Vicious's EEE 1000H Review

Here is my ultimate EEE 1000H Review.

As usual it will have more details and content than any review normally has so it will be broken into parts.

This is the first part with the written review & photo gallery. I will try to add the additional sections 1 per day, the more people are interested the faster I will try to work.

Review Contents:

Written Review: Done
Photo Gallery: Done
Mods Guide: Pending
Vista Install Guide: Pending
Easy Hard Drive Upgrade Guide: Pending
Wiimote & Bluetooth INF Guide: Pending in review but posted HERE
Driver Upgrades Guide & Links: Pending
Overclocking Guide: Pending
Codecs Guide: Pending
Maximizing Desktop & Browser Space Guide: Pending
Custom Bios Post Image Guide: Done
Bios Update Walkthru: First part at the end of the BIOS Post Image Guide.
In depth Ralink Drivers Guide: Pending
Remapping Keys Guide: Pending


Vicious's Ultimate EEE 1000H User Review

Overview & Introduction

The EEE 1000H is one of the newer models of Asus's "Netbook", new models are popping up almost weekly it seems like! Asus pretty much started the netbook line with the EEE in my opinion, I did not hear of one before the EEE was released.

Here is a nice chart with all of the EEE models and information: HERE

The original EEE was very much a "Netbook" being ultra small/portable and really only good minor web surfing. Based on SSD and small screens/keyboards. Some people were interested in the device but it was not too popular. I think mainly due to the price, limited uses, and bad keyboard. Well all the cons of the original EEE have been fixed with the introduction of the 1000H, its slightly bigger at 10" and starts to border the worlds of "netbook" and ultra portable notebook. Its perfect in my opinion as now its easily usable for many tasks. Watching movies, listening to music, taking notes, web browsing, and even gaming!

Major things to note:
> ~7 hour battery life (6 cell battery)
> Uses HDD so tons of space (up to 500gb currently) and any decent HDD is actually faster than the included SSD's in the other models
> 93% full size keyboard so easy touch typing
> LED Backlight

Asus has become very competitive with there prices and features on the 1000H. It is one of the few netbooks to come fully loaded with a 6-cell battery for the long battery life, bluetooth, wireless a/g/b/n, and a hard drive. Did I mention the hard drive & ram are also 100% user upgradable, very very easy to do and no warranty seals to break.

The older 1000H came with a 80gb HDD, but that model has been discontinued and now it comes stock with a 160gb HDD.

Specs When Purchased:

1.6ghz Atom
1gb DDR2
80gb HDD
GMA 950 chipset/graphics
1024x600 pixel 10" LED Backlit Screen
B/G/N Wifi
Bluetooth
1.3MP Webcam
Microphone
Windows XP

Specs Now:
User Upgraded to 2gb Ram & 250GB HDD


Reasons for Buying:

Well I got the EEE because I needed something portable. I upgraded my Asus C90S 15" to the G50V-A1 and the G50 is big, its nearly 17" size so it only can go with me when I know I want to setup shop or awhile.

When ever I got stuck waiting for a table for dinner, waiting in the lobby at the doctors office, sitting in the passenger seat in the car when my wife is driving, in the living room watching the kids in the day while they play. I thought wow it would be really nice to have a little notebook with me to kill time and do some work/play on.

I also knew well ahead of time that this thing can run emulators really well, I am a classic gaming fan. I love the classics like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 6 ect on the SNES. So this was a GREAT way to be able to catch up on some of my old games with downtime. Then I am a big music/movie fan too. With a HDD of up to 500gb in size if you self upgrade you can have your entire music/movie collection on the go, bluetooth built in means I get to use my Plantronics 590 BT Headphones and really enjoy myself no matter where I am at. Then of course the fact that it has 7 hours of battery life means you can actually do these things no matter where you are at any time because you do not need a power plug.

The other super super great thing is that it has multitouch gestures for the touchpad, 2 finger scrolling, 3 finger forward/back, things like that so its very easy to navigate around on it with no mouse, so you really need nothing but the EEE when you go out, you can leave the mouse & power brick at home making it ultra portable.

I also have a lot of fun using it for GPS in my car sometimes, I know it will come in handy one day.

The only real competitor was the MSI Wind, the wind lost due to the fact that only 3 cell battery was out there, also the price drop of the 1000H made it not only better, but cheaper so it was a no brainier that this as the one to get.

The other units all have major flaws in my opinion.

Dell Mini 9: Only SSD (really sucks small keyboard, expensive
Acer Aspire One: No bluetooth, small keyboard
Leovo S10: Small keyboard, I think SSD only

The SSD's coming in these thing are fairly small limiting what you can do with them and worse yet they are painfully slow, making streaming movies hard to do, and even just system performance in general can drag. HHD is the way to go, more space, speed, less cost.

SSD is a valid option if you have a very specific reason for needing it I suppose for most people though the regular hard drive is a better option.


