my other paper-and-wire notebooks with this and end up carrying less weight, even with my USB mouse and the Eee's power cord.

Because of it's small size and low weight, it's almost painfully portable. I kid you not when I say I've taken it with me everywhere in the past day I've had it... All around the house, even out to the store, and I even wrote half of this review in the restroom. :D

And all this carrying of it around means it should have good ergonomics... which it does. It's not like "molded to fit your hand perfectly" good, but using it is much like using any normal laptop (only smaller, so typing is a bit slower at first but when you learn the keyboard your wpm will normalize), and carrying it feels safe and secure. On the battery and the case, on the underside of the laptop near the hinge side is a groove, wide enough for your fingers or thumb (depending on how you're carrying it). And because it's so light, it doesn't strain your arm to carry it for a long time. It's a win-win.

2. Power
Obviously, a laptop this small (on an Intel Atom platform) won't be an amazing contender for power, but it's nothing to shake a stick at. Especially for a laptop that weighs less than all my notebooks combined. In fact, this brand-spankin'-new Asus Eee has a bit more power than my four or five year old Dell laptop (Which could run old Steam games flawlessly... HL1, CS1.6, TFC, and so forth, as well as HL2 a little laggy (well okay, really laggy). Not impressive, but when you consider it's...

3. Battery Life,
Then things start making more sense. See, older laptops and damn near all desktops aren't built for nearly the same level of effeciency as the Intel Atom series of processors. Considering the fact that the Atom processors use so little power (a comparison using an Intel Atom 230 vs. a similar VIA chip showed the Intel Atom, under full load, drawing 60w) compared to desktop computers (Running C2D chips) which can pull up to 130w. What does all this mean, though?

It means that Asus Eee PC's have a battery life starting at just under 4 hours and extending all the way up to 7 or more for top-end models. And considering that most full sized windows-based laptops pull around 2hrs tops, 4 - 7 hr battery life is damned impressive. Comparing the Eee to my old Dell Inspiron 5100 again... My Eee gets 4 hours at full charge and my Dell gets just under 1 hour. All of this comes at a...

4. Price,
Though. And that price is, for my model (base-model, 120gb HDD, 1gb RAM, no webcam), $350. They can run you as much as $680 (price via Newegg.com) for the top-end model, with the fastest and most powerful CPU, 16gb SSD, gloss screen, LED backlight, full 10" model and everything. It's not worth spending more than about $450-500 on an EeePC, however, because for more than that, you can get a significantly more powerul laptop with better features (Unless you're dead-set on having phenomenal battery life or a tiny laptop or something). Even for the $350 model, though, you get some interesting...

5. Doodads & Pre-Installed Software.
I should mention that the Eee comes with no (yes, none whatsoever) bloatware. That's right. No free-trial software, no sponsored apps, nothing. It comes with the following programs installed:

ASUS's Tray Manager.
ASUS's Battery Manager
ASUS's (well, not ASUS's, but some form of) Touchpad Drivers (which emulate Apple's "Multi-touch" touchpads... except the ASUS has more features)
Microsoft Works
and Skype (Which I promptly uninstalled because I never use it, but it is kind of a "big thing" in computing these days, so I can see why it's on there)

And that's all the software.


It has some nifty little features, too. Like these four buttons. One of them rotates through resolutions (800x600, 1024x600 and 1024x768, keep in mind the screen's native resolution is 1024x600), one of them turns off the screen (so you can save power i presume, also so you can hide that porn you weren't looking at), one of them rotates through battery/power modes ("Super Performance", "High Performance", "Battery Saving" and "Auto Battery Saving"), and the fourth opens Skype (though you can reprogram the button to open another program, do something else, etc. The last two buttons are reprogrammable via ASUS's software).

6. The Touchpad Drivers
Definitely deserve their own segment. That's right. Touchpad drivers get their own segment.

Aside from the fact that the touchpad is tiny (much like everything on the Eee), It's amazingly useful with the included drivers. You can:

Move the mouse cursor
Scroll (kind of like Apple's Multitouch here, you use two fingers and drag)
left OR middle click (Middle clicking is done by tapping two fingers simultaneously in the middle of the pad)
Zoom/Shrink (much like Apple's Multitouch, move fingers together/apart. Under web browsers or word processors, it actually makes the font bigger or smaller)
Make a Magnifying glass (put one finger down, tap another one twice to start, tap with one finger to finish)
open "My Computer" (three fingers, push up)
"Alt-Tab" (three fingers, pull down)
Rotate images (two fingers, rotate)

All that. With a touchpad. Take that, Apple!

