Asus Eee PC 901 user reviews (white, Windows XP)

Pros Portability, speed, price (you should not spend more than 450, i bought mine for 380), battery, eee community, bluetooth, webcam, to make up for small storage space eee gives i think a 50gb online storage space, and ability to upgrade by yourself.

Cons I can understand peoples comments on the touchpad's sensitivity, causing the cursor to jump when you accidentally touch it when typing, all i can say is don't touch it. I got used to the keyboard right away and i have medium size hands for a male.

Summary After researching for a couple of weeks on and off about netbooks, i finally decided to get the eee 901 and am using it to write this right now! People who don't know much about computers end up using all their memory and complaining. Memory might be a problem in the future but i download the things i absolutely need on the d-drive and everything else such as my essays or music on a memory stick i brought. This is a website that teaches you how to make everything download to the d-drive automatically:http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/how-to-change-the-default-location-for-installing-applications-in-windows/. This is not to replace your main computer. I love to bring it everywhere and my friends are always so amazed my its size as still not a lot of people know about netbooks yet. when i first opened it from the box the start up time was less than 30sec and after downloading everything it was still about 30sec. I am still playing with the bluetooth and i used the audio gateway to play music from my phone but was disappointed because it was blotchy and not very loud. the speakers alone are pretty loud for its size but definitely not for a audiophile. Battery life is amazing. I love the touchpad: one finger to move the cursor or left click, two fingers to scroll up and down, 3 fingers to right click. You can even pinch the screen to zoom into pictures you have downloaded. webcam is surprisingly bright and skype is already downloaded along with adobe reader and for some reason two word document programs. It comes with a nice soft carrying case along with a charger and other things. I must warn the charger can get really hot while charging. I plan on upgrading my eee to 2gb of ram eventually and maybe even touchscreen later on. overall i love my new netbook!

Here are the other netbooks around and why i did not chose them:
Dell's mini 9 had too many upgrades and ended up being $100 more than the eee 901 just to get the same features. Otherwise i would have brought it right away because of its looks.

Personally lenovo is my choice in laptop/desktops but its first attempt at a netbook wasn't so good.

eee 1000 also had alot of upgrade options such as 1000hd or 1000h or 1000ha. i was too lazy to see all the differences but portability was a key factor for me buying a netbook. The 1000 is so what bigger.

Hp mini 1000, one of the newest to the netbooks, looks amazing and i probably would choice instead of my eee. but again too many upgrade options and there wasn't that many reviews on it for me to be confident on buying it.

msi wind cnet told me bad!
There are others out there with bigger storage space and other options. its all up to you, but i feel the eee 901 was the best choice for me.

Pros small, good specs, fast enough to not seem slow, comes in different colors, nice touch pad with tap touch and easy to use mouse buttons, comes with case and other extras

Cons screen is terrible, no instructions on how to reset the pointers to D drive, my docs, temp etc. This is a must do so should be included as release notes. Keyboard too small.

Summary After I first got this set up I really wanted to return it. The screen gives me a headache. It is too grainy. iPhone has a much better screen for viewing small things on. I spent 2 days optimizing the text size of the windows (you can do it in Windows classic mode), upping the DPI, customizing the text in my browser etc. Unfortunately there appears to be a large handful of things to adjust to improve the appearance. Verdana at larger sizes with Bold sometimes applied turned out to be the right combo for me. I also downloaded the utility to up the screen brightness. The readability is now OK.

I wish there was a store to go to where all the netbooks could be compared side by side. Then I could have chosen the best screen out of the bunch.

I bought the Sakara Red. It looks like a product from Matel for Barbie. Kind of fun but probably not a look I would have chosen in-person.

I would have liked to wait for the products to become more available and be in stores but I needed a netbook for travel. If you can wait to see the product your getting and give it a hands on trial in the store I suggest that. I'm probably OK with this keyboard but I don't think most adults would be.

Updated on Dec 5, 2008

I forgot to mention the great battery life and how nice and quite it is without a fan. Both of these are in the pros column.

Updated on Dec 15, 2008

Just wanted to update. I used it for a few days and decided the screen compromise was too much for me. Note, that this will not bother everyone, it depends on if you like matte screens. Both my husband and my friend said they like this screen very much. My friend even bought the Acer Aspire One and liked the ASUS screen better. However, I sold my ASUS and lost some $s in the transaction but am now the owner of an Acer Aspire One. I'll post a review on that after I've spent some time with it.

Updated on Dec 19, 2008

I miss my ASUS. I have been working with the Acer Aspire One for about a week now. It is slow, runs hot and has a fan that makes noise. The ASUS 901 was completely silent, never got too hot in my lap and was super fast. The Acer has a better keyboard and screen. It also has a more pleasing look. But if you are after performance and don't mind a matte screen I would get a SSD ASUS.

Pros It does all that is said - assuming you've just started using it - but see cons for XP

Cons 'does all it says' - until you have used it a couple of days - then it fills up all C drive (4GB) ...why?... because XP has taken over 3GB!!. It is a crippling restriction of usability.

Am switching to Linux as it has become sluggish.

Summary Don't get XP - 20GB Ram on Linux models but only 12GB on XP version - Stupid or what?!

Pros Compact Size
Excellent Price
Solid-state hardware

Cons Sensitive trackpad with limited configuration capabilities
Cramped keyboard is tough for typing a lot, but usable for text messages and short emails
Requires some reconfiguration to take full advantage of the internal drives

Summary I purchased one to use for evening browsing in front of the TV and online poker. Now I can also take it to bed and stream Netflix and other online video. While I wouldn't want to work on one full time, this machine provides a high level of computing power in such a small package. With various USB accessories, this could be the configured to address several computing tasks "in the field".