Where & How Purchased

Ever since my first Asus notebook the C90S I have been an exclusive customer of GentechPC due to there great prices and EXCELLENT customer service. The C90S was a very problematic machine and Ken on multiple occasions went so far out of his way to help me and resolve the problems.

So I actually got two of the 1000H's one for me, and one for my wife. I got the very last of the 80gb models before they were wiped out and I think it was $450 each, they now carry the 160gb model for $475. Very much worth it. I enjoy my EEE way more than any other notebook so far it just has a ton of charm and uses.


Build & Design

Pictures are worth a thousand words so time to show off my 1000H photo shoot, high res photo's just click for a larger image.

Brightness Levels:

100% Brightness


50% Brightness


1% Brightness


Gradient Tests: (note that gradients look great but there will be some .jpg artifacts due to compression)

Red Gradient


Blue Gradient


Green Gradient:


View Angles:

~30 Degree Top


~60 Degree Top


~20 Degree Right Side:


~45 Degree Right Side:


~20 Degree Left Side:


~45 Degree Left Side:


~45 Degree Under:


General & Ports

Top Closed:


Bottom:


Inside: (note only 2 screws super easy to open, and immediate access to HDD & RAM with no warranty seals to break)


Keyboard & Touchpad:


Left Side:


Right Side:


Back Side:


Front Side: (quarter for scale)


Cooling Mod: (more on this later in my detailed mod guide)


Max Degree Open:


So the build is solid. The hinges have no wobble at all, nothing feels cheap or compromised. All the parts are of good quality.
There is only one real "flaw" and thats the super strange placement of the right shift key, its on the other side of the up arrow and sort of small. A touch typist will have to get used to it and may have trouble typing at full speed at first due to this.

I would consider this a major flaw if there had not been several fixes. Most people simply use a key remaping software to swap the up arrow and the right shift key so that its where it should be when typing. I however found a much better solution. A software that is scripted so you can do anything with it called autohotkey. Somebody wrote me a script that toggles the up arrow between arrow mode and shift mode on the fly. I will share all that information in the in depth section. For average joe who did not read my review and never knew of a fix, this could be a big flaw if your a touch typist.

The good though is that the keyboard is great! Right away soon as I booted it up I was able to type over 60 words per minute with no errors without having to even get used to the keyboard. Its 93% the size of a full keyboard and typing on it is a reality. This is VERY important to me, I cant peck type for very long before I get irritated. If I want to do that I will use my phone. Some people reported very minor flex in the keyboard but mine & my wifes units have no flex at all, and there is also a very easy fix for that too if you have it that will be in the mods section.

Take note! - Its super small so guess whats not here? An optical drive... So do yourself a favor and atleast have a usb flash drive to work with to transfer files and install things. If you cant live without one an external usb optical drive is an option for you.

The weight is just over 3lbs so its very light in my opinion, you can see the leather case I use in the pictures, when its closed its just like carrying a book around. The stock battery is 6600MaH so its a nice big battery, if your comparing the EEE against another unit and your a weight wenie, be sure to look and see if it has a 3 cell battery like most do, because thats where a lot of the weight is going to come from and so the other unit may not really be lighter, just have less battery there.

It has a small tilt to it making it ergonomic I get no pains when typing, I can not use my full size notebook without my cooling pad to tilt it forward or I get pains. The EEE tho is just fine on its own, and the leather case also helps it some too by blocking finger prints and raising it up some. Oh, did I just say finger prints? Yeah get used to them, and the included micro fiber cloth. if you get the black color its a finger print magnet! I am very good at handling the unit but I still would get them on there before I got that case. So just be warned that minor cleaning with the cloth is needed if your a clean freak like me and cant stand finger prints.



Screen:

The screen is really awesome. Its MATTE YAY! I know the debate of whats better glossy or matte can go on forever and ever. But just think about this, the goal of the unit is to be versatile and portable. One thing that would majorly hamper this is if the screen was glossy and reflective.

Right now typing this review up on my G50V, I see all the lights in the ceiling and part of my reflection on the NBR page... Glossy is good when you have the right lighting, but when you don't it sucks.

So, what else is good? Well its LED backlit. That means it offers the lowest power consumption, its the brightest, and there is no bleed of the light like you can find in traditional notebooks, in addition you ge nice very black black colors. I almost always keep my unit at 50% brightness as you can see its still very bright in the pictures and increases battery life. Its even totally usable at the lowest 1% setting!

So, what is bad? Well the resolution is only 1024x600 thats kind of small. Its the standard res on netbooks so its not like your losing out vs the competitors but it means don't really plan to do photoshop work or spreadsheets on here. What helps a lot is the multitouch touchpad so you can effortlessly scroll up/down/left/right at any time with just 2 fingers. I also find that adding some mods to your browser & desktop makes using the EEE a pleasant experience and can add a lot of screen space. So I will write a dedicated section on what mods I use and how they work. The EEE does offer 1024x720 and you can scroll the actual screen down. It came in handy once when I had a program with a huge window that could not be resized, I was still able to see it all and use it.

