Notebook and Computer
Today is: Saturday, 31st July 2010
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Traveling with the Eee PC 1000H
ASUS Eee PC 1000H 10-Inch Netbook Review
By R. F. Harrison (Honolulu, HI)
This is my second ASUS Eee PC. I am also the owner of the smaller 4G. While I liked my first, the keyboard was never big enough for serious work, at least for me. When I noticed a larger price drop on the 1000H, placing it under $500, I went ahead and hoped for the best.
I’ve had my 1000H for about a month now and am very pleased with the performance, though there are still compromises.
Keyboard - larger than the 4G, at 95% of a regular keyboard I have no trouble touch typing. Some folks have complained about the right side shift key, but I find its small size and placement to be no trouble after some use.
Battery Life - quite good, though perhaps not up the 7 hours claimed. The wifi and Bluetooth turn off and on together so you can’t (as far as I know) use wifi but not Bluetooth and vice versa. I do keep my screen brightness down and when I’m using my Sierra USB broadband setup I turn off the wife/Bluetooth combo. That generally gets me well over 4 hours of use, but I have never pushed it beyond that and there is still some charge showing at that point.
Weight/Size - the 6 cell battery does add some weight so it’s not as light one would think, but I find that not to be a problem. I tote this around on my bicycle in the rear rack trunk all the time and it fits fine.
Build - it seems very well built. I’ve taken it bike camping and used it off and on for 3 days to check my email and update some websites while at the campsite. In addition I’ve taken on a couple trips to outer islands (I live on Oahu) meaning it’s been in and out of my carry-on luggage quite a bit and I’ve had zero problems.
Screen - not bad, certainly not up to the quality of my Macs, but not bad at all. I keep it at 1024×600 most of the time, but for certain things I need to switch to 1024×800 which means the entire screen cannot be seen and one must move around a bit. It’s not a big deal. The compressed mode screen resolution seems really ugly to me so I never use it. On the whole it’s just fine considering the type of computer this is.
Touchpad/mouse - this is the biggest problem. It’s just too sensitive at times causing all sorts of accidental touches/brushes to be misinterpreted. There may be a newer driver around and I need to find that. I’d love to be able just to turn this off when I use my tiny USB mouse. I really haven’t spent a lot of time looking into it though.
Processor speed - it’s just fine for everything I do, including minor photo manipulation with Adobe Lightroom. If you want a game machine, this isn’t it.
I’m really glad I have this machine and use it daily and have since I got it even though I have a number of other laptops available. I will take it to Mexico with me next week because it is both small and inexpensive. I’d love to take my Mac with me but frankly, I’d hate to lose that and I can live with the loss of this machine (though, of course, I’d prefer that didn’t happen).
This is an excellent machine given the limitations of the size. I’d buy it again and when it is time to replace this machine, I’ll definitely look at ASUS again.
Aloha!
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