Netbook Reviews : Best Price : Best Buy

Most surprising in order:
1. Speed! I wouldnt have imagined with a gig of ram and an N450 ATOM that windows 7 would run this fast. My wireless downloads come in as fast as my athlon multicore desktop. IE launches quickly, as well as other applications. Windows 7 Starter runs superbly. I don’t imagine that a CAD CAM or any heavy duty graphical app will run fast on this at all but this is a netbook, and it is surprisingly snappy.

2. Component Quality: I was so happy to find that the touchpad is a synaptics brand touchpad, everyone knows that the synaptics touchpad is the best and the driver software allows you all the advanced touchpad features.

3. USB Ports: I can hookup a Smart Card Reader, a USB Logic Analyzer, and a 4gb Sandisk cruzer all at the same time. I imagine that if you owned a bluetooth mouse or a bluetooth smart phone you can also get that up and running simultaneously.

Overall, an amazingly capable netbook.

One more thing, the aesthetics were just what I was expecting, it is a sharp looking netbook.

The hard drive comes pre-partioned into 2 local drives, C and D. C being 100GB and D being 122GB. Not a fan of this setup, but will go with it for now. I figured the Hard Drive would be partitioned since one of the advertised features is that by holding F9 during boot up you can reimage back to factory default. The unit came sort of no frills with only the battery, install CD, adapter, and warranty card in the box. Installing many programs on it under windows 7 starter has been a breeze so far.

One major gripe about the unit is that since it has such a heavy 6 cell battery that is all the way to the rear of the unit, I found the computer wanting to tilt backwards, its front feet lifting off my lap quite often, especially if the screen is pushed further away from you. This wasn’t too big a deal if you have it on an absolutely flat surface, but I can see how if you are lap typing on this puppy that it would be an issue. The netbook is seriously weighted towards the rear hinge forcing you to cheat the screen angle forward in order to compensate. This gives you a slightly less viewable angle. Prior to purchasing the 1001p, I had taken a look at the HP Mini 210 and decided against it primarily because its 6 cell battery extends out and down from the rear hinge area. But now I see why their engineers chose this route, it forces the laptop back into a typeable position. I almost wouldn’t mind that sort of a design now.

Cover and palm rests have textured finish that hides fingerprints. My husband asked, “Is that carbon fiber?”, and thought it looked cool. The textured surface also provides a better grip than a shiny surface.

The Synaptics trackpad works great. Two-finger scrolling works smoothly, which is good because the up/down keys on the keyboard are pretty small. I don’t use the trackpad rocker button very much, I just use tap gestures to simulate the left and right button clicks.

I’m really glad I went for the matte non-glare screen. It is easier to read in less-than-ideal lighting conditions while traveling. The 10.1″ screen is clear and sharp, and easy to read at 1024×600, no squinting. The screen swings back and down when open, so that it sits low; it’s good to have a low profile when working on an airplane tray.

Windows 7 starter edition ran without lagging, but I can live without all the extras provided by Asus. So, having an extra upgrade license handy, I promptly did a clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium on the C: partition, leaving the D: data partition, the ExpressGate partition, and the restore partition intact. I was able to download all necessary drivers and utilities from the Asus support website. Windows 7 Home Premium runs amazingly well with only 1 GB of ram! I’m going to wait and see if I really want to upgrade to 2 GB.

I was concerned that the wireless card was only 802.11g, and not 802.11n, but I really don’t notice any difference when surfing the web. I was also concerned that the webcam was only 0.3 megapixel (640×480), but it looks fine and works well with Skype, as does the built-in microphone.

I agree with others that the connector on the A/C adapter is very thin, but it seems strong enough. I’d rather have the pin on the A/C adapter break (which I can replace for a few bucks) than the power receptacle on the motherboard.

When I’m working from home via VPN and Remote Desktop, I like to connect my netbook to an external monitor, keyboard and mouse, and wired ethernet. The EEE PC 1001p had no trouble with the 1280×1024 resolution on my monitor. The wired ethernet and USB keyboard work fine. Logitech doesn’t provide a Windows 7 driver for my old bluetooth mouse, but I just put the netbook bluetooth into discovery mode and it found my mouse with no problem. Windows 7 had the bluetooth mouse drivers I needed built in.

I inserted a 256 MB SD card into the memory card slot and it was recognized instantly. I’m trying out the Windows Ready-Boost feature with this SD card, but since most of the things I do are not memory intensive (surfing the web, remote desktop, VNC), and it’s a fairly small memory card, I haven’t noticed much of a difference.

It would have been nice if Asus had included a neoprene slipcase for this netbook. I recommend the Case Logic VLS-110 Sleeve for 7-Inch to 10-Inch Netbooks.