After getting tired of waiting for the 6 cell version of the MSI Wind to be available, I pulled the trigger and ordered an Eee PC 1000H last week. You’ve already seen the unboxing and the photo shoot comparing the 1000H to my HP Mini-Note. Now that I’ve been using the computer for a few days, I thought I’d share some thoughts.

First off, keep in mind, I’ve used an Eee PC 4G 701 and a 1.2GHz HP Mini-Note in the past. I skipped the Eee PC 900 and the MSI Wind. So I can’t give you a firsthand account of how this PC stacks up against those. But I do plan to get together with jkOnTheRun’s Kevin Tofel in a week or two and compare notes. He just ordered an MSI Wind which should be arriving soon.

Without further ado, here’s a brief review in bullet point form:

Pros:

• The Intel Atom CPU makes this computer feel rather zippy compared to the Eee PC 701with its Celeron Chip or the VIA C7-laden HP Mini-Note. Windows boots and shuts down fairly quickly (I haven’t timed it) and programs launch promptly. Most importantly, I can have 5+ tabs open in Firefox without a slowdown, or run several programs including a media player, IM application, and web browser withotu slowing down the PC. That was impossible with the Mini-Note.
• Between the power-saving processor and the 6-cell battery, the 1000H gets excellent battery life. Again, I haven’t performed a thorough test, but I’m easily getting 5+ hours of use per charge. I took the laptop with me for a weekend trip and didn’t have to plug it in once, despite several hours of use and many more hours of standby time.
• The battery also charges quickly, something that was not true for the original Eee PC 701.
• The 10.2 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display is large enough to read without squinting, although it could probably stand to be a little sharper.
• While the keyboard isn’t quite as touch-typing friendly as the HP Mini-Note keyboard, it is much larger and easier to use than the Eee PC 701 keyboard.
• The larger multi-touch trackpad with two distinct mouse buttons is a pleasure to use when compared with smaller trackpads with rocker buttons or buttons placed to the left and right of the touchpad.
• The Matte screen doesn’t reflect glare. I wish I could say the same for the glossy case.

Cons:

• It’s way too easy to swipe the touchpad with your palm while typing, which wreaks havoc on whatever text you’re trying to enter. If you use a USB mouse, I highly recommend turning off the touchpad.
• The power button is surprisingly hard to press because of the way it’s positioned. You sort of have to hit it with the very tip of your finger, and I’ve often found myself thinking I’ve turned the computer on or off only to realize a moment later that nothing’s happening.
• You can turn the WiFi and Bluetooth on or off by hitting Fn+F2. But there’s no way to turn on just WiFi or Bluetooth. You have to turn them both on, and if you’re not using one or the other, you right click on the  EeePC Tray utility to disable the one you don’t need. (My bad. It looks like you can just keep hitting the Fn+F2 key until you get the combo you want).
• The speaker volume is pretty quiet.
• At 3.2 pounds, this is probably the heaviest netbook that I’d still call a netbook.

Overall, I’m quite happy with the Eee PC 1000H. When I have some time i’ll try to run some more scientific tests on things like battery life. But there’s very little that my 6 pound, 15.4 inch laptop can do that the 3 pound 10.2 inch Eee PC 1000H cannot. And the Eee PC gets about 3 times the battery life, which makes it my current notebook of choice for working away from the confines of my home office.

I’ll be curious to see how it holds up against the highly acclaimed MSI Wind. The Wind is a bit lighter, and based on some reviews I’ve seen, it may get longer battery life. On the other hand, it lacks the 802.11n support that the Eee PC 1000H has (not that this is a must-have feature for me at the moment). The Wind also does not currently have a multi-touch trackpad. Again, not a killer feature, but it is nice to be able to scroll through web pages by placing two fingers on the trackpad rather than using one to hold down a mouse button.

Windows Vista gets a lot of flack for its heavy hardware requirements. But it turns out you can run Windows Vista Home Premium reasonably well on some underpowered hardware. The video above shows the operating system running on an Eee PC 900 with a 900MHz Celeron processor, 1GB of RAM, and 20GB of solid state memory.

