Asus Eee PC 1008HA Seashell 10-inch Netbook (Intel Atom N280 1.66 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, Windows XP Home, White)
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| Asus Eee PC 1008HA Seashell 10-inch Netbook (Intel Atom N280 1.66 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB HDD, Windows XP Home, White) | |||||||||||||||
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No details are available for this product Differentiating factor from other netbooks: Looks |
| Review Date: August 17, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Senior Consultant, London |
| Now, lets face it is. The reason to get this netbook over others, is the looks and the weight, which are exactly why I bought it. And in my opinion worth the slight premium you pay for this.
It is a netbook, so lets review it as one. It is not meant for gaming or photoshop. It is meant for surfing, checking your emails, listening to music and some basic office work. All netbooks currently have pretty identical hardware. So the only differentiating factors are keyboard, battery life and ... oh yes, design. Lets get over the boring part first, yes it has the netbook de facto Atom 1.66GHz CPU, 160GB hard drive, 1GB of memory, WiFi and bluetooth. So pretty much the same hardware as every other self respecting netbook has. Well some do skimp on the bluetooth, which is I think is critical since a bluetooth mouse really makes a difference on usability. Don't get me wrong, the track pad on this thing is actually very good, but a track pad is really only good for casual stuff. So on to the interesting parts. Design first, which is the main reason I bought this. I mean it is much better looking than the rivals; this of course is up for personal preference, but too many netbooks are like tiny versions of boring grey corporate laptops. Yes this has a little apple(ish) design feeling to it, which will please some, while not others. It is thin, shiny and well, modern and stylish. Yes, probably not everybody probably appreciates the white colour, but for some reason Asus doesn't sell the black one in UK. They sell it in other parts of the world, so go figure. I admit, I bought this because of the looks and weight. It is smooth all over, and all the ports (2usb, VGA, mic and line out) are hidden behind flaps. Purely for style reasons. The track pad is part of the case, and only identifiable from rest of the surface by the different texture. All in all, I do call it stylish. And on this it probably would be time to mention the charger, which to my surprise was actually very very small. Something I wouldn't mind carrying around with this. The 1008ha is slightly lighter and thinner than other netbooks, which was one of the deciding factors for me. The reduced weight makes it easy to carry around in my shoulderbag. I usually keep it in the sleeve that came with it. The sleeve seems actually very good and stylish, much better than the one provided for example with Samsung NC10 (which my friend purchased, and he agrees that the sleeve that comes with 1008ha is much better). Next, the keyboard, which is actually pretty good. It is pretty decently sized, and has a quite a nice feeling to it. It isn't full size keyboard which should be kept in mind, but it is quite firm, has a nice touch, and works well when touch typing. Though obviously, the feel of a keyboard is a very personal experience and it varies quite a lot from person to person. So I do recommend trying it out before buying. I'm hesitant to say that the NC10 might have just a little better keyboard, but after using this now for few weeks I'm not sure anymore. They keyboard on this is actually quite pleasant once you get used to it. The third item, battery life. It says in the marketing material it does 6 hours, which when you compare it to other netbooks, is pretty good. I think it maybe does 5hours in a real life situation, but I haven't really properly tested or measured this, so I won't say more. 5 hours is plenty for me. There are a few trade-offs when it comes to this netbook. Those being the internal battery and difficulty of upgrading memory. The battery is build inside the machine, so you can't replace it, and this might indeed be a deal breaker for some. So you want to carefully consider how you want to use your netbook. Personally I'm willing to sacrifice that for the weight and looks. Also because of the design, there is no easy access to the memory module. So to upgrade the memory to 2GB (which it supports), you basically have to take the thing apart, quite possibly voiding the warranty in the process. The Windows XP it comes with works well enough on the 1GB, so I'm still considering if it is worth sacrificing the warranty, as the upgrade procedure is quite difficult and there are some people on the Internet whose 1008ha won't start anymore after the memory upgrade has failed. So yes there are a few trade-offs for the weight and the looks, but all worth it in my opinion. Finally a netbook that is light enough to be carried around. I wrote this review on my 1008ha, with a few browser windows open and winamp streaming music from an external source. No problems with the keyboard or performance for this type use. |
| Best Netbook- So far |
| Review Date: August 29, 2009 |
| Reviewer: E. Kirton, London UK |
| Its by far the best looking netbook out there, thin and sexy- particularly in white. This demands attention and gives total performance to back it up. It comes with norton and ms office 60 day trials preinstalled on the pc as well. Battery life is also quite amazing and unlike my old dell pc when using power saving mode the monitor remains bright, thank god :) U can also run a few basic 3d games as well. I found that all of the dawn of war games, apart from the latest can be run on this pc at max settings with no lag, how great is that :) With the 160GB hdd, u can just convert ur dvds to divx format and watch the at the same quality on the move. Its just slightly and i do mean slightly thicker than the mac book air, but it has better hdd space and battery life and at 1/5 of the cost, in other words just buy :) |
| Great Little Netbook |
| Review Date: July 22, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Paul Barron, Aberdeen |
| I purchased this Netbook after reading a review in Which? magazine. It is an extremely convenient tool for use when travelling. It is incredibly light and compact, yet still very powerful and well spec'ed. It has a very sleek appearance and attracts many favourable comments from others while I am using it. The reflective screen is a lttle bit of a nuisance in brightly lit environments, but the screen itself is incredibly sharp and colourful. At this price you cannot go wrong. The white exterior case shows up finger prints pretty easily, and I might have been tempted to buy a different colour had I known that it is available in several alternative colours. |
| Brilliant |
| Review Date: August 4, 2010 |
| Reviewer: P. Rowley, UK |
| I bought this for my daughter, she's the best and deserved the best and got the best.
It's easy to use, fast, reliable and has items other net books don't. As a windows machine it's comparable and in someways better than my MacBook. |
Tags: 1.66, 1008ha, 10inch, asus, atom, ghz, hdd, home, intel, n280, netbook, ram, seashell, white, windows
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