Looking to replace that “vintage” SATA HDD in your netbook? Why not upgrade to a snazzy new SSD? Imation wants you to, and they’ve got a host of new upgrade kits designed for just that purpose.

The kits include either a 64 or 128 gigabyte 2.5″ SSD as well as an external USB enclosure into which you can slide your netbook’s existing HDD. It’s a thoughtful inclusion as it allows you to get some use out of the hard drive you’re replacing, but I’m not sure the pricing makes these kits an attractive buy.

The 64Gb variety is retailing for $211.99 over at Buy.com and the 128Gb kit will set you back $359.99. By comparison, you can DIY a kit like this for about $170 or less – similar external enclosures sell for less than $20 and you can find 64Gb SSDs for around $150, saving you a cool $40.

via Slashgear

Asus

The Asus Eee PC 1000H was one of the company’s first 10 inch netbooks. I picked one up in August, 2008 and I’m still using it. The Eee PC 1000H may not be as thin or light as some newer netbooks, and it doesn’t get quite as much battery life as newer Asus models. But you know what? It still works pretty well and shares a common set of guts with most netbooks including a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU and 1GB of RAM. The model I own has just 80GB of disk space, but there are also 160GB models out there.

Asus stopped making this netbook a while ago, but the company hasn’t forgotten the earlier adopters like me. This weekend Asus uploaded a Windows 7 Self Upgrade Guide for the Eee PC 1000H/XP to the company support site.

Having installed Windows 7 RC on the netbook earlier this year, I can tell you that many features work out of the box. But the upgrade guide recommends that before you start, you make sure you have the latest BIOS version first. While the step for installing Windows 7 just says “Install Windows 7 operating system from the DVD,” step 3 is worth checking out. Once Windows is installed, you may want to download and install drivers and utilities from the Asus support site, and step three explains the order in which they should be installed, starting with the chipset drivers and ending with the Super Hybrid Engine and Asus Update software.

Will anything bad happen if you don’t install the utilities in this order (or at all)? Probably not. But it’s nice to know that Asus was thinking about us.

Keep in mind, if you upgrade an Eee PC 1000H or any Windows XP computer to Windows 7, your data and settings will not be imported. You could configure a dual boot system which would preserve your data, but there’s no clean migration path from Windows XP to Windows 7 that allows you to import your settings the way you can when you upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7.

The other day a Microsoft employee giving a presentation at WinHEC accidentally suggested that the Asus Eee PC S101 has a dual core Intel Atom processor. But the truth of the matter is that while Intel has developed a dual core version of the Atom chip, it’s meant for desktops or larger laptops. Not netbooks. The dual core Atom 330 CPU generates too much heat and it’s larger than the Intel Atom N270 CPU used in many netbooks today.

Apparently at least one computer retailer didn’t get the memo. Because Philippine computer shop PC Corner is offering dual core CPU upgrades for the Asus Eee PC 1000H and the MSI Wind U100. The company says it will upgrade the computers by replacing the Atom N270 processor with an Atom 330 CPU. In order to accomodate the new processor, the company has to replace the computer chassis, which will cost extra. It’s not clear exactly how the new chassis will differ from the existing model. Is it bigger? Better ventilated?

The web page is a little confusing, since it also mentions the possibility that computer manufacturers might release their own upgraded models with the Atom 330 CPU. Last I heard, that wasn’t going to happen. Intel may eventually come out with a dual core CPU for netbooks, but the Atom 330 isn’t it. I wrote to PC Corner to ask if they’re actually upgrading the the CPU and chassis, and this is the reply I got:

the UPGRADE is “a FULL SWAP”

meaning Chassis + Atom 330

old chassis + 8K = new chassis + new cpu

The Asus Eee PC S101 may be super thin compared to earlier Eee PC models. But it’s also super hard to upgrade (at least when compared with most earlier Eee PCs).

Laptop Magazine pried off the access panel of their review unit and saw a RAM access slot. And that’s about it. If you want to replace the solid state disk with a hard drive, or a faster or higher capacity SSD, it looks like you’ll have to pry off the keyboard because there’s no access to the SSD from the easy access panel, or even by undoing all the screws on the back of the unit.

Oh, and as for that RAM upgrade? It turns out that if you replace the included SODIMM with a 2GB stick, the machine still seems to only recognize 1GB. It’s not clear if this is due to a limitation in the BIOS or something else. But it does mean that the most expensive Eee PC model Asus has to offer is also the most difficult to upgrade.

You can pick up an HP Mini-Note with a 1.2GHz processor and 120GB hard drive for just $50 more than the 1.0GHZ/4GB SSD version. But if you buy the lower end model and then later decide you want a higher capacity hard drive, it’s pretty easy to upgrade. HP Mini Note PC has step by step instructions, and a few photos showing the upgrade process.

Windows XP runs great on my Mini-Note. My only major complaint is that the 1280 x 768 screen is so sharp that I’m having a hard time reading some content. I’ve been toying with the idea of replacing Firefox with Opera for my portable browsing needs, since not only does Opera have a full page zoom feature (as opposed to Firefox 2’s text-only zoom), but you can set a default zoom level so that every new page you open is properly zoomed. While Firefox 3 beta 5 has a full-page zoom option, you have to manually zoom each individual page.

But I’m getting off track. The point is, that my HP 2133 Mini-Note, with a 1.2GHz processor and a 120GB hard drive runs Windows XP about as well as any 4 or 5 year old computer would. In fact, the PC boots Windows XP in just about a minute, which is about the same amount of time it takes my Eee PC to get to a working desktop. Eventually HP plans to offer Mini-Note customers the option to purchase a system with Windows XP preloaded. But for now you can only get a Mini-Note with Windows Vista Business, Vista Home Basic, or SUSE Enterprise. And that’s a real shame, because as Joanna Stern at Laptop Magazine has noted, it takes a full 2 minutes and 30 seconds to boot a Mini-Note running Windows Vista.

Now, boot times aren’t the end all, be all. And everyone knows Vista takes longer to boot than XP on most systems. But having to wait 2 and a half minutes for your PC to load before you can start working at the coffee shop, on the train, or wherever you are… that’s just silly. Stern managed to shave about a minute off of the boot time by customizing some settings (check out the Laptop Magazine blog to see how), but Vista still takes longer to start up than XP. Oh, and did I mention she’s using a Mini-Note with a 1.6GHz processor, not a 1.2GHz chip like mine?

So next up, Stern decided to try upgrading the RAM from 1GB to 2GB. She’ll be evaluating the performance over the next few days and posting her findings. But in the meantime, she shot a nifty little video showing how to upgrade the RAM in a Mini-Note.

It’s not quite as simple as upgrading the RAM in most Eee PC models. While many Eee PC units include a RAM access panel on the bottom of the unit, in order to upgrade the RAM in a Mini-Note, you’ll have to undo some screws in the battery case and remove the keyboard in order to pop out your RAM.

I had originally planned to do this upgrade myself. But honestly, in the few days I’ve been using my Mini-Note, I have yet to approach 1GB of memory use. I’m not sure there’s much need for more than 1GB of RAM in an XP machine I’ll be using primarily for web browsing and writing with a little audio editing on the side. But Vista is a much more resource-intensive operating system, so I imagine the RAM boost should help at least a little bit.

I did put 2GB of RAM in my Eee PC, but that’s because the Eee PC has just 4GB of storage space, so I didn’t want to dedicate any of that to swap space or a page file. If you pick up the 4GB solid state version of the Mini-Note, you might want to consider a RAM upgrade as well.