The computer certainly takes longer to boot up and shutdown than it would if it were running Windows XP or Linux. But it runs most of the programs you’d want it to run, including Windows Media Player, Microsoft Office, and web browsers. It’s not exactly a speed demon, but Windows Vista is certainly a bit prettier than XP, includes a built in widget engine, and supports USB TV tuners and media center extenders.

Just when you thought Asus couldn’t possibly introduce yet another Eee PC model, the Eee PC 900HD shows up on the FCC web site. The 900HD shares more than a name with the Eee PC 900 and 900A. The PC’s chassis looks basically the same as earlier Eee PC 900 models. But if you look at the bottom of the case, the access panel is significantly larger, which could make it much easier to get at the hard drive — because that’s likely the main thing that sets this PC apart from its predecessors, the inclusion of a hard drive instead of flash storage.

It’s not clear at the moment how big the hard drive is (either in terms of storage capacity or physical size. Is this a 1.8 inch model or a 2.5 inch hard drive?) We also don’t know if the Eee PC 900HD uses the same 900MHz Intel Celeron CPU that you can find in the Eee PC 900 or the newer 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU used in the Eee PC 900A. I’m inclined to think it probably uses the Celeron, otherwise it might be called the Eee PC 900AHD. Because there’s nothing Asus loves more than tacking extra letters onto a PC name.

[via jkkmobile]

Asus appears to have launched its new software download center for Eee PC users. The site has over 3,400 free Liinux applications including games, media players, and office applications. There’s just one problem. There doesn’t appear to be any easy way to install these programs on a current generation Eee PC.

Each program has a handy little “install” button next to it. But what happens when you click install is your computer attempts to download a file with a CNR extension. CNR stands for “click n run,” and it’s a file type designed for the Linspire Linux operating system. The idea is that you can click a file on a web page to download and install applications in Linux just as easily as you would in Windows. No need to type anything into a command line (or fire up a separate application like Synaptic).

But right now, Xandros doesn’t support CNR. And if you’ve got an Eee PC running Linux, it’s runnning Xandros (unless you installed your favorite Linux distro all by your lonesome). So what gives? Well, Xandros bought Linspire a little while back, so it’s possible that future versions of the Xandros OS will support CNR. And it’s possible that a software update could be pushed out to Xandros and Eee PC users fairly soon that will let them take advantage of the Eee PC Download center. But I have no idea why the site went live a few days ago when it’s pretty much  useless at the moment.

[via Engadget and EeeUser Forums]

After taking a few moments to rip my new Asus Eee PC 1000H out of its packaging, I did a quick photo shoot with the 1000H and my HP Mini-Note.

As you can see, the Eee PC 1000H is consdirably larger than the Mini-Note, and it is a tiny bit heavier. This is partially due to the larger battery. That’s the price you pay for extended battery life. The keyboard is a huge improvement over the Eee PC 701 keyboard, but not quite as touch-typable as the Mini-Note keyboard.

The display is matte style, while the Mini-Note is glossy. Conversely, the rest of the 1000H case is glossier than the Mini-Note case.

Sure, the Asus Eee PC 1000H has been out for a little while now and you may have already seen an unboxing video or two. But you haven’t seen my unboxing video yet, have you? So check it out:

I’ve been playing with the laptop for about a half hour, and so far I’m very impressed. It addresses almost every issue I’ve had with the Eee CP 701 and the HP Mini-Note:

• The onboard graphics and CPU are powerful enough to handle multitasking and multimedia. It plays Hulu videos flawlessly.
• The 1024 x 600 pixel display doesn’t manage to fit as much on the screen as the 1280 x 768 pixel display, but it handles most web sites (including this one) just fine, and no squinting is necessary when looking at this computer.
• The keyboard is much larger and easier to type on than the Eee PC 701 keyboard. It’s not quite as easy to touch type on as the HP Mini-Note.
• The touchpad is nice and wide, and has two trackpad buttons. But I still prefer to plug in a travel mouse.
• Asus ships a padded slip case for the computer
• The power brick and AC adapter are relatively small, and feature a two-prong plug that goes many places the HP Mini-Note three-prong plug will not.

