Tuesday May 26, 2009
Eee equals battery power squared
SIMILAR BUT DIFFERENT: The 1000HE has a similar design with some of its siblings but has an improved chiclet style keyboard. Asus adds the Eee PC 1000HE, which has a claimed battery life of 9.5 hours, to its already large stable of netbooks.
By TAN KIT HOONG
Since we reviewed the first Eee PC a while back, the so-called netbook has become a bona fide market segment of its own.
Not surprising as these mini-notebooks fulfil a need in the market for a small and above all, cheap, notebook for word processing and surfing the Internet.
Meanwhile, Asus has been busily churning out Eee PCs of all kinds hoping to keep a hold of the market it almost single-handedly created.
The latest in this line is the Eee PC 1000HE, which, though it shares much the same size and look as the 10in 1000-series Eee PCs before it, has some small and quite significant changes for the better.
We’ll see whether Asus can still hold on to its share of the market with this model.
BOX OF CHICLETS: The keyboard on the 1000HE has better spacing, travel and generally feels nicer than the keyboards from other Eee PCs. The physical
Before I go on, it’s worth mentioning that our review unit has one difference from the same models out in the market.
The review unit has an Intel Atom N270 CPU running at 1.6GHz, instead of the newer 1.66GHz Atom N280 processor that all 1000HE models in the market currently ship with.
If you buy the 1000HE now, you will get the slightly faster 1.66GHz Atom for your RM1,599.
As I mentioned before, the 1000HE is physically similar in size and shape to the previous 1000-series models — it comes in white or black and sports the same design as the previous models.
Flip open the lid, however, and you’ll immediately be presented with the 1000HE’s most significant change.
Gone is the old conventional style notebook keyboard, and in its place is a “chiclet-style” keyboard which is not only easier to type, but has also relocated the right Shift button to a more logical position next to the Up cursor key.
This roomy, well-spaced keyboard allowed me to type quite quickly with few errors.
The one thing I don’t find so appealing with this new keyboard is that if you type as hard as I do (since I was brought up on clunky old typewriters) you actually see the entire keyboard flex quite a bit when you hit the keys in the centre, like G and H.
Other than that, the outer shell is basically identical to the first 10in Eee PC — which in my mind, is a little large by modern standards especially when you compare it to the competition like the HP 1001TU and the Dell Mini 10.
There are a few important changes inside however — for one, the battery, though it’s identical in size and shape to the 6600mAh battery on my Eee PC 901, is actually rated at a whopping 8700mAh.
This certainly contributes to the 1000HE’s claimed battery life of 9.5 hours.
In case anyone is wondering, I did test whether the battery on the 1000HE would fit on my older Eee PC 901 and I’m happy to report that it does and fits completely flush with the casing, just like the 901’s original battery.
Internal storage is a roomy 160GB hard disk so you’re not going to be limited by space anytime soon.
That, in essence, are the only changes to the basic Eee PC design we’ve come to know and love.
Asus has carried over the very nice multi-touch capable touchpad, which allows you to use multi-finger gestures to zoom in and out of pictures, scroll through documents, and many other features much like the touchpad on modern MacBooks.
I really find the multi-touch touchpad very useful especially for scrolling down webpages, so kudos to Asus for carrying over this feature from previous Eee PCs.
My only gripe is that I wish Asus would put in a button to quickly disable the touchpad as I usually find myself accidentally tapping the touchpad while typing.
The other feature still the same is the excellent 10in 1,024 x 600-pixel screen.
I’m pretty fussy about screen quality on notebooks but the one on the 1000HE is one of the best I’ve seen, with better colour and wider viewing angles compared with other netbooks in its class.
Battery life on the 1000HE is actually really good — even with WiFi turned on and the screen at a reasonable brightness, I easily ran the machine for about five to six hours before it gave me low power warnings.
If you turn off WiFi and lower the screen brightness I’m pretty sure you could stretch the battery life close to Asus’ claimed 9.5 hours.
The metaphysical
Now this is usually the place where I talk about my overall experience with the software and what’s on it, but I won’t.
After all, this is Windows XP (which is almost eight years old now) and the hardware is almost standard netbook specifications so there’s nothing here that users won’t already know about or have not seen before.
Instead, what I’d really like to talk about is my experience installing and running Windows 7 Release Candidate on the 1000HE.
While it hasn’t officially been released in stores yet, Microsoft has made the nearly complete operating system freely downloadable and usable till March next year.
The thing is that one of the important criteria Microsoft had when designing this operating system is that it should run well on netbooks.
Well I can certainly attest to that fact — Windows 7 doesn’t just run on a netbook, but it runs extremely well on a netbook.
Yes, you’d think Windows 7, being based largely on the Vista kernel is as much a resource hog but once I installed Windows 7, I was in for a very pleasant surprise.
On the 1.6GHz Atom with 1GB RAM and the Intel GMA 950 graphics, I could turn on all the Windows 7’s flashy interface enhancements, including the translucent Aero windows.
Heck, even Flip 3D (which is activated when you press the Windows key together with Tab) works just fine.
In fact, I could even run a 720p WMV movie, open several windows and use Flip 3D to switch between them with no slowdowns at all.
Since the specifications of the 1000HE is much the same as other netbooks on the market, I’m pretty sure Windows 7 will run just as well on these machines too.
Conclusion
The Eee PC 1000HE is certainly a worthy addition to the series — Asus has tweaked parts that need improving (like the keyboard and battery) and kept others that worked.
Also, at RM1,599, it is cheaper and better than the similar Eee PCs that was released last year, making it quite an attractive buy.
However, Asus should have redesigned the casing to be a little smaller to fit the 10in screen, or conversely, enlarged the screen to perhaps about 11in to fill the space now occupied by the large bezel.
Other than that, this 1000HE is still a winner and certainly one to consider if you don’t mind the slightly larger size compared with its competitors.
Pros: Improved keyboard; great screen; very long battery life.
Cons: Rather large for a 10in netbook.
Eee PC 1000HE
(Asus)
Netbook
Processor: Intel Atom N270 (1.6GHz)
Memory: 1GB RAM
Graphics: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
Display: 10in (1,024 x 600 pixels)
Storage: 160GB HDD
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11b/g/n, 10/100 ethernet port
I/O ports: Three USB ports, VGA out, headphone and microphone jack
Other features: SD/MMC card reader, 1.3-megapixel webcam
Operating System: Windows XP Home edition
Dimensions: 266 x 191.2 x 38mm (w x d x h)
Weight: 1.45kg
Price: RM1,599
Website:
my.asus.com
Review unit courtesy of Asustek Computer Malaysia, (03) 2148-0827
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