 One of the first Atom N450 netbooks |
| Review Date: January 5, 2010 |
| Reviewer: A reader, Berkeley, CA |
Intel has been gearing up to release the Atom N450 or "Pinetrail" since late last year. The manufacturers had a whole slew of netbooks ready for release between January 4 (when the big electronics show CES opened) and January 11 of 2010 (when it's ok to sell all the new Atom N450 based netbooks). Information was very scarce last year due to a press release embargo and probably the desire to sell of old-stock Atom N270/N280 netbooks.
Here is an extremely useful, albeit technical, review of this particular Asus model AND of the Atom N450 on which it is based (if the link gets edited out by Amazon, go to anandtech and search for Asus 1005PE):
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Please note that Amazon already has a less expensive Asus, the 1001P, listed on the website, in two versions as well, a more expensive Win 7 Starter edition with 250 gb hard drive and a less expensive Win XP edition with 160 gb harddrive:
ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1001P-PU17-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook - Up to 11 Hours of Battery Life
ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1001P-MU17-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook - Up to 11 Hours of Battery Life
The main difference is 3 extra hours of battery life, but there may be other feature diffences such as wirless n and bluetooth support.
I am thinking about getting the Win XP version of the 1001p which is quite a bargain. While Win 7 Starter actually runs quite well on these netbooks, and has a few nice features, Win XP is still slightly faster and less of a resource hog. To get my current Win 7 netbooks to match Win XP, I have to do a lot of adjusting (turning off auto indexing, turning off auto disk defrag, choosing Windows Classic theme instead of Win 7) and Win XP is still slightly faster. My main hope in getting a new N450 netbook would be that elusive grail of netbook owners, decent Hulu and YouTube performance (believe it or not, I can watch DVD's and h.264 high rez content, but not the stinkin' Hulu and YouTube content except at low rez, not-full-screen mode).
Early reports are that the N450 has about a 10% performance increase over the last generation Atom netbooks, and a 20% battery life increase, but as always YMMV.
THERE ARE TWO IMPORTANT things you need to know:
1. It's very likely in the next two weeks, netbooks are going to come out with the Broadcom HD chip in them, for $30 extra, which will allow high def output, all the way up to Blue Ray quality, and also an HDMI port to allow easy hookup to your living room tv. This would mean high quality streaming video on an external display. This is probably the single biggest reason to wait.
2. Even if high def video isn't important to you, Intel is supposed to be releasing a 1.8 ghz version of the Atom in February or March, and given the cycle of aggressive product adoption and pricing, the extra performance might be worth waiting for.
Your budget for one of these, by the way, should be about three duckbills for a basic model like the 1001P and no more than four duckbills for an Atom based netbook with some bells and whistles.
And if your machine doesn't come with 2gb of system memory, while single applications run well under Win 7 and two applications run well simultaneously under Win XP, you should budget for an upgrade to the maximum permitted 2gb at some point.
Oh by the way, I rummaged around on the Intel website and also found out that the old N270/N280s only support 32 bit Windows but the new N450 supports 64 bit, which is really cool. |
Good Little Machine
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| Review Date: January 13, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Bizzybee, Virginia Beach, VA United States |
I purchased this little computer about a week ago and so far it has been great. So far I have not found anything to complain about with the computer so I will list a few of the things I like:
- Even with the extended capacity battery, the computer is very light and portable
- The battery life is great! My daughter watched movies for almost 8 hours on our plane ride home without a hitch or stutter. After being in use for nearly the entire flight, it still had 35% of the battery remaining. Another note on the battery, in the earlier 1005 netbooks, the battery would stick out past the screen on the rear of the netbook. That is no longer the case, on the 1005PE it is flush with the rear of the netbook.
- The keyboard is nice and decent size. I almost bought a Toshiba solely because I did not like the keyboard on the 1005HA version of this machine. Asus changed the keyboard on this model to a chiclet keyboard which is much better. I saw one review that thought the keyboard was flimsy. As far as I can tell, the Asus has no more flexibility in the keyboard than the Acer or Toshiba netbooks I looked at.
- Windows 7 starter and Asus Utility. I saw a few reviews where people complained about Win7 Starter. Again, so far no problems with the OS, it does what it is intended to do. As far as the complaints about changing the background on the desktop, Asus was kind enough to provide a utility that makes changing the background very easy.
- WLAN - since I bought the netbook, it has been in 6 locations that have wireless internet and it has jumped on the network easily each time regardless on encryption.
A couple more thoughts on netbooks in general:
- Netbooks are not desktop replacements or miniture laptops. They are intended to provide basic computing and internet needs. If you are expecting it to fly through huge power point presentations or apps that require a lot of RAM and processing power you will be disappointed. If all you need is a computer that travels easily and will allow you to surf the web, play music and video and run office programs, netbooks can be a very good choice.