On the down sde, the built in speakers are pretty quiet. And the webcam is a bit choppy, at least with the included software. I’ll try another application soon.

I was mildly surprised to note that Asus ships the Eee PC 1000H with Microsoft Works and StarOffice rather than OpenOffice.org. Of course, StarOffice and OpenOffice.org are basically the same office suite. But it seemed like an odd choice.

Asus has been shipping Eee PC units with solid state disks since day one. But by disks, I mean little flash memory modules that you can slot into various connectors on an Eee PC motherboard. Now DigiTimes reports that Asus is working on adding standard SSDs with SATA interfaces to its Eee PC line. In other words, the same type of solid state disk used in more expensive laptop computers. The advantage for Asus is that more and more companies are starting to offer SSDs as alternatives to hard drives, which is driving down the cost. And that could eventually make it cheaper for Asus to purchase standard solid state disks. Right now, they typically cost much more than the flash memory available in an Eee PC or other low-end netbook. The advantage for consumers is that it could be much easier to upgrade the SSD or HDD on an Eee PC in the future if Asus decides to go this route. Because all you’ll need to do is pick up an off the shelf component, make sure it fits in the space Asus has carved out in the case for it, and snap it into a standard SATA connector.

DigiTimes reports that Asus is preparing a notebook with a 10.2 inch display, an Intel Atom CPU, and hard drives with up to 320GB of storage capacity. And these notebooks will not bear the Eee PC name. Instead, they’ll be called the Asus N-series.

For a company that’s already done a lot to dillute the Eee PC brand name by releasing over a dozen laptops with similar names, the move seems a bit odd. The N-series will reportedly start at NT$15000 or about $479 US, which puts these computers squarely in Eee PC territory when it comes to both price and size. The only thigns I can see that really would really set these laptopss apart are the facts that they run Windows Vista and have high capacity hard drives (which might be part of the reason they run Windows Vista — Microsoft is only granting low cost laptop makers the right to use Windows XP on devices with slower processors and smaller hard drives).

If DigiTimes is correct, the N-series should be available in September.

[via Register Hardware]

Asus has officially unveiled 4 new Eee PC models. But you know what? We’ve already kind of seen all of these. Here’s what’s new: The Eee PC 1000HD XP, the Eee PC 904HD XP, the Eee PC 901 XP, and the Eee PC 900 XP.

In other words, what you’ve got here are 4 Eee PC models running Windows XP. But Asus had already announced the Eee PC 1000HD, 904HD, 901, and 900 models. So there’s really not much new to report here. But if comparison charts are your thing, check out the new chart that shows how each of these newish models stacks up against the others after the jump.

[via UMPC Fever]

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s good news and bad news on the Eee PC 900A front. Jkkmobile reports that the upcoming laptop has the same size and form factor as the Eee PC 900, right down to the RAM access panel on the back making it easy to upgrade the computer’s memory. That’s something you don’t find on every netbook, or even every Eee PC these days.

The new computer also uses a single 8GB SSD module for the operating system and storage, unlike some other units that have a speedy 4GB SSD for the OS and another slower SSD for storage. That means the Eee PC 900A would probably outperform the 900 even if it didn’t have the faster Intel Atom CPU (the original 900 has a Celeron chip).

But not all is well in the land of the 900A. The computer comes with a cheap 4400mAh battery. And that battery uses a different connector than the Eee PC 900 or the Eee PC 701. That means you can’t just swap out a spare battery you already have lying around or pick up one of the hundreds of spare batteries you can find on eBay.

We’ve heard a lot about the upcoming Asus Eee PC 900A over the last few days. We’ve found out that it’s virtually identical to the Eee PC 900 but that it swaps out the 900MHz Intel Celeron CPU for a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor. But one thing that we haven’t seen is an official price. Sure, at least one German store said the computer would cost €299, but you never know if those first prices are just the actions of a rogue retailer or the official list prices.

Now it looks like Asus is spilling the details on the Eee PC 900A price. The PC will indeed cost €299 in Germany, although it’s not clear if it will be available for the same price in other parts of Europe and/or the US. €299, by the way, is about $446 US.