The screen is definitely 10/10, I personally wish there was an option for a higher res screen... but I know demand wouldn't be too high since it would raise cost and most would probably say reading text and stuff is hard since its too small.


Speakers:

I can not even express to you how utterly surprised I am at the quality and volume of the speakers in this little unit.
If you happened to look at the "post your computer setup" thread you may notice while at work I have both the G50V and the EEE side by side out at the same time... whys that? Because the EEE sounds better than the G50V!

I read in other forums people said the volume is low for them, but for me its as loud as I could have expected so I think it must be there source files encoded very low. Also there is software out there than can further boost the volume.

Listening to music & movies on here is really good. Almost none of that tiny speaker syndrome. I mean there is no real bass there, but it still does not sound like little ear piercing treble only speakers. It produces good strong mids that make up for not having a subwoofer. If you ever did have a qualm with the speakers, you can use earphones, and better yet bluetooth headphones like me so you can use the EEE as your portable radio station


Processor & Performance:

Well this is not going to be long and full of benchmarks like most of my reviews. It would be pointless. Why? Well obviously this is not a performance machine. It just has low end integrated graphics and a little single core 1.6ghz Atom.

Still despite that, it works really well. I don't feel like the machine is slow even tho I use high end computers along side it.

The Atom does one thing and it does it well, its very cool, and it uses very little power. It does this so well that its rather hard to make this machine over heat. You can in my experience block the vents and everything and it still stays in a safe temp range.

So what can it do?

Well it plays all the way up to 720p video without a problem. It runs emulators like a champ, I have had it running Playstation games even. Some computer games work well, starcraft, D2, Fate, CS 1.6, and tons more. I have not ventured in the PC games really, just not my style or taste for this little unit, if you really want PC games it may be worth the premium for you to look at the new Asus N10 unit that is basically and EEE 1000H with a Geforce 9300GS in it.

If your a Vista OS fan, it can run Vista quite well, but you will need to upgrade to 2gb of ram to make it enjoyable. Id personally stay with XP just so that when doing something that pushes the machine to its limits like PSX Emulation or high res movies you can get every last ounce of power dedicated to your task and not to the OS like I think Vista may do.

If you do choose to use Vista you can look forward to one nice benefit. Longer battery life! Yes indeed you can get 7 hours on XP but people with Vista have reported over 8 hours when trying to max battery life. Vista has better battery management and thats all there is to it.

>> Insert SuperPi Score Here Later

Also just one thing to mention, we have ways to overclock. I know of a few programs and methods to overclock the EEE and I will share them in a dedicated section below. Most people get ~2ghz with the cpu. This may very well help out if your doing something thats borderline of running smooth and not smooth.

The included Super Hybrid Engine software had 3 modes.

> Power Save = 1.2ghz
> Performance = 1.6ghz
> Super Performance = 1.7ghz

I keep mine in power save almost always since I don't use the power adapter often and it feels fast still. Also quickly another quirk.

The software obviously just changes the FSB and in relation the cpu speed & ram speed will move with it. Well since the SATA hard drive shares the buss, for what ever reason the HDD speed will change in the different modes, and get this the lower the FSB the faster the HDD. So Power Save = Fastest HDD while Super Performance = Slower.

>> Insert HDD Test with different power modes


Heat & Noise:

Power consumption & heat go hand in hand. Used power = generated heat. So since the EEE uses so little power to have that great battery life, it naturally produces very little heat. You can easily use it in your lap and still have children one day.

Noise is also great for me, I did do a cooling mod for mine that dropped my HDD temp 2c and my CPU 4c that I will show & discuss below in a dedicated section, but the fan can only be heard in a silent room and its not a annoying fan noise its more of a moving air noise.

I see problems with the heat or noise so nothing to complain about.


Keyboard & Touchpad:

I more or less already talked about this above in the build quality. The keyboard is 93% of the size of a normal full size keyboard and uses almost the entire units size for placment so its as big and as nice as you can get without a bigger computer. Its very usable for touch typist and has good feedback.

The right shift key is the only annoyance and I will share the fixes for that below when I write the tutorial on how to fix it.

Touchpad is really really great. It is not a synaptics device like 98% of most notebooks that means the 1 finger scroll along the edges is not here. Instead it uses a Mac like multi touch gesture system that I like much better.

That means:
> 2 finger scroll up/down/left/right
> 3 fingers for forward/back with a swipe to the left or right
> 3 fingers up/down will launch my computer or switch threw windows.
> 1 finger held down and then a double tap with the other finger opens a magnifying glass
> 2 fingers in a pinching or reverse pinching motion zooms in/out
> 2 fingers rotated will rotate pictures and things.

