jvolzer's Full Review: ASUS (1005HA-VU1X-BK) Netbook
I've owned several netbooks but had not yet found exactly the right one for me. The Asus EEEPC 1005HA is finally a keeper! It has good performance and features in a great size package at a very nice price. The best part is getting one of the best battery life netbooks available today.
Some of the key factors for me in finding the right netbook were a good keyboard, long battery life, integrated bluetooth, and a 10" display. This unit meets those needs nicely.
Specs
Full specs are availabl everywhere, but in a nutshell you'll get: Intel Atom N280 at 1.66 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB hard drive and 10.1" display. It has integrated 10/100 ethernet and 802.11 b/g/n wireless as well as Bluetooth. A function key sequence can quickly turn wireless and Bluetooth off or on independently to help save battery life. A 1.3 mp webcam is integrated above the screen. A 6-cell 63 WHr battery provides 5 to 10 hour run time, but some models will only have a 6-cell 48 WHr battery or 3-cell with less run time. Watch carefully when shopping!
Layout, screen, etc.
Sleek, light, cool. The netbook gets slimmer near the front. It's kept very clean looking by eliminating even a latch for the screen -- just pry it open. The ports are exposed, rather than hidden behind plastic flaps like the 1008 series, which might not look as clean, but makes them easy to get to. On the left you find power, VGA, 1 USB and security lock. On the right you'll find network, 2 USB, headphone and microphone, and multi-reader card slot. There are no ports on the back, as this is where the battery goes. Thanks to wonderful engineering though, Asus managed to get a 6-cell battery (more on this later) to be almost completely contained within the shape of the laptop, with no huge (and heavy) bulge behind or underneath! Great job Asus! It protrudes only slightly from the bottom, but that's good for providing a slightly forward slant.
The keyboard and touchpad will get their own section below, as I found this to be a very important factor. Also inside is a dedicated button above the keyboard on the left for disabling the touchpad. The top right is where you find the power button, with a blue light when powered on, or blue flash when in standby. Near the front edge are cool blue indicators for power, battery, HDD, wireless, and caps lock. The wrist rest area looks very clean once you remove all the silly sickers they put on there (some of which leave a sticky mess to clean).
In a departure from the design of previous EEEPC netbooks, the screen hinge now moves the screen back and down as you open it, making the bottom of the display more in line with the keyboard height instead of up higher.
The slick gloss finish on the 1005HA looks great at first, but not for long, as it's a fingerprint magnet. Why do manufacturers keep doing that when everyone complains? I guess they look better in ads or on the shelf.
The screen itself is good and bright and runs at a resolution of 1024 X 600, making it wide enough that you don't have any horizontal scroll on web pages. If you set the Windows taskbar to hide and minimize the use of toolbars in your browser (or use Google Chrome) the vertical resolution is reasonable. You can set it for 1024 X 768, but the screen will scroll when you reach the top or bottom. Some netbooks may soon offer higher resolution, but that would just make things too small for a 10" display in my opinion anyhow and I would not want it. The only thing I don't like about the screen is that it's a glossy screen, rather than matte, making reflections very bothersome when used outdoors, near windows or even at certain angles. I'm not sure what the advantage is of glossy screens and why manufacturers keep offering them. This is one aspect that I liked better with the 1000 series EEEPC.
Keyboard and Touchpad
I'm a pretty fast touch-typist, so having a good keyboard is one of the most important factors for me in a netbook. Early on I was able to rule out the 9" netbooks with their tiny keyboards. Even some of the 10" models have keys that are too small. Starting with the EEEPC 1000 series netbooks though, Asus saw the wisdom in making the keyboard as large as possible at 92% normal size. However, they made a big flaw in early models by putting the right shift key in the wrong place, moving it to the right to make room for the up arrow key. I owned one of these and regularly hit the up arrow instead of shift. As you can guess, this caused a mess as the pointer moved up and I'd begin typing in the middle of the line above.
My next netbook was the MSI Wind U115 Hybrid storage netbook with its incredible 13 to 17 hour battery. But alas, MSI made a big keyboard flaw too. They shrunk the size of the keys to the right of M, making it near impossible to hit the period key. So web addresses and sentence endings are aweful to type. This brought me to the EEEPC 1000HA and I'm finally a happy typist! In order to get proper placement of the keys at the bottom right Asus shrunk the up and down arrow keys so that they only take the space of a single key. Ahhh. I'm typing this review on the 1005HA.