In other news, it looks like a member of the Hong Kong PDA User Group got his hands on an Eee PC 900A and shot some video showing off the computer’s features. Nothing too spectacular here. It looks pretty much like an Eee PC 900, but with a faster processor, new BIOS, and 8GB of storage. You can check out the video after the jump.

[via Eee PC News.de and jkkmobile]

Read the rest of this entry »

Eee PC 900 running OS X

While the Asus Eee PC line only officially supports Linux and Windows, people have been finding ways to load OS X onto the diminutive laptops for ages. But if you care about little things like performance, here’s a tip: You might want to pick up an Eee PC 1000H instead of an Eee PC 901 if you want to run OS X.

MacEee reports that the 901 is just too slow to run the Mac operating system. The problem isn’t with the CPU. The two computers actually have identical processors. Rather, the Eee PC 901’s solid state disk just isn’t fast enough to keep up with the demands OS X places on it. The Eee PC 901 actually has two solid state disks, a 4GB disk for the operating system and a second, larger disk for programs and files. The 4GB disk is pretty zippy, but the secondary disk not so much. And according to MacEee that second drive makes OS X kind of sluggish. OK, that’s an understatement. It reportedly takes 7 minutes to boot OS X on the Eee PC 901.

The solution? Pick up an Eee PC 1000H. It comes with an 80GB hard drive, and happens to be about $50 cheaper than the 901 anyway.

While I would never actually condone installing OS X on unsupported software (which is a violation of Apple’s licensing agreement), you can find a ton of information on how to do it at the Eee PC OS X Project wiki.

Last week Asus launched an online storage service for Eee PC customers — but only Eee PC 901 and 1000 users can access the site at yostore.net. But Aldrin Cantos at Asus Eee HowTo says that could soon change.

Cantos says he’s received word from YoStore support saying that those who have purchased older Eee PC models like the Asus Eee PC 701 or Eee PC 900 will soon be able to access the web service. Users can store up to 20GB of data online, although it’s possible that you’ll get less storage space if you have an older unit. For example, if you have an Eee PC with a 4GB solid state disk, you may only get 4GB of storage. This is how I originally expeced the YoStore to work, but since Asus seems to be providing 20GB to Eee PC 1000 and 901 users who may have 40GB or more of storage on their computers, it looks like 20GB might just be the standard offering.

Users will also be able to find software and firmware updates for the Eee PC at the YoStore. Eventually Asus may sell third party software through the site as well.

It’s official: Asus is pulling yet another Eee PC out of its very, very large hat. The Asus Eee PC 900A, which we first started to hear about a few weeks ago, is indeed virtually identical to the Eee PC 900. But there’s one major difference: The new model packs an Intel Atom CPU.

The Eee PC 900A is also the first Eee PC I’ve seen that comes in purple. Here’s a rundown of the rest of the specs:

• CPU: Intel Atom N270
• Display: 8.9 inch, 1024 x 600 pixels
• RAM: 1GB
• Storage: 8GB or 16GB SSD and 20GB free online storage
• Connectivity: 802.11b/g, Ethernet
• Expansion: SD card slot, 3 USB ports, VGA output,
• Webcam: 0.3 megapixels
• Battery: 4 cell, 3-4 hours
• Dimensions: 22.5cm x 17cm x 2~3.38cm
• Weight: .99kg
• Colors: white, black, and purple

No official word on pricing or availability yet, but German retailer ComTech is accepting preorders for the computer for 299 Euros or about $445 US.
[via jkkmobile]

Apparently Asus has decided to give its Eee PC computer lineup the collector’s card treatment. The company offers Eee PC models coated in white, black, pink, green, and blue plastic around the world. But now for a limited time only, Korean customers can pick up a pinkish red or green Eee PC with some sort of pattern that looks a bit like spilled paint on the cover. Be the first kid on your block to own one!

The special edition designs will show up on Eee PC 901 and Eee PC 1000H models and should be available on August 22nd in Korea only. And possibly eBay.

[via Engadget]