All of these gestures work great, I don't use the zoom or magnifying glass often though. You can also customize almost every aspect of them in the driver software to make sensitivity higher/lower, enable/disabled them and more.

I can honestly say this is the first time in my entire life that I did not consider a mouse a mandatory accessory, so much infact I never use a mouse with the EEE even tho I bought a Logitech VX Nano for it.


Input & Output Ports:

Very basic here, this is one of the few places that the competing products may offer more options.

You can see in the pictures that I labeled all the ports for you.

> VGA Out (Dsub)
> Headphone & Mic (1/8" mini stereo jack)
> LAN (RJ45)
> 3x USB 2.0
> SD Card Slot

And thats it really for the outside, like I said others offer some things like express card slot. So this setup can be beat. But I personally never use anything but what is here so its perfect for me. Plus you know the saying "it's whats on the inside that counts" well they may have been talking about people but it works for notebooks too


Wireless:

The EEE has bluetooth inside already, and wireless B/G/N so its up to snuff with all of the newest standards and able to be used with just about any network or device.

Only problem I have tracked down is the unusual brand wifi card Ralink I think does not support WEP security networks at least not with some editing of the files. I use AES/TKIP on my network and have the SSID hidden and it worked perfectly. I get full signal and full speed.

There are newer drivers than what comes on the disk and is on Asus's site that I will explain in detail below. I think its very unique because it offers a control panel of its own that is much more detailed and advanced vs the standard Microsoft Zero config. You will see what I mean later in that section.

Bluetooth works perfectly for me, I think my range may be slightly less than my other 2 notebooks ~20ft with my headphones instead of ~30 but I have to retest as it could have been interference. I do not use the stock Widcomm/Broadcomm drivers/software at this point I have manually hacked Bluesoleil onto the EEE and the link to how to do that is near the top of the review in the overview. I also know Toshiba BT Stack can be installed via the same method.


Battery:

GREAT! the 7 hour battery life Asus claimed was not a lie! You wont just magically get 7 hours, you would have to shoot for it by using power save mode, lower screen brightness, and turn off wifi/bluetooth. But even if you leave that stuff on and just your normal thing you get 4-5 hours easy and thats a lot. Probably more than you need to sit at a computer anyways

My other notebook would struggle to make it thru a 2 hour movie on battery, the EEE will get me thru 2 movies and still let me surf the web after so I am very happy with the battery.

This is one of the very few netbooks that actually has a 6-Cell battery stock and its a big one too 6600MaH. If you crave more power I have seen after market batteries all the way up to 11600MaH that should give you almost double the stock battery with on time.

Also just to recap what I said above, the battery life is even longer in Vista due to its better battery managment. People have gone past 8 hours on the stock battery in Vista.


Operating System & Software:

Comes with XP, works with Vista and SHHHH OSX (no sound/wireless currently but all else works)

Software bundle is standard, Asus is good with giving no bloatware. The closest thing is the free norton & office trial that you can easily uninstall.

Also comes with free 10gb of online storage.


Conclusion:

So, all said and taken into consideration I think Asus holds the crown for best netbook right now when it comes to all around performance and value. Its small enough to be ultra portable but big enough to be practical to use.

Its built well, it looks good, and it performs well. I am very happy with my purchase, and my wife is also very happy with hers.

Many situations arise where portability/mobility > power, and for those situations Asus has you covered with the EEE.

 

Reserving, I think I may easily hit the post limit once I start plugging in the guides.

Guide #1 Customizing your bios post image!

Ok lets face it the stock ugly grey post image does the EEE no justice, and it would be much more fun to have one of your own right?

Well you can do that! and its pretty easy to do.

So first of all:
Warning you are messing with the freakin BIOS more people break there computers messing with the bios than anything else, so don't blame me or my guide if you brick your EEE.

Now with that said, its VERY safe, and tried and tested by numerous people, just don't be like me and start messing with the bios tools and try to do other stuff.

So three part guide, how to make the image, and how to change it with your current one, then how to flash the BIOS.

Step 1 Making the Image:
The stock image is a 640x480 indexed .bmp file. So that is exactly what we want to make to replace it with to be safe.
You should know that the EEE screen is 1024x600, and if you work with photo's often those are two totally different aspect ratios (meaning one is wider than the other) So pretty much what we have to do is create are image "squished" so that when it gets stretched out by the bios it stretches it back to normal.

You can use any program that has these options, but I do all my image work in Photoshop so the guide is going to be based off of Photoshop CS3.

First some background information. The stock bios image file is 301kb and the bios file itself is only 512kb. Thats over half the size of the BIOS! Crazy right? Well there is a reason, the BIOS compresses the image file. After you insert it into the BIOS the stock image shrinks all the way down to 9,348bytes!