- I would recommend that anyone who buys a netbook remove as much of the installed software as they can. I was able to remove alot of pre-loaded junk and the netbook ran faster. Here are a few program that I think every netbook should have: Firefox or Google Chrome for internet, vlc (Videolan) for music and movie playback, Open Office 3 for word processing, spreadsheets, etc and Foxit Reader for opening .pdf files.
Also, I have seen several recommendations to replace the 1GB Ram with a 2GB stick. I have not done this yet and it still works great. At the moment I have a 4GB SD card installed to see if there are any performance gains using the Windows Reafyboost function. So far so good.
The bottom line is that this netbook has exceeded my expectations and is a solid little machine. I would recommend it to anyone in search of a good netbook.
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Glad I didn't wait for the iPad from Apple...
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| Review Date: January 27, 2010 |
| Reviewer: M. Harrison, California |
I wanted to wait to write this review until after the new iPad from Apple was released today to see how they compared. I'm glad I didn't wait to buy the 1005PE from Asus! So far I'm very happy with all of the same things the rest of the reviewers are happy with- and kinda bummed about the same things the others are bummed about. (Fingerprints)
This netbook is basically an upgrade to my 32GB iPod Touch that sits on my bedside table. I used to use the Touch for web surfing and media viewing, but now I have this awesome little netbook that does everything the iPod Touch did for me, plus it has a ton more storage (250GB compared to 32GB) 13-ish hour battery life (compared to 3-5 on the Touch) and it supports Adobe's flash standard! (Something even the new iPad from Apple doesn't seem to do...) All in all, I'm very pleased with the 1005PE and have zero regrets following the unveiling of the new iPad from Apple today. I'm sure the 1005PE isn't a perfect replacement for the iPad to ALL users, but for me, I couldn't be happier with my purchase.
One thing to note- as already reported- you want to get the 800 MHz RAM upgrade from Crucial, not the 667 MHz that Amazon lists on the 1005PE product page. I did the upgrade and noticed that things are even snappier- but the 1GB RAM module that came out of the 1005PE was 800 MHz memory- not 667 MHz...
For the person who gave this netbook one star because he couldn't get greater than 1024 x 768 external VGA output while mirroring the internal monitor, that's pretty weak in my opinion. Considering all of the other features that this netbook provides for such little cost- I think this netbook is a real winner! Thanks for reading my review! |
Excellent on the battery life!
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| Review Date: January 14, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Michael A. Duvernois, Minneapolis, MN United States |
Got this for the long battery life. It really does get most of the advertised 14 hours. Got about 11 hours with wireless access during most of that time, a fair amount of work on the machines, and there was still a tiny bit of battery life left. So I'd say the numbers (14 hours would reflect less work and less wireless use) are not too far off. The machine is very sleek, somewhat heavy for its size (the battery probably makes up a good deal of the weight gain), and the Windows 7 is usable. I'd say that it was a good package if battery life were near the top of your desire list.
Pro:
- Genuinely good battery life
- Works fine, hardware & software
- Looks good, especially the display
Cons:
- Slightly heavy for the size and definitely heavier than some other netbooks
- Windows 7 "Starter" edition, if that matters to you
- Probably would run faster with more memory standard |
Excellent machine!
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| Review Date: January 15, 2010 |
| Reviewer: C. Chen, New York, NY |
Okay, since I am a college business major who doesn't know a great deal about computers, here's my 2 cents:
Pros:
1. Superb battery life: got 13 hours out of writing research papers on Word, generating excel reports, checking stocks, reading WSJ, managing portfolios, and etc.
2. Chiclet keyboard feels great to type on
3. Screen is bright enough
4. Sound quality is great comparing to other netbooks
5. Windows 7 runs pretty fast in my opinion
6. YOUTUBE & HULU VIDEOS RUN EXTREMELY SMOOTH! (not in HQ of course)
Cons:
1. Hate the glossy screen (there goes my eyesight)
2. Chiclet keyboard is a little loud comparing with the one on 1005HA
3. 6-cell battery can be somewhat heavy for the girls
4. Two-finger scrolling did not work for me, so I had to install an additional driver. URGH!
Bottom of the line, the Asus 1005PE is still the best on the market as of now. |
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I am a faculty member and I need/want a netbook that I can use for basic word processing and powerpoint. Will this model allow me to make slides in powerpoint and use it for displaying slides when I am not in an area with more powerful machines?
Yes, you can.. the netbook itself is capable of handling basic word processing.. but MS Office does not come pre-installed on a netbook.. so to use Microsoft PowerPoint, you will have to install it using either an external DVD drive or a memory stick. Alternatively, consider using freeware like Open Office which you can download and install from the Internet.