The Eee next to my Glock 36.

A review by Exodus

I am a System Administrator with eight years in the industry. I currently work for a small business and manage a network with four servers and thirty workstations. I fill the rest of my time as the company’s Graphic Designer, and have had to learn to be a Commercial Photographer. I’m still working on the photography skills though.

There are plenty of tech reviews on the ‘Net full of synthetic benchmarks and shiny graphs, and as such, I’m not going to waste my time on any of those. If that’s what you’re looking for, Google will show you the way.

The Asus Eee PC is one of many in a relatively new class of computers: The Netbook. A Netbook is a lightweight, low power portable designed for web browsing, e-mail and light computing. They boast a long battery life and a relatively low sticker price sitting in the $279 to $500 range. The key when looking at a Netbook is to remember that while it looks like a laptop, it is not. It is always important to select the right tool for the job. A powerful laptop is like a rifle; the Eee is more like a subcompact pistol.

First, the hard facts:

CPU Type: Intel Atom 1.6Ghz Multi-thread (variable from 1.2Ghz – 1.8Ghz)

Memory: 1GB DDR2 667 Mhz

Storage: 12GB SSD (2 drives, 4GB & 8GB)

Screen Size: 8.9”

Display Type: WSVGA

Max Resolution: 1024 x 600

Built in Webcam: 1.3 Megapixels

Weight: 2.42 Pounds

Ports:

VGA

USB 2.0 x 3

Microphone

Headphone

LAN: 10/100 Mbps

WLAN: 802.11 b/g/n

Bluetooth

The Eee has several power saving features. You can shut the WLAN and Bluetooth off if you’re not using them. It will also adjust the clock speed of the Atom processor on the fly. It has several settings (controlled with a system tray program and and multi-function button above the keyboard).

The settings are:

Low Power: 1.2Ghz

Standard: 1.6Ghz

High Power: Overclock to 1.8Ghz

Auto: The computer will select the clock speed based upon what you are doing

When I ordered my Eee, I went ahead and got a 2GB stick of Corsair memory, and a 16GB SDHC memory card for extra storage.

The Eee next to my CRKT M16

The first impression upon seeing the Eee is its size. It looks like a baby laptop (which, of course, it is).Mine sports a nice black theme, with a high gloss finish. It looks slick and shiny, and grabs fingerprints like crazy. You don’t even need dust to life a print off this thing. It is sturdily built, with a good stiff hinge. The screen opens surely, and stays in place. It does not feel like a hinge that will fail with continued use. It does not, however, have any latches to keep the lid closed. The hinge tension keeps it closed fine though. The Eee sports a fairly standard laptop keyboard, though it is quite cramped. Everything is mostly where it should be though, so it is possible to type by touch. The biggest problem most touch typists will find is the right shift key is on the right side of the up arrow. You’ll probably hit the up arrow instead of the right shift. This isn’t a problem for me though- I use an unorthodox typing method, and only use the left shift. The only other problem with the keyboard is it is rather small – I find I’m over-reaching and hitting the wrong key from time to time (like hitting both the delete key and backspace key at the same time). With more use, I’ll get used to shorter travel to keys. Now, all that being said, I can type about 80 words per minute on a normal keyboard; I’m running about 45 words per minute on the Eee with around 90% accuracy. Accounting for correcting errors, I’m netting about 30-35 words per minute. Not bad considering I’ve only had it for a day to get used to. I’ve got about average size hands for a guy, and the keyboard works for me. I wouldn’t advise trying to type out the next great novel on it, but it works for e-mails and reviews.

For mousing about, the Eee has what appears to be a pretty standard touchpad on it. It has some non-standard features though. At least, I think they are. I’ve been running IBM Thinkpads for years and have been using trackpoints. The touchpad is responsive and does its job; it has a left and right mouse button mounted side-by-side under it. You don’t really need them though. You can tap with one finger for a left click, tap and drag with two fingers for a scroll function (like the center wheel on a mouse), and tap with three fingers for a right click. I have found it to be really useful.

The Eee comes with two solid state drives (though there are models that come with a conventional hard disk drive, and a lot more storage space). The solid state drive brings a couple of things to the table to make up for lack of storage space. First, they have no moving parts, making the Eee less sensitive to shock and trauma. Second, they consume less power. Third, they are faster – there is no rotational latency. It takes only 34 seconds for the computer to fully boot to the desktop and only 16 seconds to fully shut down. The Eee has two. The first is a four GB drive that houses the O/S and has a formatted size of 3.72GB. The second is for programs and data and has a formatted size of 7.5GB. The Eee comes with a lot of pre-installed software; but nothing that doesn’t make sense. Things like MS Works, Star Office, and WinDVD got the axe right out of the box. Skype, got to stay. It doesn’t seem to come with any trialware or outright crap; just some stuff I don’t personally need. Except for WinDVD. The damn thing doesn’t have an internal optical drive. Why did they include WinDVD? I guess the logic is it is there in case you add an external drive. Of course, external DVD drives usually come with DVD player software. About all you need to add is some good Anti-Virus software. And Firefox.

Now to the practical use.

I am using this Netbook to replace an aged, full-power laptop; an IBM T22. My T22 was powered by a PIII 900Mhz processor, so this Netbook is an upgrade and will fill the role in my life that the Thinkpad did.

