Asus launches new Eee PC 901 Model
Posted on June 11, 2008 at 5:10 am
Some of you may remember my hands on review of the ASUS EEE PC 701 some months ago. At the time I was completely enamoured with the little machine, I really believed it was going to become a useful tool that I would just not be able to live without.
In reality, things turned out somewhat different. There are four things I dislike about the machine now that I have used it for a few months. The screen is too small to use for an extended period, the battery life is pretty short, the internal storage is too small and there is no integrated Bluetooth. All of these problems can be lived with or worked around, but they have stopped me using the EEE PC as the tool I was hoping it would become.
Computex 2008, which took place on the 3rd of June, saw ASUS roll out 3 new EEE PC models, for the purpose of this post I am going to take a look at the new 901 model, is it capable of overcoming the issues I have with my 701?
First lets take a look at the screen (pun intended), my old 701 has a 7″ TFT screen running at 800×480 resolution, which for browsing and email is actually fine but I am a writer by trade, meaning I have to spend long periods of time concentrating on what I am writing, and after an hour or so the 7″ on the 701 becomes a real eye strain. The new 901 has an 8.9″ TFT screen and runs at 1024×600 resolution, this represents quite a large increase in size, and should make the 901 completely useable for me. So that’s +1 for the EEE PC 901.
Battery life on the 701 is pretty terrible, ASUS will happily tell you that you can get up to three hours use from a single charge, in reality you are lucky if you get 2.5 hours, even less if you have the WiFi switched on. For an ultra portable notebook, this is ridiculous, even my ASUS G2S gaming laptop running in high performance mode can manage 2 hours.
The new 901 model is supposed to give a battery life of up to 8 hours, so even if we say ok ASUS are exaggerating again, we are probably still looking at a good 6-7 hours of use on a single charge, this is more like it! So what have ASUS done to give this huge increase? Quite simple really, they have used the Intel Atom CPU instead of the old Celeron M that was inside both the 701 and 900 series.
This tiny CPU draws a fraction of the power needed by conventional CPU types, so where is the downside? At first glance there doesn’t seem to be any, the Atom is rated at 1.6Ghz, the old Celeron in my 701 is running at 900Mhz (overclocked), so my initial reaction was great! Faster and less power! But when I checked out the benchmarks for the Atom, I found it actually performs worse than the Celeron does, although only slightly.
I can live with this, I use my 701 for purely work type applications I don’t need speed as much as I do battery life. So another +1 for the EEE PC 901
My original 701 has a 4GB internal SSD, which at first seemed plenty to install Windows XP (cut down install using nLite) and basic system software such as codecs and system tools, everything else I intended to install on a 4GB SD card in the SD slot.
The problem is, even if you use a streamlined XP install, by the time you have patched it fully, you are sitting with around 3GB of space taken up on the system drive, just not enough to have a decent size pagefile and leave some free for the future. The 901 comes in two sizes, a 16GB SSD running XP and a 20GB SSD running Linux. I guess a lot of XP users will by the 20GB Linux version and wipe the drive and install XP. So 20GB solves all of my problems, another +1 or the 901.
Having no internal Bluetooth in the 701 came as a surprise for me, this little notebook is the perfect partner for a data enabled cell phone, so I have been forced to carry a USB Bluetooth dongle around in my bag, I have lost 2 of them already, also it means losing one of the 3 USB ports. I am glad ASUS have included an integrated Bluetooth device in the 901. So yet another +1 for the new model.
So it would seem that replacing my 701 with a 901 is a logical choice, certainly one I am considering, it solves all of the problems I have with the 701 in a single integrated package. Does anybody want to buy a slightly used ASUS EEE PC 701? If not it can join the huge pile of gadgets I have purchased, tried and discarded over the years.
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Mmm,… what’s about MSI Wind?
I’ve just look over a post on a PC magazine,there was an advertisement regard of this.
it’s said that the E PC was very suit for the people who were studying in the Middle school.
In truth it’s suitable for anybody who needs a cheap and portable sub-notebook.
The Linux version has a very simple interface and is easy to use, even for people who have very little PC experience.
have you tried the hp2133 mini note? i think it’s far better than the Eee PC.
My problem with the HP mini note is that it has a standard HDD, which means you still have to treat it gently. The EEE PC with it’s shock resistant SSD storage is far more forgiving. My current EEE PC 701 gets thrown into my bag, without a protective case, the bag gets dropped, strapped to the back of my motorcycle and generally treated quite roughly, the EEE PC withstands all of this.
Ulysses mentions the MSI Wind, which I agree is a great little machine also, but I recently found out about a new Dell sub-notebook that will be a real killer, hopefully by the time I have to head back to the UK in September they will be on sale. I’ve been a big fan of Dell for years, my spare laptop is one of their cheap Inspiron models, and it has been abused so much and still works perfectly. I’ve carried it Half way around the world in a backpack, it’s travelled over 5000km strapped to the back of a motorcycle and it’s spent hundreds of hours working in extreme heat, a very good laptop.
tengo una pregunta con el Eee pc 701 se puede trabajar word, excel y power point, porque solo quiero trabajar con estos 3 programas y si con la nueva Eee se pueden trabajar, agradezco mucho que me resolviera la duda, gracias