So far on the other forums I have seen people use a file that when compressed was 50kb and the bios has room for up to 85kb before its "full" so it is my recommendation that you keep it at 50kb or less since for now that is the highest confirmed safe level. This is VERY easy to do if you follow my steps to make your image.

For reference my image in .bmp format was 307kb and when it was in the BIOS it compressed to 9860bytes (.98kb)

So lets start!

> Create a new photoshop document the size of the EEE screen, 1024x600.

> Make your image, here is mine:

(note this is the final product resized)

> When you have your image created the way you want it, its time to convert it into the right size and type for the BIOS.
Go to the Drop Down at the top of the screen: Image --> Image Size --> Uncheck Constrain Proportions or it will only let you resize the photo with a maintained aspect and we are on purpose going to distort this image --> Enter the new size of 640x480.

> The image is the right size, now to change the format.
Go to: Image --> Mode --> Indexed Color --> This is the biggest step that stands between the size and quality of the image, try to get it down to as few colors as possible and have it still look good. The more simple your image is the easier this will be to do.

You can turn off transparency, Matte & Dither per your preference, having them off should make the file smaller. No more than 240 colors, I would shoot for under 50, mine only uses 10!

> Hit ok to finalize your indexing

> Now just to save the file.
Go to: File --> Save As --> .BMP file type with options set to Windows, 8-bit, leave the 2 checkboxes at the bottom off (compress and flip row) these should be the default options.

> Hit SAVE, and thats it your image is done!

Part 2 Inserting the image into the bios and flashing the bios.

Ok first the tools you need, download them here: http://rapidshare.com/files/71859070/AMI_tools_8.rar
This is the AMI Toolset, American Megatrend Industries, they make the bios for a ton of machines, so you can probably adapt this guide and do the image change on other computers.

There are two tools we will use in the pack.

OEMLogo.exe - The program that swaps the old image with the new one
MMTool.exe - The advanced program that lets you change ALOT of stuff, but we are just going to use it to verify the image size.

Also you will need you bios file. I would just go to the Asus.com site and download the newest bios out 1103 for the EEE1000H is what I used. The BIOS files are .ROM format.

So first let me explain MMTool, open it up and use the "Load ROM" dialog to open your bios file. Right away you will see some information pop up and just about 11 lines down. I have it highlighted in this picture:



You will see the column "source size" thats the image size before its compressed, and then "size in rom" that the compressed size. We wont use this tool for anything, I just want you to see the original logo size and then come back after we finish the next step to make sure your new image is under 50kb.

So now lets open the oemlogo.exe program.

> Use the "Load ROM" function again to open the BIOS file.

> Use Browse to find your indexed 640x480 .BMP file we created in the first step.

> Use the "Replace Image" button and it will swap the images out for you.

> Use "Save ROM as" to save the BIOS, I would recommend you name it to a new file and not save over the original file. Like 1103Test.ROM is what mine was.

> Go ahead and open the new BIOS in MMTool.exe to see what the new file size is. If your under 50k (or feel brave and want to try the max 85kb that we know should work in theory) then lets go ahead and FLASH!

Final Step: Flashing the New BIOS

The easiest way in the whole world is to use the program that should already be installed on the EEE, Asus Update.
Run the program and you will see the update BIOS option.

It gives you a few options, you want to select the "Update from File" option (sorry no pictures here since my EEE is in deep hibernate mode right now)
Browse to your new test BIOS file and select OK/Flash or what ever it says.

It will prompt you that the EEE will need to restart to continue, Say OK and it will reboot and automatically for you open EZ-Flash and flash the BIOS for you. Don't do anything here, just wait until it had completely finished, it only takes a minute. It will beep at you when it is done and say hit any key to reboot.

Go ahead and hit a key, when it reboots you will see your new image! After flashing any BIOS tho I always do what is recommended and that is hit "F2" to enter the bios and then Save & Exit (also make sure all the options are how you want them, I think BIOS 1103 has the camera off by default for instance)

I also leave boot booster off so that I can see my image and its easier to get into BIOS.

Pro Tips:
*** Make sure you are plugged in when flashing the bios, just so that your EEE does not power down from a dead battery or something.
*** If you ever upgrade your ram from 1gb to 2gb, you need to enter the bios and save & exit in the same manner for the machine to update and use the 2gb.

Here is my image in person during boot up, I only took one picture and did not know that it as ultra over exposed, so it looks all white but in reality it looks just like the original image.



Thanks to Frankgg for posting most of this information in his guide on another forum, I took what he posted and changed it up a bit for my taste.

Stay tuned for more guides as I get the time to do them!

 

Some of those aftermarket batteries offer higher capacity cells but lower voltage so it ends up working out close to the same as the 6600mah that it comes with.
I haven't been able to get 7 hours out of it, more like 6 hours but wifi is always on.
The only other netbooks with 6 cell now are the Acer Aspire One, and the MSI Wind. MSI is way pricey though, and the way the screen wobbles when you type on it (independent of surface on the 3-4 that I've tried), I couldn't stand it. Nice unit though I wish they had stuck with Synaptics at least for the touchpad.