7. Overall
Overall, It's an awesome piece of tech. It's small, light, portable, decently powerful, cheap and affordable, and it's pretty much no-frills usefulness. If you got big, clumsy fingers like I do, I suggest getting a mouse, though.

9.5/10

FuzzyPlushroom
12-25-2008, 09:38 PM
Sounds good to me! My only comment, really, is that if you're only getting an hour out of your old Dell, it's probably time to change the battery. I just adopted an aircraft-carrier 17" Dell (Inspiron 9400, Core Duo 1.73, terrible GMA 950) and it gets a bit over two hours from how it's done so far.

OvRiDe
12-25-2008, 11:22 PM
They can run you as much as $680 (price via Newegg.com) for the top-end model, with the fastest and most powerful CPU, 16gb SSD, gloss screen, LED backlight, full 10" model and everything.

Don't they all have the 1.6Ghz Atom processor?

Also...

:pics:

xRyokenx
12-25-2008, 11:46 PM
)(sds lol

Nice review, by the way.

Crimson Sky
12-25-2008, 11:46 PM
My wife got an EE from work, and its fantastic. Named it Lilly on the network ;)

Luke122
12-26-2008, 12:32 AM
I've managed to to some long term testing with both a 7" EEE and a 9" EEE.

The 7" was a 4G model; 4gb SSD, 512mb ram, and Linux. The 9" had the 12gb ssd, 1gb ram, and Windows. I upgraded the 7" to 2gb ram, and installed XP Pro, then added 16bg SDHC card for storage. The only thing I did with the 9" was upgrade to 2gb ram, and XP Pro (instead of Home).

I found that the 9" screen was (not suprisingly) much nicer to work with than the 7", but the 7" model had much better sound, as the speakers were along side the screen, rather than under the palm rest like on the 9" EEE.

The 7" also ran fairly warm, which was remedied by adding a utility (which I cant remember the name of now! dammit..) which allowed manual control of the fan speed, cpu speed, and screen brightness. In fact, the screen brightness could be raised above the factory locked "maximum" level, to make the display daylight readable! (there was a NOTICEABLE hit in battery life though..)

Even with the fan running full time at 80-90%, the 7" unit was very quiet, and much cooler/stable. Battery life was not seriously affected by the constant running fan.

I have wanted to try the 10" EEE for a long time, thanks for the great review!

OvRiDe
12-26-2008, 01:24 AM
)(sds lol


It was a rhetorical question. :P

I have been interested in them for a while. I would really like to have one for when I have to travel. Be able watch movies on the plane, surf the internet during a layover, without having to lug a full size laptop. The problem is I just don't travel THAT much anymore and it would probably just sit most of the time. I also would love to see one of these use the Atom 330 (Dual Core), but its probably overkill for the purpose the EEE was intended.

Oh.. and I forgot in the first post.. nice review.

xRyokenx
12-26-2008, 01:25 PM
It was a rhetorical question. :P

Perhaps that was a rhetorical answer? :P

SXRguyinMA
12-26-2008, 06:07 PM
nice review, I was looking at getting one of these for the wife, was skeptical about the size and price though, but you've changed my mind :up:

progbuddy
12-26-2008, 06:13 PM
Don't they all have the 1.6Ghz Atom processor?

Also...

:pics:

I have the original 701 4 Gig from last Christmas. It runs a 900 MHz Intel Dothan M processor. It still gets 4 hours of battery life. :]

Omega
12-26-2008, 06:37 PM
As it turns out, mine is an Asus Eee 1000HD, which has an Intel Celeron M CPU in it. Not the Intel Atom I thought it had.

Still gets like, Four hours of battery life, but that definately explains the lower price than anything on newegg.

Collinstheclown
12-26-2008, 08:29 PM
I got myself the Eee 1000. Comes with 40gigs of SSD, gig of ram (changed to 2 now), wifi, bluetooth, 1.3MP webcam, 10" screen, and linux.

I'm not familiar with Linux, so I'm going to be putting XP on it as soon as I find the damn disc. It came with a driver CD for XP, so it should be painless.

