EEE PC 1000H - Initial impressions

I just bought the Black 1000H a week ago for about US$560. This is my 4th laptop in 8 years. Here's a little background of my laptop experience:

I've owned:
SONY VGN SZ260? ($2,200 US - 2 years old)
HP Pavillion dv 6000 bought for $650 US - 1.5 years old.
HP Pavillion dv 5000 bought for $1,200 US - 8 years old.

I think by and far, the worst quality is the SONY VGN. It's such a fragile computer, even with its much touted carbon cover. The optical bay can become loose with its plastic cover coming undone several times (I had it to send it to get fixed). Don't ever put too much pressure on its cover or the screen will crack. I did much research on it then before settling on the SONY, what a huge mistake that was - it is simply an overpriced laptop with carbon cover gimmick. That SZ has a very defective battery. I'm on my 4th battery replacement costing $100 US each minimum and the last time the battery went out, I've had enough and decided to look for what's new out there...

Well, I really want a lighter, easier to manage laptop than ones I've owned so I gave my HP dv 6000 to my mom. One thing I can say about the HPs is that they are built like a tank! I've never had to replace any of the batteries, even the 8 year old one!

Now I use my SONY as a desktop at home (Finally the Ge7400 speed mode will have some use, but not much nowadays).

Moving on to a lighter portable...(EEE PC)...

I've looked at the MSI Wind, the HP Mini, Acer Aspire One and finally settled on the EEE PC 1000H. I think HP mini has the best built keyboard and the nicest looking layout out of the bunch. But there were several things that bothered me, one is its VIA CPU which is a few steps behind the Intel Atom N270 in terms of technology. So the battery life is quite abysmal - around 2 hours. Another thing for me is is the screen size, I think 10" is just right for an ultraportable, 8 or 9 inch (Like Acer one), I think, would make it very uncomfortable for the eye for any extended period of time. Had HP used an ATOM cpu I would've been sold on it. Next in contention was the MSI Wind - which cost about the same as the EEE PC 1000H here. I think MSI has a winner here, with its larger 120 gig hd vs 80 gig for 1000H and its faster booting time than EEE PC (but not much). But all else being equal, I think the EEE PC just looks better - but not by much - than the Wind. You have to see it in person as pictures on the internet don't do them justice. I've ready that MSI may last a few minutes more than EEE PC when it comes to battery but EEE PC may sound a little better with its Dolby sound. There are little pluses and minuses here and there for each laptop, but at the end of the day, I finally settled on EEE PC 1000H because ASUS has a very good reputation building laptops for years and MSI is just starting out (not to mention EEE PC has won numerous awards). On top of that, the price is same (with the Wind being almost $20 more expensive here). The one thing I don't like about the 1000H is the placement of the RIGHT SHIFT button, it is very small, like a key, and it has hampered my typing speed because I'm not used to the placement. Also, the ASUS keyboard feels a little bouncy, I don't know if that's a good thing or not - hopefully with time, these issues will become irrelevant. I think I would've been fine with the Wind if EEE PC wasn't in stock.

On to day to day use. Wow, these mini-lap tops are a must now adays for anyone that can't live without their laptops and carry them everywhere with them. I use to think that my Sony SZ, being 3.7 lbs is an ultra-light, but after 2 years of lugging it around, it felt very cumbersome now. It is such a chore to carry around the SZ's and its huge AC power supply. The EEE PC looks almost 1/2 the size of the SONY but it also weights few ounces less - so manageable. Still, the weight is quite heavy for being 1/2 the size, but it is still lighter than most portables and I have absolutely no complaints about lugging around 3.5 lbs all day - it is the size that matters....

As for not having a DVD/CD drive - well, I can think about perhaps 5 or 6 times that I've ever needed to burn DVD/CDs while I'm on the go. With USB flash cards nowadays, I don't miss it at all.

I will miss my HP's Duo Core 2 because you can tell it is smoother and faster than the Atom N270 - but the difference in speed is hardly noticeable but the difference in portability and battery life is like night and day. I would trade up this difference any day of the week.

