Sensibilium Blog

so my new asus eee pc 1001p arrived last week and i spent some time with it since then.

i was originally searching for a netbook around $300 cdn, and while the 1001p was $26 more than that, the vendor i went through had free shipping so it kinda balanced out. looking at netbooks on various etailers i found an unboxing video of this model which convinced me to buy it.

setting up was very fast. about half an hour from first boot to fully set up and browsing through firefox. it was very simple and easy to to get updated, get connected to my router through wifi(no wireless n on this model though) and set up media streaming from my desktop. i accidentally powered up the ancillary OS instead of the regular power button at first, and it booted and was functional pretty much instantly. though i didn't take the time to play around with it.

i spent the first afternoon drinking beers with it on the patio. i i was using firefox to browse my usual offtopic forum with youtube videos playing music in another tab. most videos played lag free even with a total of 4 tabs open. windows was very snappier, and overall i found it more responsive than the higher specced laptops i've used in the past.

the keyboard was comparable in ease of use to other laptop keyboards i've used, and i only had to slow down slightly from my typing speed on a full sized keyboard, and even drunk typing wasn't too bad.

the track pad is pretty small but fully adequate once i adjusted to it's size. i was looking forward to trying out the multi touch gestures, primarly two finger scrolling. unfortunately this feature was wonky as hell. two finger scrolling never seems to work properly, and i found that tapping the touchpad with one finger for left mouse button single clicks would sometimes act as middle mouse button clicks and open links in new tabs. i quickly gave up and started using it like any other laptop touchpad. which is unfortunate because this is the thing i dislike the most about laptops.

ASUS advertises up to 11hours of battery life, but using it from about 4pm to around 8pm i had only 2.5hours of estimated battery life left. which i was not surprised about but somewhat dissapointed.

i tried using it in direct sunlight, as i read somewhere that the screen was great under this condition, but it was pretty much unreadable, though not overly glared.

when using it on my lap it was not warm at all like full sized laptops i've used. teh screen goes back far enough for fairly comfortable viewing while it sits on one's lap, but typing is not that good in this potion. i found the best experience was sitting in the shade with this netbook on a table for comfortable viewing and typing.

music volume was fairly decent outside with windows volume set to full. not great quality which is to be expected, but certainly better than i was anticipating. certainly good enough for a single user on the porch listening to youtube or streaming music, but i wouldn't use it for 2 or more people in the same situation.

i have not bothered trying to play HD video on it, although people seem to point out these things aren't built for that or that they want to do that with them. i don't think it would be a pleasant viewing experience with the small screen and low resolution. i did watch some fairly high quality youtube videos that i had made myself, at default resolution, and it played them back perfectly.

PROS:
great value and performance for the price.
lightweight and cool on your lap.
snappier than expected.
fast and easy to get started from unboxing.

CONS:
ASUS software does not properly changed wallpaper as advertised
lower "real" battery life than advertised
wonky/not functional as advertised multi touch pad leads to aggravating but typical for laptop scrolling while browsing.