Was only $400, and so far I'm nothing but happy with it. I go on business trips here and there and need something like this to take with me to pass the time. Gonna put Starcraft on it lol, and load it up with emulators.




-CollinstheClown

Omega
12-26-2008, 08:43 PM
40GB SSD? Where? I've seen 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 16, 32 and 64gb SSD's, but never 40.

Also, you need a USB CD drive to install winxp. I nuked my laptop earlier today just to see how hard it'd be and I was pleased to find out it takes under 10 minutes (mine, anyways, uses norton ghost to restore the image in under 10 mins on a slow usb ODD and dual HDDS... not bad)

Omega
12-26-2008, 09:41 PM
http://img354.imageshack.us/img354/3033/pa060005no1.jpg

The Eee (lower left), Inspiron 5100 (lower right) and my two 17" screens (top center and rightmost).

What's funny is how huge the Inspiron feels now... and how it's resolution is 1024x768 and it's so huge whereas the Eee's is 1024x600 and it's so small. (Desktop screens are 1280x1024 fwiw)

Collinstheclown
12-27-2008, 12:38 AM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220369
It's like a 32GB and 8GB or something.. I havn't been able to dive into it really so I can't really say.

I have an adapter for my DVD drive, so no worries there. I'm about to try the install now so I'll beable to see what drives are in this thing.

But it has to be said, this is my first time using SSD and it make no noise what so ever, not even a fan! I'm in love with it lol.




-CollinstheClown

Omega
12-27-2008, 02:26 AM
Yeah, SSDs are sweet. Less power. No noise. No moving parts. No fans. Awesome.

Collinstheclown
12-27-2008, 03:01 AM
Agreed. I just finished installing XP, and yeah it's a 8GB primary drive, and a 32GB secondary drive.

ASUS has a utility on the XP driver disc that comes with the Eee, it's called "InstAll". It installs all the Eee drivers automatically, one after another. There is also advanced features to let you do it all yourself.

ASUS really makes this thing easy as cake to use! No wonder it's a hit!


*Edit* I just noticed the touchpad has a triple finger input, anyone know what it does?




-CollinstheClown

Omega
12-27-2008, 04:20 AM
Agreed. I just finished installing XP, and yeah it's a 8GB primary drive, and a 32GB secondary drive.

ASUS has a utility on the XP driver disc that comes with the Eee, it's called "InstAll". It installs all the Eee drivers automatically, one after another. There is also advanced features to let you do it all yourself.

ASUS really makes this thing easy as cake to use! No wonder it's a hit!


*Edit* I just noticed the touchpad has a triple finger input, anyone know what it does?




-CollinstheClown

Read my review, I went over what all the touchpad functions are

Collinstheclown
12-27-2008, 04:55 AM
I feel foolish. :redface: Must have missed that, thanks!




-CollinstheClown

progbuddy
12-27-2008, 04:42 PM
Love the "BURN IN HELL." It adds that finishing touch to any Dell.

Zephik
12-27-2008, 07:36 PM
40GB SSD? Where? I've seen 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 16, 32 and 64gb SSD's, but never 40.

There are 250GB SSD's (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2013240636%201421444038&name=250GB) out now too. ^_^

Omega
12-27-2008, 09:28 PM
Love the "BURN IN HELL." It adds that finishing touch to any Dell.

Yeah, pretty much.

The other thing on there is "I'm so Adjective, I Verb Nouns!"

progbuddy
12-28-2008, 03:53 PM
Yeah, pretty much.

The other thing on there is "I'm so Adjective, I Verb Nouns!"

Haha. Great. :) I had an idea to take my friend's Dell and cross out the "D" and put "Nicht Schn-ell."

chaksq
01-21-2009, 06:08 PM
I have been debating on getting a EEEpc for a while. I almost bought one (earlier model 7") from someone at school but my roommate needed it more and had money for it so he got it instead. He loves it. I don't need one right now but I think when the time comes to replace my laptop I'll get one.

EspoNation
02-03-2009, 09:39 PM
I have been debating on getting a EEEpc for a while. I almost bought one (earlier model 7") from someone at school but my roommate needed it more and had money for it so he got it instead. He loves it. I don't need one right now but I think when the time comes to replace my laptop I'll get one.

Agreed on that one, I have been looking at the 10" ones lately. I was thinking about picking one up and swapping in a bigger SSD drive. But I think I am going to wait, my lappy serves me pretty well for now.