Tag: asus eee

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Asus EEE PC 1000H

After a lot of dilly-dallying, I finally pulled the trigger on the Asus EEE PC 1000H. As I mentioned on my comparison, it seemed to me that it is the best of the current crop of netbooks.

The Asus EEE PC 1000H is definitely bigger than your typical netbook. But it brings with it a bigger display, keyboard (majorly sucky wrongly-placed itsy bitsy right shift key), and battery. Although these lead to less portability, these definitely improved usability and coupled with the bigger memory and disk space brings it up almost to the level of ultraportable notebooks but without the hefty price tag. The sleek black case even reminds me of the Fujitsu P7020 that I was lusting for a long time ago.

It booted up straight out of the box and, with the input of some personalization and localization information, was almost ready for use.

The wired network worked fine. It let me get my wireless network’s security details which I then keyed in, unplugged the network cable and I was wireless in a snap.

The 80gb hard disk provides a comfortable amount of space but is partitioned in two. Not very flexible. So merged the two with the freely downloadable EASEUS Partition Manager. As with most netbooks (and some ultraportables), there is no built-in optical drive. So I had to use my USB to SATA/IDE adapter to copy my backup files from my external drive and install software from their CD installers.

And that was it. It seemed snappy with Firefox 3.0, Yahoo! Messenger, Open Office 3.0 beta 2, and Eclipse. Movies and music played smoothly with VLC. I’ll also be running Tomcat and MySQL servers but maybe after a 1Gb memory upgrade.

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Asus EEE PC 1000H vs MSI Wind U100

I’ve been waiting for the Asus EEE PC 901. I’ve decided that it has the best combination of features that I want. Unfortunately, it seems that Asus is not planning to release it here so I figured the best compromise would be the Asus EEE PC 1000H which has almost the same specifications but in a slightly larger package. It has however a tough competitor in the MSI Wind U100. So I made the following comparison:

Asus EEE PC 1000H MSI Wind U100
Intel Atom 1.6GHz Processor Intel Atom 1.6GHz
1GB Memory 1GB
80GB HDD Storage 80GB HDD
10″ 1024×768 Display 10″ 1024×768
WiFi B/G/N, Bluetooth Wireless WiFi B/G, Bluetooth
6 cells (7 hours) Battery 3 cells (2-3 hours)
1.45kg Mass 1kg
266×191.2x38mm Dimensions 260x180x31.5mm
P26,000.00 Cash Price Pxx,xxx.xx
P29,892.00 Installment Price P25,988.00
12 months Installment Term 6 months
P2,491.00 Monthly Installment P4,331.33

At first, the two netbooks seem to be evenly matched until you see that the Asus has a much longer battery life, very important for devices like these, as well as Wi-Fi N. Of course, it pays for this by being larger and heavier but it’s still quite manageable. In terms of price, the Asus might look too expensive but it actually is the better deal with its 12 months installment payment term (unless you really have nothing else to do with your money). So it looks like the Asus wins unless the MSI goes down in price and/or gets a better battery (there’s supposed to be a 6-cell battery available).

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Asus EEE PC 900 Launched!

Finally, the Asus EEE PC 900 has been launched. Yay! It is initially priced at P24,995. Way better than the rumored P33,900 before the launch. Some would say the price is still high especially since some full-featured notebooks are already within that range. But remember that the Asus EEE PC is way smaller and lighter (and cuter!) than these budget notebooks. Besides, you can be sure prices will slide down after a month or two.

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Asus EEE PC 900

asuseeepc900.jpgThe Asus EEE PC 900 has been shown by Asus at CeBIT 2008. It’s got the same small and cute form factor as the originals but now has an 8.9″ screen, 1GB or RAM, and 12GB SSD. Those are exactly what I’ve been waiting for! Time to start saving up.

More info here and video here.

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Asus Eee

asuseepc.jpgYesterday, as I was heading out for lunch, I encountered Tessa at the elevator lobby. She was carrying this small black neoprene case that almost without a doubt contained an electronic gadget. From the dimensions, I concluded that it was an Asus Eee which I’ve heard and read quite a bit about. But to be sure, I asked her and she confirmed that it is indeed an Eee. We talked about it a bit but since lunch was waiting, I scheduled a visit with her for later in the afternoon. As soon as I got some free time, I went up to her office and played around with the Eee.

The Eee is a diminutive device. It is around an inch thick and about the size of A5 paper and quite light. But it seems well-built and quite robust. The screen is small but quite usable especially when applications are in full screen mode. The keyboard is also small but still quite usable. The 900MHz processor is not too powerful and the 512MB RAM not too big but the response of applications is quite snappy. The storage is a (surprise!) small at 4GB, but quite fast since it is solid state (i.e. flash-based). If you need more, you’ll need to use external storage via up to three USB ports. But then again, most everything are stored online these days. Speaking of online it has both wired and wireless network interfaces.

But here’s the killer: It’s Linux-based! I know what you’re thinking. That it would be a complex beast. But no, it is actually seems quite easy to use. It has two mode: simple mode and full mode. In simple mode you’re presented with a very simple tabbed menu with large icons that even a grandma would like. Full mode, on the other hand, is the traditional Linux GUI with access to the applications you expect including my favorite: ssh. Oh yeah!

Do I like it? Hell yeah! But being new to the market, it’s still a bit expensive for my liking. But if someone were to gift me one, I wouldn’t say no. The black one please!