 

Not me I really like the elantech touchpad.

 

Great review.

 

Doesn't seem to be much interest, guess I missed the boat since I reviewed it late.

I just broke mine EEE yesterday too (in the name of science!, well in the name of writing complicated mod guides..)

I already have the resources to write all of the guides tho. Guess this will be a good test to see how good/fast I can get it fixed.

 

Hi,

I liked the review. Thanks for posting it!

$429 for a computer without an optical drive though. Add $100 for an external DVD writer and thats over $500. I can get a Dell Vostro 1000 with windows XP for about the same, and similar Celeron M type computers (Thinkpad SL400) from other manufacturers. What sort of perfomance change do I get with the bigger machines?

I've tried finding benchmarks on the Celeron CPUs but there seem to be several dozen CPUS named Celeron with widely varying benchmarks.

More importantly, which computer plays WoW better, including instance runs, not just running around Stormwind?

 

Excellent review Vicious! Very detailed as always
I'm actually really interested to see your guide on changing the bios image. Hopefully you'll get your eeepc fixed soon!

 

That was an EXCELLENT, detailed review...The pic's were awesome!

Kudo's on a great job!!!


Cin

 

Dam awesome review...yet another quality post. I think once people get wind of it, there will be more chatter. What did you do to your eee? Were you installing internal gps or something and snip a wire?

 

No did some more advanced bios modding, some uncharted territory that I was hoping to pioneer in.

Im going to try to write the image guide tonight tho, thats easy and safe. I am working all week 7 days, I lost my days off because my relief was fired. Still as long as its not too busy I can write the guide in downtime at work.

I thought about internal GPS but computers emit a field that will disrupt most gps, my external usb unit will not work until I get it so far away from the unit and I really want Sirf Star III for the chipset and I think none of the internal ones have that.

 

I have seen external usb optical drives for $20 on ebay, and about $40 in the stores. I think your $100 quote is really inflated or rather your just looking for the wrong thing. You dont need a dual layer dvd burner or anything like that just a reader is all you could ever need. If you want to burn stuff use your real computer that is more suited for those tasks.

Plus that would only be something you need for 2 reasons.

> To install or read a disk when away from home
> To do the normal install of windows from disk

The first one holds true because while at home you can easily use your existing computers optical drive for the EEE via sharing it on your network. So any program or game you may need to install by disk you can do like that, me personally I just would rip the image to a file and transfer it to the EEE with my flash drive and use Daemon Tools to mount the image.

The Second is something that you should not have to do hopefully, if you have to install windows fresh you cant really use the network method (I think there is a boot via LAN option so maybe you can but I have not ever used it)

There are many guides to installing windows via flash drive, personally I just downloaded the free trial of Acronis when I first got the EEE made a copy of the drive into a backup image and now I can refresh my EEE back to its brand new state at any time with the USB drive using Acronis rescue media.

I already did it for both units because I upgraded from an 80gb to 250gb drive and it was so quick and painless, swap the drives out and in about 8 minutes the 250gb drive was a identical copy of the 80gb drive with a fresh EEE XP install and I even got to setup custom partitions. Acronis is great software, wish I had known how nice it was when it was on sale for ~$13 last month.

As for the computers, your sort of comparing apples to oranges. The Volstro without a doubt will have more power, a Centrino is not a very powerful cpu if you compare it to its C2D brothers but its certainly faster than the Atom and it should be dual core rather than single core.

But the unit is going to be much larger, hotter, and the battery life wont be the same. Its a standard 15" notebook vs this little 10" netbook also the volstro is about as basic and plain as you can get.

The EEE should not be looked at as a gaming machine, WoW will barely run on here, the N10 would run WoW ok and be the same size though.

It is a gaming machine if your ok with emulation tho I mean you can stuff over 1000 SNES/Genisis/NES/Gameboy ect games on here easy and have enough games to keep you occupied for the rest of your life.

Its going to be very hard to find a small notebook with any real gaming power, and its going to be expensive. 15" is the best place to look, or if your ok with 17" gateway makes cheap gaming notebooks. Pretty much anything under the 15" area comes at a huge premium and is target more for business and the gpu's in them are generally not nearly as nice as what 15" & 17" offer for less.

 

BIOS image guide is up!

Please feel free to post your images here, I would love to see everybodys results and creations.

 

Or you can get a U3 USB key (like sandisk cruzer, bought an 8GB for $17 after taxes) and using some tweaks, can use it to install the OS with. U3 will emulate a CD-ROM so the BIOS/XP thinks that it is a CD-ROM you are booting/installing from. Installed an nlited XP this way, took 12 minutes from start to finish on 1000H and Aspire One.