I did have one issue with the 1005HA's keyboard initially though. There was a lot of "give" to the keys near the left side. Notice that the keyboard actualy looked bent, as if it didn't fit the case and had to bend up. Looking it it almost flush with the top I could see the left Alt key and those near it sticking up higher. I could feel the flex and hear a more plastic click when typing. It made the keyboard feel cheap. I found, however, that the keyboard was just not seated well in the case. With some firm pressure I was able to get it to seat into place better and now all is well. The touchpad on prior EEEPC models has also been less than ideal. As many reviewers noted, they click keys were quite firm as the wrapped around to the front a bit. Like others, I found them difficult. Well, the 1005 HA solved this with better placement and and easier to press buttons. There's actually just a single bar that you can press the right or left half of to activate right and left click. Others have complained about this, but I have no problem with it at all, and it looks sleek too. The new touchpad is also the new style where you don't see any new surface material as it just continues into the rest of the wrist area. The touchable area is designated by small dimples that make the area textured. Asus also went with a multi-touch pad that allows "gestures" like a "pinch" to zoom in or out, although I find it a bit clumsy and non-accurate. The driver allows touch zones for things like vertical or horizontal scroll by dragging a finger near the bottom or right edge. This is configured in the Synaptics pointer manager. The pad it small, as with all netbooks, so found that I had to make the scroll area a good bit smaller than default because I kept activating it by default.
Battery
Battery life was probably the 2nd most important feature for me in a netbook selection. I'm surprised that models currently on the shelf with tiny 3-cell batteries and claimed run times of only 3 hours (which means real-life run time of 2 or less) are still selling. Well, this EEEPC 1005HA is one of the best available. The only netbook I've seen that's significantly higher is the MSI Wind U115 which I just sold. It claimed 13 to 17 hours and I found real-world run time of over 10 hours. Asus lists the 1005HA with the 6-cell 63 Whr at a 10+ hour battery. Of course, that's more of a "max" and would require dim screen and no WiFi or bluetooth. I've been running at about 75% screen brightness with WiFi on and Bluetooth off. I'm seeing run times of 6+ hours. I think this would jump to 7 to 8 hours if I'd move down to 50% brightness. I don't have much occasion to use it withouth WiFi though. But those are still fantastic times compared to so many netbooks in the 3 hour range. Just be careful when shopping since there are two offerings that are 6-cell batteries available. Be sure to get the larger Watt-Hour one.
Software
The 1005HA ships with Windows XP Home, which boots and runs quit well. Don't attempt to load Vista on this, or any other netbook! I did load Windows 7 RC1 on my previous EEEPC, the 1000 and it ran very well, probably equivalent to XP. So I suspect that this model will also run Windows 7 well too, but I've not yet tried it. Asus is starting down the path of other manufacturers by pre-installing a bunch of crap. I immediately removed the Norton trial. A trial of Office 2007 was also installed. Skype is also pre-installed and works just fine with the built-in webcam. I was surprised to find a complete version of Microsoft Works. I don't recall seeing that in the product description. It's a decent program, so I'll keep it for awhile. Asus also installed a suite of silly proprietary apps. I don't know that there's a useful one in the batch. A "dock" drops down from the top to allow some of them to be launched. EEE Storage provides 10 GB of online storage. A sync program is part of the suite, but with MS Live Sync being free, I don't know that this app would have any advantages. Asus Vibe provides some multimedia content access, but currenly says "coming soon" when you run it. Font Resizer makes it quick to adjust system font sizes and Splendid adjusts display properties. A parental control app is also provided but seems very limited.
Other observations
- I love the tiny power adapter Asus uses, even smaller than the one from MSI. And the power cable is a nice thin 2-prong one too, saving even more space. Velcro straps make it easy to wrap up. - The sleeve that comes with it doesn't have handles or any pockets for a small mouse, power adapter (not that you often need it with the great battery), flash drive, etc.
UPDATE Aug 10, 2009: I found one annoying aspect of this netbook: it's back-heavy. If you open the screen very much past 90 degrees, or if already have it leaning back a bit, such as when using it on your lap, the whole unit then tilts backward, making it impossible to type. I'm getting a bit frustrated with this as I often use this when sitting on the couch or in a chair with the laptop on one of those laptop boards that gives a nice hard surface. It also happens if using it when standing up when there's a need to tilt the screen back further.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 389 Operating System: Windows Processor: Other Processor speed: over 1000 Screen Size: 10 inches RAM: More than 256 Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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