We were more concerned about upgradability, especially with Windows 7 on the horizon. Want to add some extra memory? Impossible without taking the machine to bits. We didn't try it, so we can't honestly say you'd find a spare Dimm slot in there if you did.
You're paying for portability and performance, not practical upgradability
Final thoughts? The Seashell has Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and 802.11n Wi-Fi, so Asus isn't skimping on wireless connectivity. If you like to listen to music through the speakers, the Eee has a very decent volume for a machine this small. If you don't like Windows XP, you'll have to pay the tax anyway, but Ubuntu 9.04 booted up and ran nicely off our Live CD - or as nicely as it can without Wi-Fi. That said, this is a common problem with netbooks, and we're satisfied this could be fixed after a full install.
Then there's the price: £380. We think netbooks should really come in under £300, so you're paying a lot for a great design, it seems. But you do get the fastest netbook out there, top spec Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and really portable slimness. If you don't like bulk, this is the netbook for you. If you're only interested in price, look elsewhere.
Very easy to carry
Verdict
Get over hang-ups about built-in batteries and you'll see the 1008HA as not just a very, very sexy, slimline netbook but as an eminently portable and a powerful one too. The only aspect we don't like is the very limited upgrade path. We'd like the price to be keener, but you do get an impressive feature set for your money, certainly more than much cheaper netbooks provide. If you're willing to make a few trade-offs, this is one gorgeous netbook. ®
More Netbook Reviews...
Acer Aspire One 751 |
HP Mini 2140 |
Asus Eee PC 1000HE |
Dell Inspiron Mini 12 |
Asus Eee PC 1008HA Seashell
COMMENTS
@AC - REFUNDS?
>claim a refund from Microsoft for the unused XP license.
My understanding in the UK is that you have to claim the refund from the vendor you bought the PC from. laarge vendors seem to make a habit of accepting the EULA for you before they hand the machine over, so you don't get the chance. It certainly cuts the ill-informed out of their rights.
The only succesful attempts I have heard of involved Photographing each screen during the initial power up process, including the EULA rejection; going via the weights-and-measures people; and issuing a claim in the small claims court.
I think this sort of thing should be on the EU's agenda, as uk.gov would certainly side with M$
@W/Ramazan
I agree that ultraportables, like the Q40 Ramazan mentions, have a completely different niche as compared to netbooks, but as you say, a £300+ machine is not that chuck-about-able at all, and in all fairness, you can find older £1000+ machines for £150 on eBay as well. I use my old Vaio TR5 that is 5 years old for netbook tasks, but I just love that it is the same weight range (1.4 Kg) and same dimensions (10.6 inch screen), but with a great keyboard, and with 1280x768 resolution, and the screen is of such a high quality that it is entirely usable. It is no longer my main laptop so I don't mind it taking a bit of a battering either, but it really is a great little machine that I will be sorry to see die off.
I would like to see how the Atom handles an Oracle instance which I need for work, as the little Pentium M ULV could work happily away with it, and the higher rez allows for useful spreadsheet viewing, but then again, those tasks are not what netbooks are designed for! Unfortunately, with the growth of netbooks into the larger, pricier form, such as the Acer Aspire 751, people will be thinking of them as small notebooks and that may well turn people off them.
As per other posters, it will be interesting to see what the new, small, ARM based machines will do to the market - I have noticed they are growing as a sector over in the Far East, but that region always produces many items that never make it over to the West...
Skinny Beach Bird
I wanna see a skinny Beach Bird to match the skinny eeee.
The other one was a bit of a porker.
PS
If you don't like the pre-installed windows XP, install Linux and claim a refund from Microsoft for the unused XP license.
@@Ramazan & @Peter Gathercole
@@Ramazan
Thanks Big Bear. Yup, aside from highlighting the omission of the detail in the review, if I had to be pinned down to making a point, it would merely be this: a weight of 1.1kg is (as Senor Tony Smith points out) nice to have. But it's hardly a revolution.
I'm not gonna slate the machine before I've seen it in the flesh, but the price/features combo doesn't make me want to trade in my NC10. That's not to say that £380 is an utter rip off for what you get. Just that £380 is more than I'd pay for what I want a netbook for.
I'm very happy with my NC10, but if I was going to replace my NC10, it would probably be in the other direction to the 1008HA - I'd probably plump for a second hand EEE 901. It's a largely comparable machine to the NC10, but with an SSD. And "from under £150" on eBay it'd be eminently more chuck-about-able than a new £300 NC10.
It goes without saying that anyone who mentions thin little £1000+ Sonys/Samsungs or 14"+Dual Core £400 Dells/Acers in a thread about netbooks is utterly missing the point.
@Peter Gathercole
I made the point about installing these Fisher Price broken Linuxes was a bad bad move, but got utterly shouted down by a few folk for being an MS apologist. I'm far from it. But MS realised the situation and at an effective price of less than £20 a pop, they started giving XP away as a stalling measure until Win7 arrives. It'll be interesting to see how things pan out in the Win7 era.
@Ramazan
Isn't the Samsung Q40 an ultraportable in the £1,000+ price bracket? W is comparing a bunch of cheap netbooks, hence no mention of the stupidly expensive Fujitsu Porteges or Sony Vaio T-series machines, which are all in the same size and weight range as netbooks but have much more capability like Core 2 Duo CPUs, fast RAM, integral optical drives, and decent screen resolutions. Of course, good quality components like those cost a lot more money...
