| ASUS Eee 8G PC 8GB SSD Notebook |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Notebook | Compact PC | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Joe McGuire - tinfoilmusic.net - Edited by Olin Coles | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sunday, 06 April 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ASUS Eee 8G PCASUS has created a huge wave in the sub-notebook & portable Internet device markets with their Eee PC. Sub-notebooks are normally wonderfully exotic looking hardware for delightfully high prices. Well, exotic until one looks at the specs. The MacBook air is a great example - it looks like a killer machine until one looks at the combination of the lackluster specs and a price that makes even the most enthusiastic Mac fan blush. As for portable Internet devices, the Nokia N series is the first that comes to mind. Granted, they are really fantastic machines with excellent screens and software, but I am a bit old school I suppose. I still want a real keyboard. The Nokia N810 is close, but like my HTC TyTN, the keyboard is good for casual data entry and not suitable for long sessions of messaging, IRC or typing out documents or spreadsheets. The Nokia and other portable devices tend to also be pretty light on specifications, unless one is willing to pay the obscene price that OQO wants for their sub-sub-notebook.
One may then look at the ASUS Eee (and the similar devices that have since come along) and wonder what took so long? They certainly aren't powerhouse machines with performance lagging all but the most basic Pentium 4, not to mention any other CPU that came to market in the past three or four years. The EEE could have easily been produced years ago, minus the SSD. There is only 8GB of storage on the top-end model, and a meager 2GB on the cheapest. All but the high-end models come with a limiting 512MB of RAM as well. Storage expansion is pretty good though, with an SD card reader capable of SDHC as well as 3 USB2.0 ports for memory sticks. Expanding storage inside isn't going to happen unless your skills with a soldiering iron approach ninja-like, though I am told the 8GB model I'm tapping this story out on is equipped with storage stuck in a mini-PCIE slot rather than soldiered onto the motherboard. I'll confirm when my touchscreen mod comes in. ASUS Eee Features
Mobility & Reliability
Ease & Technology
Work & Connectivity
Media & Entertainment
Eee 8G Pearl White Specifications
Closer Look: ASUS Eee PCThe keyboard is surprisingly tactile and responsive for its size. And that's the rub, it's tiny. You won't be typing out your next novel on this thing unless you are on a first name basis with your doctor. I often hit the / key when going for the right shift and the \ key often subs in for the enter key. The trackpad is too small, of course, and the mouse buttons are incredibly stiff - FAR too stiff. The scroll on the side is nice and the software allows for a side scroll at the bottom of the trackpad. The keyboard also withstood the investigations of my inquisitive 2.5 year old little girl, and the finish on the pearl model seems to be impervious to anything except for the most chocolaty fingerprints.
The screen is strange, isn't terribly bright and the anti-glare makes the screen look terribly dirty. Use outside will require heavy shade. A higher resolution screen would have been welcome as well, as 800x480 is limiting and many websites require side scrolling. It is driven by the Intel 915GM, a chip that didn't win any awards when it was introduced, and certainly isn't going to now. Output to external monitors is accomplished by a VGA connector. It supports some basic resolutions but tops out at 1024x768. I suspect I will be editing my xorg.conf file. ASUS has done a decent job in optimizing the built-in applications for the small screen.
Sleep mode is accomplished simply closing the screen, but to wake it up one must open the screen and hit the power button. Annoying. Waking up from sleep mode is faster than a typical Windows laptop, but any Mac notebook will wake up much faster.
The Wi-Fi radio has really very good reception. Better than my TyTN or my Dell laptop. Too bad that ASUS did such a poor job with the software that they created to utilize it in Easy Mode. The software used in the easy mode will not remember WEP or WPA keys nor will it take a WEP pass phrase. It also does not connect to networks automatically. This is supposed to be easy? Hardly. The wireless software in the advanced mode is far better, removing these limitations.
The battery life is disappointing. I've not gotten more than two hours out of the device with the wireless on, compared to over four hours with my much larger Dell. True, I have two batteries in my Dell. Hardly apples to apples, so take that for what it is worth.
Oh ya, there is also a webcam. It works. The cooling fan is virtually silent, quieter than my Dell and Macbook. The audio is also present and accounted for. ASUS has cut out a lot of the typical sounds one expects to hear when booting up, much to their credit. Detailed FeaturesThe easy mode UI is intuitive, I suppose, and looks good, but it's the first thing I got rid of. ASUS has removed the easy to use switch to go from Easy mode to Advanced mode, requiring some time spent in the terminal (which isn't terribly easy to find) but once in the advanced interface, the wireless works MUCH better and the device works far better. Windows users will not feel out of place and KDE fan-boys will also feel right at home. I'm a Gnome fanboy, so I feel a little left out, but such is life.
Here are some basic comparisons that may or may not be of use. The Dell is a hacked up Inspiron 8200 with upgraded P4M 2.2Ghz CPU, 1GB RAM and an NVIDIA Quadro4 500 GoGL w/64MB dedicated RAM. The ASUS is a 900Mhz Celeron-M 353, 1GB RAM and an Intel 915GM w/ 8MB shared RAM. HD (hdparm -tT /dev/xxx):
Ouch. I really did not expect the ASUS to do so poorly against the Dell, which has a Seagate 80GB 2.5" drive with 8MB of cache. Video (glxgears):
This is not unexpected. The Dell figures would be higher, but I am running Compiz on it, and Compiz generally slows down OpenGL applications. The Quadro is, essentially, a GeForce 4MX 440. As this site is called Benchmark Review, one would expect to see more benchmarks. Honestly, the only thing even remotely interesting from that POV is the SSD storage. My very basic benchmark with hdparm surprised me as I was expecting it to be faster than the Dell. It certainly feels faster, and the Dell is running Ubuntu w/ preload installed. I suppose ASUS may have optimized the software, but I can't say for certain. I'm reasonably impressed with the sub 20 second boot times. OpenOffice (2.0? Where is 2.4?) is surprisingly speedy as is Firefox. As for CPU & graphic performance, please, is there any point in benchmarking a 900Mhz Celeron? True, it will add some neat graphics to an otherwise plain article, but in the end the graphics will only point out that it is nothing more than a 900Mhz Celeron. It's slow. The graphics are provided by built in Intel stuff, and it was slow when it was introduced. But both work more than adequately for what ASUS intended them to do. ASUS Eee ConclusionOverall, the device is a mixture of compromises centered around an SSD storage device. Speedy SSD storage and reasonable amount of RAM (in the 8GB model) make up for the lackluster CPU. The power-sipping CPU & SSD make up for the sub-par battery. The keyboard is as good as can be expected given the size. The screen.... well, nothing really makes up for the ugly anti-glare screen. I suppose that given the price, one shouldn't give ASUS too hard a time. This is a new niche and it's a great first effort. As I have not tested any other device in this niche, it is tough to rate it. I can't say it is incredibly useful as anything other something to be used in a pinch or for some quick & dirty computing on the run. It's handy to have, but it won't replace my laptop or my desktop. The Highs:
The Lows:
The Ugly:
Presently the ASUS Eee 8G pearl white notebook PC (SKU 90OA05A11111111U125Q) is available for $499.99 from NewEgg, and also for $499.99 at ClubIT. The price will eventually change, so you'll want to shop the web for the best possible pricing. Lots of things could have been better, but again one must consider the price. We can't be too hard on ASUS for not giving us a Bentley for the price of a Hyundai. Final product rating: 8.00 out of 10.Questions? Comments? Benchmark Reviews really wants your feedback. We invite you to leave your remarks in our Discussion Forum.
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