Asus Eee PC 1005HA user reviews (Intel Atom N280 1.66GHz, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, XP Home, black)

Pros Dual hard drives (250G total) are dual boot/partition friendly; Bluetooth connectivity to cell phone, printer, etc. very handy; Battery life is 9+ hours with Windows 7 Starter, and just shy of 8 hours with Ubuntu 10.10; Durability.

Cons The smaller keyboard takes a lot of getting used to. The on-board speakers pretty much suck.

Summary I bought this Asus eeepc 1005HA netbook to have a relatively cheap machine on which to learn to use Linux Ubuntu. Computer with 2G memory chip was $380 from Amazon; shipping and tax included! At that price I knew if I bricked it or otherwise destroyed it, I wouldn't be too heartbroken.

Through lots of experimentation, i.e. loading and reloading Operating Systems and playing with partitions (none of which I had ever attempted prior to this computer), this machine has proven to be all that I wanted it to be, and has gone above and beyond to impress me. I work in construction and take it to work and into the shop to listen to music and look up products online. While I'm kind of careful about where I place it (upwind of dust flow), it's handled the dusty environment well (although I do clean it often). It was once catapulted off a work bench when something heavy fell close to it; it flew at least 8 feet in the air and landed on a concrete floor. When I made my way down the ladder and over to it, it had shut itself off. I feared the worst. It booted right back up and the only apparent damage to it was the loss of the two little plastic tabs that cover the hinges for the screen, and a small crack in on corner of the lid, near the hinge. That was several months ago and the screen still shows no sign of damage. Additionally, with a baby at home and one on the way, I am trying to become a good cook. With a recipe database loaded, I use it a lot in the kitchen. It's been exposed to grease, flour, etc., and held up well.

I use this machine, in addition to what I've mentioned above, to stream music and movies. We don't have a TV in our house so we watch streamed or DVD movies using this computer and a larger monitor. We also don't have an internet connection (2010 was one heck of a year for implementing austerity measures in our household!). We share an internet connection with our next door neighbors. While my wife's 5 year old Vaio gets 3 WiFi bars or better, this computer never gets more that 2, but gets them all over our house, and that's been enough to watch movies on Hulu and Netflix.

I also play with lots of software offered on the Ubuntu Software Center and have never felt like this machine was lacking in any way. In fact, a good friend who's a web designer with a Mac was blown away by this computer and GIMP.

So there you have it. If you want a cheap machine, this one probably has everything most people need on it.

Pros Nice keyboard, good screen resolution and brightness.

Cons Weak grphics, typical sluggish Atom CPU. Weak WiFi.

Summary Probably one of the better Netbooks. But their all slower then a typical Notebook. I have loaded Windows 7 Premium and its just as good performance wise as Windows 7 Starter. I can't say I would want to spend much time on it. Typical problems with Netbooks are frquent sqrolling, poor performance with video and lousy touchpads. The Asus touchpad is a bit better but the single button bar is really bad. The only plus for a netbook is battery life. This one does 6 plus hours. If you travel a lot this will probably do. I would not spend the money on this to replace a Laptop you will be disappointed.

Pros 7+ hr battery, using wireless and bluetooth.
cheap...I got mine refurbished from newegg for 249$, with a 90 day warranty.
memory upgradable to 2g.
wireless N and bluetooth......most netbooks for this price dont have either.

Cons A lot of unnecessary software from asus, of which 98% of can be removed. (the reason for 4.5 starts instead of 5)
Its a bit heavy, but thats because of the 6 cell battery.
Glossy casing loves fingerprints.

Summary This is a great netbook for a great price.
The battery really does last for more than 5 hrs. I ran mine for 7+ hrs with wireless n and bluetooth on and in use. (I wanted to make sure the battery held a charge after some complaints about it on newegg).
The touchpad is a bit weird to get used to, but Ive found I like better that normal touchpads.
The keyboard is fairly large, and easy to use.

Pros Lightweight
Sleek design
Great battery life (if you can charge the battery) -- as far as i can tell

Cons Needed to replace power adapter in less than 1 week of owning the computer, no joke.
Horrible customer service from ASUS.

Summary I purchased this netbook last week, the cnet reviews strongly influenced this purchase. Unboxed the netbook, put in the battery, charged it up, everything was great. The battery life lasted me about a good 6-7 hours of e-mail, internet, some MS office work, and watched a video or 2 from streaming Netflix. Cool.

Only problem was when I went to recharge my batter for the SECOND TIME EVER OWNING THIS NETBOOK, the power adapter wasn't working. The little blue light on the adapter wouldn't light up. I tried unplugging and plugging back in, nothing. Tried different outlets in my place, nothing. Called ASUS customer service and was on hold for 40 minutes. The guy on the line informs me they can send me a replacement since the netbook is under warranty (obviously), but I would have to 1st mail in my defective adapter before they send out the replacement. Insane!

After further review, if you read the customer product reviews on Amazon, apparently TONS of owners of this model have been having the same issue. Not cool.