The first thing I tested with the Eee is movie playback. My test file was 300 in AVI Divx format. The movie looked pretty good on the Eee’s widescreen and the sound is acceptable. You can only get so much out of tiny speakers on a small computer. The movie played fine; both from the data SSD and from the SD Memory card. I played the movie with the computer running on battery power. Even with the processor running at 1.2Ghz the movie played fine.

The screen cap is a little fuzzy, but the movie played sharp and crisp.

I also ran some voice chat with my brother through Skype. The Eee’s dual microphone picked up my side of the conversation well and filtered the speaker output so there wasn’t an echo. Of course, I surfed the web a bit and hit Madogre.com. This computer is built for web surfing and performed admirably. The other thing I use my laptop for is when I’m taking pictures for work. Most of my photography takes place in my studio. I transfer the pictures of each product to my laptop for inspection before I move onto the the next product. The WSVGA screen is clear and gives good detail and fair color accuracy. The USB 2.0 ports pull the photos off of my camera quickly and the Eee runs my Hyper Utility Software (the Image & EXIF viewer that came with my Fuji SLR) well. I also tote the laptop when I do on-site photography – kind of a mobile photo studio.

I took a couple of pictures of the Eee, transferred them to it using the internal memory card reader, and performed the post processing using Photoshop CS. The Eee actually runs Photoshop rather well (though I did cheat and connect an external mouse). I adjusted the levels and cropped the images in Photoshop. Despite the tiny screen, it was pretty easy to use. Though small, it is still 1024 pixels wide so Photoshop is usable. It did take a while for Photoshop to open (about forty-five seconds), but then, it has never really opened fast even on a graphics workstation. I will say I was surprised at how well the Eee ran Photoshop. For minor adjustments, and light touch-ups the Eee has enough power to get the job done. Its supreme portability makes it an attractive unit for a field photographer.

The final test was some ‘casual’ gaming. I though Halo would be a good test. I shared a CD Drive through the wireless network. I had the Eee running on battery power for the install. Of course, I had to grab a NOCD crack to run the game, but that’s not a problem. Started the game up and….no sound. Check the settings; nothing out of the ordinary. Close Halo, and play an mp3. Also no sound. Nothing muted, all the volume is up. Bloody Hell. I ripped the sound driver in Device Manager and rebooted. Windows auto-reinstalled the driver. Played an mp3 and we have sound! Started up Halo and had sound. Guess the install corrupted the driver. An annoyance, but nothing too tragic. So, I connected and external mouse and got playing. I set all the quality to low, and ran the game at 800x600. Everything looked good and ran smooth right up until the first battle and the game started running slow. The frame rate dropped and got choppy. I paused the game, and plugged the Eee into AC power. It automatically stepped up to High Performance mode and the game continued without a problem. The framerate drops in large battles, but nothing too low where the game is unplayable. With the power setting on Auto, the computer keeps the processor in Low Power Mode when on battery power. If you’d like to do some gaming on batteries, turn the power mode to Normal or High.

So far, so good.

I have kept the Eee’s Power Setting auto so far and haven’t noticed any lack of power, or any lag as it adjusts the clock speed of the processor. Of course the focus of this is to conserve the battery power. The marketing materials state that the battery life is 7.8 hours. I’m sure it is possible to wring that amount of life from the battery by shutting down all networking, reducing the screen brightness, using the low power setting for the processor and not actually doing anything but letting the computer idle. My real world battery life so far is more like 5-6 hours of light computing (MS Word, Internet browsing). Heavier tasks (like gaming, or movies) will bring the battery life down to about four hours. Still not bad, all things considered.

After just a few days, I am extremely happy with this Netbook.

Now, a few things I do not like:

The lack of a latch on the screen is annoying. I don’t think the screen will every open by accident; I’m just used to a latch. I would prefer a trackpoint over a touchpad, but the extra features this touchpad sports helps to make up for that. Those two are more personal preference than actual problems with the Netbook. The only complaint that I have is the keyboard; but that is a tradeoff for having a compact computer and I am starting to get used to it. The corrupted audio driver is as much a Windows problem as a problem with the Eee, and it was quickly fixed. I’ll update this review if I find anything actually wrong with the Eee 901. One review I read complained about a lack of USB ports. The Eee has three which should be plenty for this class of device. If you are carrying more than three USB devices that need to be connected at the same time, it shouldn’t be a problem to carry a pocket USB hub. Of course, toting all of that crap gets in the way of having an ultra-portable computer.

Another thought: Several manufactures are making a 10” Netbook. I’m not too impressed with these; they are almost the size of a small laptop but lack the full power of a laptop. Go for low power and portable. If you’re going to sacrifice the small size, you might as well get a full power laptop.

If you are looking for an ultra-portable computer for Internet browsing and light computing, the Asus Eee will certainly fit the bill. Recommended.

At the time of writing (and purchase) the Asus Eee 901 retailed for $279.99 +shipping from Newegg.com.

The above review is pure conjecture from a skilled geek. All statistics and figures were collected by eye and processed with SWAG.

Copyright G H Hill 1999-2012

Graphic Artwork by Martin White