Check out Asus’ latest ultra-portable laptop!
July 21st, 2008 by Amazing College Student, Christine
This looks like it’s going to be an incredible summer for the “subnotebook”, which is what they’re calling the latest flood of laptops designed to be ultraportable (think: 7″ screens) and inexpensive (think: $300 and up).
Those heading to college this fall should definitely take a look into the subnotebook category, if they haven’t already.
While laptops are ever-popular in the college classroom, they’re still often a bit heavy to carry around casually. If I know that I need to go bike off-campus after a class, I’ll opt to take notes on paper instead of lugging around my 8lb HP laptop. My lower back thanks me.
However, these laptops are often 2 lbs or less, making them only too convenient for the casual note-taker to take to class, around campus, and on trips.
In addition to being lightweight, laptops such as the eeePC 1000H (now there’s a mouthful) were built to be durable. So if you think you’d be worried about stuffing something so small and valuable into a bookbag full of ultra-unportable 400-page textbooks, worry no more.
Just a couple of years ago, we were paying premium prices for such portability. However, now it looks like we’re paying much, much less. The just-released 1000H retails at $550 and up. However, there are a number or even cheaper ultraportables out there — and rumor has it that Dell is going to unveil its own ultraportable starting at $299 in August — you just have to know if it has everything you need.
For now, I’m just going to review the eeePC 1000H, so that you can make an educated comparison with any of the several other subnotebooks debuting this summer.
The cheapest version of the 1000H comes with a 40GB hard drive — to put that in perspective, that’s about enough space for Windows XP (which comes pre-installed), Microsoft Office, and 10,000 songs (my own calculations — no promises!) Which is more than enough for the casual user.
It comes with 1GB of memory — which is enough to run Windows, Firefox, and Microsoft Word easily, but I wouldn’t suggest running any games at the same time. If you tend to have a lot of programs open at once, I would spring for the version with 2GB of memory (RAM).
This has a 10″ display, which, while larger than most other subnotebooks, is pretty small compared to a regular laptop. I would suggest going to a nearby electronics store and looking at a 10″ screen, just to be sure that it’s what you want. A lot of keyboards on subnotebooks are also small — so those of you whose hands that tend to cramp while typing will want to take this into consideration — but ASUS has actually managed to fit a keyboard 95% the size of a standard keyboard onto this model. Pretty impressive.
As far as subnotebooks go, this seems to be a solid laptop, though somewhat pricier than comparable laptops, like the MSI Wind and the Acer One.
Will this be the premier subnotebook of the summer? We’ll have to wait and see.
- To get your own eeePC Click Here
- To review special pricing options on the eeePC Click Here
- To price comparison shop Click Here