I do see how you may want an external drive in the end but I can count the amount of times on one hand, how often I have used my DVD writer in my main laptop over the course of the year. I'd rather not have to carry it with me if it means a slimmer/lighter portable.

 

Yeah wallmart may advertise always low prices, but its not

Electronics is a big weak point, I mean a 2gb flash drive there will set you back $40 when just like goofball said the 8gb Sandisk is like $20 online. (I have that same model goofball, I do not think your idea will work considering I cant post or anything, but thanks for sharing)

They almost got me once I was on market for a digital camrea, and they had this nice looking Kodac that said Sale! ws $280 now $160 and I was like wow what a deal! I almost bought it on the spot, but I decided when it comes to something like that you need to go online and read reviews first to see the stuff the box doesnt tell you like iso quality, flash charge time, ect.

Well when i searched for it the first search I did was the price search and found several sites selling it for $140 and the MSRP was only like $160ish so Walmart put FAKE super high prices up, then said it was a rollback to a lower price that was still higher than MSRP.

 

To the top for a a while, looking for pictures of people that did the post image mod!

I'll delay any of the other guides if nobody wants them.

 

The Sandisk 8GB for $19.99 was at Walmart.

It does work, I have done it on Acer Aspire One and the Asus 1000H. If you want, I can PM you the link to the software to do it with.

 

YOu cant use any software if you cant even post, thats what I am trying to say, the computer does not function or even read the usb port until after it posts from bios.

 

Whew, I am back after a nasty VGA driver install. It seems that the newest drivers were giving me some grief, so for the last 2 hours I have been reinstalling the stock Asus ones. They are back and finally connecting to an external monitor works. I upgraded the Wifi drivers, fyi for those that do it, make sure to go into the properties for the wireless device and change the power saving option to always on. I also turned on the option for Gaming/Multimedia, maybe it will get a bit faster connection. Did the latest BIOS update and no side effects so far. I think I will also try installing Rainlink's app package. I am using Netstumbler for site queries, but it sounds that Rainlink has a decent suite. I will also try some different VGA drivers and post up to how it works out.

It is sad that there isn't more posts. This is by far one of the best reviews with information for not only buyers but owners...Vicious, did you also post this on EEEuser.com forums?

 

No, I have not posted it there. I wanted to have it finished first but now I am not sure if I should finish it.

I may move onto my HTPC stuff here soon, I have a new build planned. Just need to weigh out the reward of having a HTPC vs the cost of building one.

 

I'm not sure you understand what I'm saying?

The U3 software emulates a CD-ROM. If you plug in a U3 usb key in Windows, you will see the writable flash portion of the drive and a U3 CD-ROM.

If you do a bit of tweaking, you can load an ISO of any OS installation CD you want so it is the U3 CD-ROM contents.

You can then boot the 1000H off the U3 CD-ROM and install Windows this way. Or any OS. You get the option on bootup (if you press the right keys to do the one-time selection for bootable devices) to select the Sandisk U3 CD-ROM. Windows will install as if it was actually installing from a USB CD-ROM. XP fresh installs (if you automate and nlite it well) in about 12 minutes from the key.

 

Just putting this out there, I'm really interested in your mod guide, I plan on buying one of these when I'm in tech school for the Air Force, and anything else i could do to mod it would be nice since I'll have all the tools I need to on the base.

 

I've been thinking about getting a sub-notebook at some point. Thanks for an informative review about the EEE 1000H. I'll definitely look at this one closely. :yes:

 

Im affraid its the opposite my friend, you cant boot from anything without bos posting first, usb, cdrom, hdd, you name it. I know what U3 does I have it and I have a 8gb SanDisk.

Your bios is what tells the computer everything, it tells it that it has that usb port there and how to use it, it tells it what strings to run to boot. If your BIOS is FUBAR you cant get past it. Period.

 

I don't know how the BIOS became part of the discussion about U3? I didn't mention the BIOS at all (except for perhaps telling the PC to boot from a USB device?).

 

Oh I thought you were telling me thats a fix for my broken bios (aka use a bios flash image file) Na your right about what your saying.

I just used Acronis and made a bootable usb key and made an image of my install, its faster than a new windows isntall and its all setup already (so you can have all your drivers, names, settings, ect already done)

 

That's true but this is good for those who want to have their own slim version of a fresh XP (using nlite or what not) as well. Or for those who have a U3 key and think that it is useless.

I carry a GHOST bootable key as well with me and have gho images of my drive in pristine state but there are times I can see when it will become outdated. This is when I would do a fresh install again, and update everything, then make an image.

Keep up the good work, this is a great guide!

 

Pardon me, but does/will the EEE 1000H come in white? For some odd reason I want people to think I have a tiny mac only for them to walk up and be like "OMG*** WINDOWS?! I THOUGHT THIS THING WAS COOL!" and then i'll be all like "This thing is flippin cool, now sit down while i do some multi touch, it aint apple exclusive kiddies." Then their heads will explode and they'll go back to using a PC because thats obviously what cool kids are doing these days.

