I got my new EEE PC 1000HE yesterday! Overall I am quite impressed with it. I am a longtime Thinkpad user, and I was pretty skeptical about netbooks in general to begin with. However, I was looking for a lighter travel notebook in lieu of my 15” T61 (Core 2 Duo 2GHz) and I was sold on the EEE PC 1000HE after playing with it at a local store.
Here are my impressions after installing Windows 7 and all my base software, and playing around with it for half a day. I also upgraded the RAM to 2GB, and installed the 802 BIOS update. All this took around 4 hours.
The Great:
Price. I got mine from zipzoomfly for $379 with a $30 MIR. $350 is the sweet spot for me. The more premium machines like the Samsung NC-10 selling in the $450 range are just too close in price to regular notebooks.
Battery Life. This is the primary killer feature of the 1000HE. It’s rated at 9.5 hours, but I like to run it at full performance and brightness, which still estimates a 6 hour+ life.
Form Factor. I was initially afraid that 10” would feel too small, but that isn’t the case at all. While not as small as the HP Mini, I think 10” is the perfect compromise between portability and utility.
Build quality. The device itself is well constructed and is better designed than I expected. It looks as good as any current generation Dell or HP, and better than most. The screen hinge is as solid as my Thinkpad – not loose at at. The glossy finish does pick up fingerprints, but not enough to bother me.
Screen clarity. Another surprise to me is how bright the screen is. I don’t know how many nits it’s rated at, but it certainly looks as bright as my desktop LCD monitor, and definitely brighter than my Thinkpad’s. The matte screen is awesome. No glare, and very usable in sunlight.
Built-in components. In stark contrast to Dell’s nickel-and-dime model where you have to pay dearly for every little “upgrade” (e.g. $25 more for Bluetooth!), the EEE PC 1000HE comes with pretty much every standard component you would expect: Webcam, Bluetooth, 802.11 G and N, 3 USB slots, and an SD reader. The included slipcase and smudge cloth are a nice bonus.
The Good:
Performance. This was another area I was worried about at first. Although a secondary machine, I wanted to be able to use MS Office on it and do some light work in Visual Studio, in addition to basic web browsing and blogging. I was expecting app start times to be noticeably slower, but that isn’t the case at all. Practically speaking, I don’t feel any real difference vs. my current Thinkpad. The 1000HE performs as well as my 5 year-old Thinkpad x30 (Pentium-M 1.4Ghz), which is to say, quite alright for what I want. I am using it as I would my other machines (keeping multiple windows open etc.) without compromise. For example, I’m installing VS.NET SP1 while typing this entry in Live Writer.
Video and Sound. The speakers are basic, but better than expected (I’ll be using headphone most of the time though). Video playback, as widely reported, is fine, except for playing HD Youtube videos, which are jerky. Standard def and Hulu Hi-Def seem fine though.
Hard Drive. Although pretty standard nowadays, 160GB is more than enough for me. Access and RW performance it perfectly fine.
The Not So Good
Keyboard. This is one area I’m pretty picky on, having been spoilt by the ThinkPads, so I’m pretty biased here. The actual size of the keys aren’t a big issue for me. They are spaced out pretty well, and the key travel is acceptable. My main issues are with the size of the right-shift key and the lack of dedicated text navigation keys (Home, End, Page Up and Page Dn). Luckily I was able to solve the latter with the very awesome and free tool, AutoHotKey by mapping the (typically unused) Pause, PrintScreen, Right-Alt, and AppsKey (next to the Right-Alt) to the text navigation functions. I am pretty happy with this little “hack”, and consider that problem solved. Here’s the AHK script I’m using if you are interested:
Pause::send {Home}
^CtrlBreak::^Home
+Pause::+Home
PrintScreen::send {End}
^PrintScreen::^End
+PrintScreen::+End
RAlt::send {PgUp}
AppsKey::PgDn
The right-shift still irks me. I hit the ‘?’ and up-arrow keys accidentally all the time. I wish they would have either offset the arrow keys down, like the Samsung or Acer models, or made the left-shift key (which I almost never use) shorter instead. Well, I’m sure this is something my fingers can get used to after a while.
Trackpad. True to other reports. The Elantech trackpad isn’t as precise as the Synaptics (like on my Thinkpad). It might also have to do with the smaller screen, but I find myself overshooting buttons quite a bit so far. The multi-touch is nice though, and two-finger scrolling is very handy, even if it does tend to overshoot as well. I suppose this is something you can learn to compensate for after a while. Double-tapping is also a little hit and miss out of the box, without tweaking the mouse sensitivity settings.
Screen resolution. Ok, I know it’s unfair to criticize the 1024x600 resolution of a netbook, but I really would have loved to see them standardize on 1024x768 (like my older x31), that would have catapulted this from a secondary to a primary machine in my mind. It seems that the Dell Mini-10 is pushing in this direction, so I’m sure it is a matter of time for others to follow. So far, I’m dealing with this by getting used to auto-hiding my taskbar and using full-screen mode for most apps.
In Summary
The EEE PC 1000HE is a killer app because it offers all-day portable computing (that’s actually usable) at a very affordable price. Asus has designed the definitive netbook for today, and it is only a hair’s breadth from being a great primary notebook.
One thing this means for me is that I’m never going to be able to pay more than $400 for a primary notebook anymore. A new bar has been set.