New ASUS Scores A 10 For Style
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010By Richard Mcleish
While a little light in the power department, the Asus EEE PC 1008HA “seashell” netbook puts the emphasis on design
A little over two years ago, Asus appeared on the scene with a model that was to start a n ew era of laptops — the netbook generation. Since then, many manufacturers have followed suit, releasing a myriad of models of various specs and sizes. Asus continues its epic EEE PC series with the recent release of the 1008HA model, but can they continue to shape the genre of laptop that they practically defined?
Let’s take a closer look at the 1008HA, with its design emphasis, to see if netbooks will indeed rule the portable computing world one day soon.
ASUS EEE PC 1008HA “SEASHELL”
The 1008HA comes after more than 20 defferent releases in the series, with a new emphasis on style by Asus.
Out of the box, the new model we received is distinguishable by its glossy black finish, which quickly drew the fingerprints of anybody within arm’s reach. The stylish front lip makes the unit appear even thinner than its one inch. Contributing to this impressive dimension spec is an angled ethernet port, a neatly hidden VGA output dongle (fine, since it won’t get much use by the average user,) and a specially moulded case for the fixed battery. The marketing drive of the model pushes the “seashell” theme, featuring a curious picture of the laptop at the beach surrounded by crabs –not the most gadget-friendly environment, although I didn’t test it. The model weighs in at a feathery 1.1kg, and is a little plasticky in the hand, but seductively stylish overall.
Inside, it features an Intel Atom N280 processor at 1.6GHz, which is appearing in many new machines of this class, and 1GB RAM — no real upgrade offered here from Asus. Mac users will cite netbook specs as being grossly underpowered. This set-up copes with basic functions — web browsing document editing and light multitasking — but nothing more. A 160gb HDD is included but might never get filled, considering that the unit’s capabilities fall short of photo work or movie playing.
In terms of functionality, the 10.1 -inch 1,024 x 600 LED screen is bright and compact, as the use of LEDs affords thinness and less power consumption. A strength of the model lies in the multi-touch pad, marked by raised dots in a grid, which is very easy to use with its scrolling feature and zoom functions, made famous in Apple devices. It has become annoying to use older machines without multi-touch pads nowadays. The mouse button under the pad is responsive and the 92% -sized keyboard is adequate. Asus claims six hours of battery life, but it seemed closer to four, which is certainly passable for this class.
In terms of software, the proliferation of netbooks seems to be a great opportunity for manufacturers to turn towards a more effcient operating system. Something linux-based would seem a better choice than the bloated Window XP that was shipped with the test unit.
Such a decision might be economically motivated, so time will tell if Micorsoft continue their stranglehold on the market in this area.
Overall, on paper the 1008HA brags similar specs to other netbooks around and it is not the cheapest in its class.
Its small dimensions only offer comfortable usage for short periods, and for web-based applications only.
However, it goes ahead on style points and its tracking pad usability, refreshing the netbook frontier and keeping the surging netbook market accelerating as nicely as Asus and others hope. Or at least until users realise how underpowered netbooks are and start demanding more brawn for their buck.
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