EEE PC Review 1-1/2 Years later

In November, 2008 I squired a Asus EEE PC 1000H after careful examination of the market.

I wanted a portable computer, new or used, for travel with the following qualities:

1. Long Battery Life
2. Lightweight
3. 100GB+
4. Less than $500
5. Bluetooth
6. SD Card port

The EEE PC seemed to meet my expectations. My previous laptop was a Toshiba Portégé tablet PC that I bought used off eBay. I was fairly satisfied with it until I dropped it too many times and irrectifably damaged the motherboard while living in Ireland.

The Toshiba was once of those Tablet PCs with a rotating keyboard so could alternate between laptop-style and tablet-styler. When I got it in the summer of 2007, I took notes for class in tablet-style fairly easily. It had a fairly acceptable rate of recognizing my handwriting and converting it to text. The voice regonition software it came with was amusing. It was the kind of tablet PC that required a stylus. It was a very good device for doodling and creating graphics.

When I looked in Fall 2008 for a new portable, I considered many options, including buying a used one again. The EEE PC 1000H had only been on the market for a few months.

The 1000H features a 10.5" screen and is one of the larger netbooks. I had read a warning while considering my options that any smaller would make typing cramped. The 1000H seemed to meet all of my requirements, so I went with it. I also debated using their Linux distro which was optional, but since I would have had a Windows partition anyway, I didn't want to waste space.

I mulled for a while over the solid-state driver versus the disk-platter hard drive, but was persuaded by the larger capacity of the traditional hard drive.

Reactions:

• The 1024 x 600 screen is tiny, I set it to 1024 x 768 with vertical scrolling. Nevertheless, it's amazing how much MORE productive you can be with a larger monitor. Using Gmail with double-sidebars on a 1024 x 600 display takes 2-1/2 times as long as it is does with a typical desktop widescreen monitor.
• The battery life is not "all day computing" as claimed by Asus. The battery life claimed for the 1000H was up to 7 hours. When I first bought the computer, I believe it was possible to watch two movies with the wireless off and the brightness on low. Now, a year-and-a-half later, I have just over an hour of battery life.
• It was slightly heavier than I expected--3 lbs 2.2 oz, nevertheless, still light for a computer, but not as light as it looks. It's all in the battery.
• The touchpad gets hot.

Overall I am happy with it, the price was right. It combined everything I needed.

The battery is my biggest frustration. It now needs replacement. I partially blame this on being required to use my own computer for my current employer.

Lithium Lion Batteries typically deplete at 20% per year. Continiously charging a fully-charged battery is bad for the battery, but at work my power gets kicked out fairly frequently, so I cannot remove the battery during the day.

Also currently at work I use a monitor as a second display, which works very nicely. I normally have a broswer open on the monitor and a Word Document open on the netbook's display. A battery-charge off-switch would be a useful device.

I just installed Windows 7 last night. It seems to be all-right thus far.