We ran our customary netbook-oriented battery life test: keep Wi-Fi on, set the screen to maximum brightness and run a standard-definition H.264 movie full-screen until the screen goes dead. The N10 goes into Battery Saving mode as soon as the power cable's pulled, and we tested the machine at that setting and in High Performance mode. We also tried it using the integrated GPU rather than the Nvidia chip.
Battery Life Results
Battery life in minutes
Longer bars are better
The change in CPU speed made little difference when the Nvidia GPU was enabled - the graphics chip and the screen dominating the power draw. But the time of three hours 20 minutes isn't bad for a netbook. Switching to the integrated GPU saw the runtime leap just shy of four hours. Compared to other netbooks, the N10 delivers a very respectable performance.
The luxury-lover's netbook?
Asus has made it easy to get to the N10's memory, hard drive and wireless card: just unscrew the large hatch on the base of the machine, and you're ready to start upgrading.
Verdict
It's hard not to like the N10 when it's sitting in front of you, but we can't help coming back to its neither-fish-nor-fowl nature. Think of it as a notebook, and its performance and low screen size and resolution will disappoint. Consider it a netbook, and it's expensive and bulky. This is a shame, because the N10 packs in a heck of a lot of technology for the price and it looks great. But it sits right between two stools, and we think most buyers will opt for either a smaller netbook or a larger, more powerful notebook.
Asus N10 notebook-not-netbook
COMMENTS
I propose...
a new name for it - since it comes with Fista, how about "crapbook"?
So it's got Linux on it too.
I wonder how many people will find that they are using that all of the time, and then wonder why they bothered with Vista?
PS The 10" screen allows it to have the XP option - M$ forbid it for anything larger.
@W
"give it a tweak, make the case white and square it off, install OSX, market it, and watch the dollars roll in. "
You forgot "and mark up the price by 50%" there...
@Ishkandar re: Apple
Aye. That's why I mentioned it. I shoulda been more explicit.
@basically it's a tarted up EEE1000
FYI, Asus did make quite a few Apple machines in the good old days. So they are not exactly starting from scratch !!
That said and despite a big Asus fan, I will *NOT* buy this machine. I fail to see the point of having a good graphics card and then cripple it with a crappy screen !!
This is typed on a 4 year old A6000 series laptop that is used as an Oracle database server and client as well as for playing games and surfing the 'net !! It weights a fair bit but since it is upgraded to max, it will blow many desktops away !!