I can travel very light now! If you are on standby, it awakes in a flash. The battery, so far, is great! I think you can easily get 5 hours with battery saving mode using wifi and casual surfing. I'm sure you can get more if you turn down the LCD brightness to its lowest and set the cpu speed to the minimum. It multitasks nicely with several windows - hardly a hiccup. It has bluetooth 2.0, Wifi n capability, and the LCD screen itself is nicely done. I think for its price and function, nothing can touch it - but I'm sure in 5 years, they will come up with a quad-core, 320 SSD drive, weighing less than 2 lbs, battery that last 10 hours all for the same price - HAH, that is when I'm planning to buy my next laptop anyways.

Cheers for the 1000H, great price, nice computer so far (except for the that stupid shift button). I think it is becoming the best laptop I have ever owned.

 

Thanks for this information! Probably useful to 1000H prospective buyers.

 

thanks, I think I am going to get one of this

 

Bought one for my daughter couple weeks ago, swapped out the 1G for 2G, loaded Office 2003 and a couple of other programs, also picked up an external drive for her.

I am really happy with this unit, perfect size & functionality compromise. It is also much easier for her to lug around in school instead of her MBP.

Should head over to http://forum.eeeuser.com if you haven't done so already.

 

Nice review, but the SZ weighs 4lbs and the EEE 1000H weighs 3.2lbs.

 

My girlfriend bought one and it runs smoothly with xp on it. It basically runs circles around her old celeron Dell inspiron, but sometimes when we turn it on it powers up but the screen stays black. That is a little frightening.. at least it has a one year warranty.

 

I started with a 701 and didn't like the 4GB of storage so I sold it and bought an HP Mini-Note. Nice little unit but the **** battery sticking out the bottom really defeats the purpose of having a small netbook. I kept the Mini-note but found a 1000H at Directron (just down the road from me) so I snapped it up. Since then I've dropped a 2GB stick of RAM and swapped the HD to a 160GB.

Need to fix the keyboard flex but all in all I'm really impressed with the latest. I see now that the 1000H is coming with a 160GB HD from the factory.

Oh well... only cost me $60 for the drive so no biggie.

 

If I'm not mistaken, the latest generation of via is much better than the atom...

But quite a useful review . What are the specs tho?

 

Nice review !

How's the battery ?
I jsut got MSI wind and i'm pretty disappointed. one hours +-. that's what you get

 

From a performance point of view. Atom trades it off for lower power consumption and heat output.

 

i thought the price for 1000H dropped down to $450-ish 2 weeks ago, did the price come back up?

 

where did you find the 1000H for 450?
In two weeks I hope to have this sitting on my desk, and moving my macbook down to the production studio, but if I can find it for 450 I will get it now?

I am between this, the Lenovo S10, and maybe even the Dell Mini 9, but I really just need at least a 10" screen.

Also, the only netbook displayed at best buy is the eee 900, how different is the design in the 1000h?

 

Which video card does the 1000H sport?

 

FYI for the OP many people have been using a utility to remap the up arrow and another key to be the right shift key. It seems to remedy that issue.

I forget the details but its all on eeeuser.com forums. Also they have OSX working on here, and there is a new driver to add many more jesters and motions to the touch pad.

 

No need to go to eeeuser... here is how to do it:


Here is how to remap the keypad:

Download and install:

Autohotkey

From: http://www.autohotkey.com/

Here are the example programs from the guru, DaveAMS:



=============================================

FROM DaveAMS:

----------------------------------------------------------

I use a prog called AutoHotKey, which (among other things) does key remaps. Since I use it anyway, I wrote a "conditional" remap, which tries to guess what I really want when I push the right up arrow. The conditions:

Acts like up arrow if:
1. the left shift key is already pressed,
2. or either control key is pressed,
3. or the up arrow key was previously pressed within the last 900 ms
Otherwise it acts like a shift key.
Code:
#InstallKeybdHook
*up::
if(GetKeyState("LShift") or GetKeyState("Control")
or (A_PriorHotkey="*up" and A_TimeSincePriorHotkey<900))
Send {blind}{up}
else
{
Send {RShift Down}
KeyWait, up
Send {RShift Up}
}
return


I think this will make a good starting place for you. I set it up so that if you press win+z, it toggles back and forth between "arrow mode" and "shift mode"...and it even gives you a little "tooltip" in the top left of the screen to tell you which mode it's toggled into.