 

I know the 1000HA can be had in white. Not sure if the 1000H is out in the wild in white yet. Mainly see Fine Ebony for the 1000H.

 

Yea, I just noticed the difference between the HA and the H... I don't really need the H i guess, so I guess a HA is just enough for me :-D

 

And, if you need the H's options, a better Intel 4965 N card and a bluetooth mini dongle will put you out, collectively, $40 and give a huge performance boost over the H's internal wireless. I have a HA in white and it is sick. My mother had a lady come up last week at a education function and say, nice mac...then she got educated

 

Yea, I'm at the University of Toledo, and I see about 30+ macs a day because you know that using a mac makes everything you do smarter... I don't hate macs i hate the attitudes of the people that use them... I'm gettin pumped for this lappy! Now all I need is that mod guide so i can see how hard it is so to whatever needs doing

 

The HDD, RAM, wireless card are very easy. There are a couple videos, but they can be logically figured out. There are guides also on how to convert the webcam to another usb device, but loose the webcam functionality. Vicious has some awesome guides to modding it so far, especially the wii one

 

I do not think you would even need a guide on changing the HDD & Ram on here, its the easiest of any machine I have ever seen.

I personally wanted the white, but because the H only comes in black had to settle for it. In the end I was glad because it looks a bit less toy like and while black may attract fingerprints easy it wont stain like I imagine white would. I was able to solve the finger print issue easy with that leather case.

As for the internal bluetooth & wifi both of them work great for me, and I really like the ralink wireless control panel actually. Id not want external dongles for things I can have inside the notebook. I think you would have to void the warrenty but it should be possible to add the bluetooth to the HA model, the wireless card is easy enough though to upgrade if you want too, and may as wel upgrade it to a Wifilink 5100 or even toss in an antenna and put a wifilink 5300 in there!

I was going to put my G50V's 5100 in the 1000H and then upgrade the G50V to the 5300 its only like a $30 part if you shop around.

We since we were talking about mac's its nice to know the EEE can run OSX. No sound, no wifi stock but if you update the wificard to one that works in OSX thats solved, and for sound you can use a usb headset/soundcard or use bluetooth sound stuff.

 

I was reading about that, totally awesome. The thing I am more interested in is ExpressGate once there are wireless drivers out for the rainlink. Sometimes I only need to check an email, nothing else, and my sweet 2:30 boot up time (seeing I run all of my luxury apps) is a bit long.

 

wow 2:30?? mine is ultra fast its feels like 30 seconds or so, and I have not even run tunexp yet to defrag and re order my boot files.

For you that may help alot since you have a lot of files loading.

 

I am measuring boot up time from on button press and I have auto login to my main admin account, to loading the last startup app, is this how you are measuring the time too?

 

No, button press to fully loaded in windows takes me about 1:20 probably, I did upgrade the HDD that has a lot to do with it I am sure.

I do not even use boot booster

 

Gar, well I will get on it. I run, on top of the regular startup, Tea Timer, AVG, Zone Alarm, Pidgin, Gmail notifier, dropbox, and touchpad kill. I will defrag the boot files and optimize my boot and see how I do.

 

Hey Vici,
You referenced that WEP wouldn't work without some changes...I have just figured out that I have this problem... Do you have a solution?

 

I have not used it, but I would hop onto EEEUser.com and search there forums. I am pretty sure there is a fix posted. You have to manually edit a config file I think.

In a very worst case scenario you can swap out the wireless card, thats something I know how to do and can guide you through it, and I always know where to get stuff cheap.

The Wifilink 5100 is only like $20

 

Added to Info Booth & to the Reviews and Owners' Lounges Index. Thanks!

 

Has anyone tried the 4gb RAM on this netbook? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231202

 

I am most positve it wont work, the chipset is rather old. Plus what would you expect to gain with 4gb of ram in a netbook?

 

maybe in-ram virtual hdd...

i've got another question - how quick can the module be to still be working in the machine? would 800mhz module simply downclock?

 

Yeah it would just downclock unless it has some kind of bios restriction or incompatibility, and I doubt it. I have seen no ram computability issues so far.

If you have some laying around wont hurt to give it a shot, if your buying it, just buy the 667 it was designed for, it will probably have faster timings and cost less.

I just went shopping and got 2 new things for me EEE

Slim external optical drive: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=370111065297

and Dell 1505 broadcom chipset wireless card: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=270302176730

I also made a new boot image for my bios.

I have a little experiment coming up.

 

what type of significant improvements does the 1002H/A Show over this model?( im bringing this back from the dead )

Bro you deserve some type of Award for your reviews im not even joking around.........

 

nothing significant. different casing. lower capacity battery.

 

thats it? Wow that sucks.