ASUS Eee 1005HA Premium Notes

Hi guys (and gals), I just purchased an Eee 1005HA from NCIX (Canada), and I decided to share my thoughts on it.

Most of what Jerry said in his review is spot on. This isn't meant to be a full-fledged review, just my own personal thoughts. Check out the review I mentioned for a more in-depth look.

Reason for Buying

I've been eying the netbook world since the original Eee 701 came out a few years ago. However, I already had a new (at the time) laptop, and figured it would be fine to lug with me to class or to the lab (I'm a third-year neuroscience student). However, two years in, I realized I needed something much smaller and with much more battery life to take with me if I needed the internet for something.

In comparing this to what I first saw that I liked in the 701, I decided I needed a bigger screen, more battery power, a better keyboard, more hard drive space, and cheaper. I found everything but the latter in the 1005HA. While it's competitively priced to other similar netbooks, it's far from the "$200 laptop" we were promised back in '07. But I digress.

I'd considered a bunch of brands, the Acer Aspire One seemed to possess the typical flaws Acer is known for in terms of build quality. The Dell Mini didn't have enough hard drive space, the HP's didn't have enough battery life, and both the MSI Wind and Samsung NC10 were hard to find in Canada. So, I looked towards the Eee. As most of you know, ASUS has been releasing so many of these darn things that it's hard to keep track of them. I had originally settled on the 1000HE, but came across the 1005HA just before ordering, and with its toted 10.5 hour battery life, I was sold.

Design Overview

The "Seashell" design is really nice, with streamlined curves and a low profile and footprint. The lid is a fingerprint magnet, but that wasn't exactly a deal-breaker. The port selection is also fairly generous, with 3 USB ports sure to come in handy at some point. The trackpad is neat, in that it's flush with the palm rest, but has little bumps all over it. I found scrolling to be difficult with the trackpad, and found myself resorting to the arrow keys most of the time (which are, handily, very large and usable). I don't mind the rollbar mouse buttons, it's fine for most things, but I would have preferred two separate ones.

The keyboard maximizes space very well, and I found myself typing easily within only a few hours of using the Eee. And yes, the large shift keys really is a great thing. The webcam seems decent enough for Skype, but I haven't tested the internal microphone. Also, the internal speakers aren't awful, and youtube videos sound fine, or at least what's to be expected.

Performance Overview

Performance so far has been great for what I've needed. It was nice that ASUS included Office 2007 (Home and Student) pre-installed (as a trial), because I already had a copy of it, including a product key, which saved me the trouble of installing it. Firefox runs great, and is basically only limited by the vertical resolution (600px). Using an external DVD burner, I was able to install some old games (No One Lives Forever, MOH:Allied Assault, Peggle and Defcon), and they all run surprisingly well. I was able to run NOLF on average settings at 1024x768 with more than playable (30+ FPS) framerates.

The battery life on this thing is amazing. Using the "auto power saver" setting, I was able to get 9.5 hours out of the battery. I've noticed that some reviews on the web don't realize that there are two 6-cell versions of the 1005HA - 4400mAh and 5600mAh (like mine), with the latter providing at least 2 more hours of juice. I'd estimate that with normal usage and wi-fi on, with brightness set to full, 8 hours would not be out of the question.

Anyway, if you've got any questions, ask me, and I'll update this post with answers. (if I can!) Edit: I just realized this is my 666th post. Creepy.

 

Congrats on your new purchase Mr.Kubelwagen.

Do you plan on upgrading your ram to 2gb?

 

I've debated upgrading, but I really don't think that XP needs the extra gig. If I find a cheap 2 gig stick at Best Buy or something I'll pick it up.

 

Yeah, I get customers into best buy worried about the netbooks only having a single gig...most people dont remember that 3 years ago at the end of xp's lifetime, 1 gig was very high end for an xp machine to have. Hell, I'm running vista off 1 gig right now...not smoothly, but running....