You can make the hotkey just about anything you want, using the subsitutions:
# for windows key
! for Alt key
^ for Ctrl key
+ for Shift key

You can also add a < or > before any of these to specify only the left or right Win/Alt/Ctrl/Shift.

to change the toggle hotkey, just change the line that currently reads #z:: (for example, if you wanted ctrl+alt+t, the line would read ^!t::

Hope this helps!

Code:
#InstallKeybdHook
;Hotkeys:
; # Windows, ! Alt, ^ Ctrl, + Shift
#z::
CoordMode, ToolTip, Screen
if (arrowmode=1)
{
arrowmode=0
ToolTip, Shift Mode, 1, 1
Sleep 1000
ToolTip
}
else
{
arrowmode=1
ToolTip, Arrow Mode, 1, 1
Sleep 1000
ToolTip
}
return

*up::
if(arrowmode=1)
Send {blind}{up}
else
{
Send {RShift Down}
KeyWait, up
Send {RShift Up}
}
return




One thing you can try is this: the key names for page up and down are PgUp & PgDn. It may be as simple as
Code:
PgUp::
CoordMode, ToolTip, Screen
arrowmode=0
ToolTip, Shift Mode, 1, 1
Sleep 1000
ToolTip
Return

PgDn::
CoordMode, ToolTip, Screen
arrowmode=1
ToolTip, Arrow Mode, 1, 1
Sleep 1000
ToolTip
return

*up::
if(arrowmode=1)
Send {blind}{up}
else
{
Send {RShift Down}
KeyWait, up
Send {RShift Up}
}
return
I have not tried this though, so I'm not for sure that it works! I don't think this would be an issue, but if for some reason you were using the "numberpad" page up or down, they have different names:
NumpadPgUp
NumpadPgDn
So if the PgUp/Dn don't work, this might.


RE: Remapping PgUp/PgDn keys: this is because of the way that the Fn key modifies the other keys (I think). The keyboard driver actually knows that Fn+Up is supposed to be PgUp. The registry fix that moves the Up key happens at a low enough level that the Fn+Up = PgUp happens *after* the registry tells the computer to swap the Up & Shift keys. At least I'm pretty sure that's why.

The "PgUp/PgDn" toggle for AutoHotKey (the one I posted last night) works properly: I checked it today. I also added a new thing to my original "smart" shift/arrow script, which is a toggle associated with the capslock. (If CapsLock is on, it's always an arrow key. CapsLock off, it tries to figure out what you really want, as explained in my first post. Here's the new version of that.
Code:
*up::
if(GetKeyState("LShift") or GetKeyState("Control")
or GetKeyState("CapsLock","T")
or (a_priorhotkey="*up" and a_timesincepriorhotkey<600))
Send {blind}{up}
else
{
Send {RShift Down}
KeyWait, up
Send {RShift Up}
}
return
If you want a version that only does the toggle with the caps lock, but doesn't have any of the "smart" stuff, I'll include that too: (Since there are people who probably don't think it's "smart at all
Code:
*up::
if(GetKeyState("CapsLock","T"))
Send {blind}{up}
else
{
Send {RShift Down}
KeyWait, up
Send {RShift Up}
}
return
This could easily be changed to work with NumLock or ScrollLock...just replace "CapsLock" with one of those two.

Note: This will also work with the "Insert" key, but be warned: The system has its own "insert" state, which isn't the same as the insert state of various programs (i.e. Word, notepad, etc). It's like this: You're in inset mode by default when the computer comes up. if you open notepad and hit insert, now the system says you're in typeover and so does notepad. Now you open word, but it says you're in insert mode still, because *it* didn't specifically get an insert key. So now you hit insert in word, and you're in typeover mode in both notepad and word, but the system toggle is reset back to insert. So there you go...another case of the right hand not knowing what the left foot is doing!

 

I got the Asus 1000h 160gb and am loving it. I upgrade the RAM to 2gb and installed Vista because when I loaded all my programs in XP it was running very slow. I guess Vista's memory management is better and the power management is great too. I also got a 2gb SD card for Ready boost only and haven't had any problems. Funny thing is when I use my 12.1", 14" or 15" laptop afterwards the screen looks humongous after using the 10" 1000h! I bought an external DVD drive and everything is all well.