Careful with the memory upgrade. The 667 MHz 2GB module mentioned on this page is not suitable for the 1005PE – mine kept freezing. Instead, order the 800 MHz module, Amazon # (ASIN): B001342KM8

Pro:

- Genuinely good battery life

- Works fine, hardware & software

- Looks good, especially the display

Cons:

- Slightly heavy for the size and definitely heavier than some other netbooks

- Windows 7 “Starter” edition, if that matters to you

- Probably would run faster with more memory standard

This netbook is basically an upgrade to my 32GB iPod Touch that sits on my bedside table. I used to use the Touch for web surfing and media viewing, but now I have this awesome little netbook that does everything the iPod Touch did for me, plus it has a ton more storage (250GB compared to 32GB) 13-ish hour battery life (compared to 3-5 on the Touch) and it supports Adobe’s flash standard! (Something even the new iPad from Apple doesn’t seem to do…) All in all, I’m very pleased with the 1005PE and have zero regrets following the unveiling of the new iPad from Apple today. I’m sure the 1005PE isn’t a perfect replacement for the iPad to ALL users, but for me, I couldn’t be happier with my purchase.

One thing to note- as already reported- you want to get the 800 MHz RAM upgrade from Crucial, not the 667 MHz that Amazon lists on the 1005PE product page. I did the upgrade and noticed that things are even snappier- but the 1GB RAM module that came out of the 1005PE was 800 MHz memory- not 667 MHz…

For the person who gave this netbook one star because he couldn’t get greater than 1024 x 768 external VGA output while mirroring the internal monitor, that’s pretty weak in my opinion. Considering all of the other features that this netbook provides for such little cost- I think this netbook is a real winner! Thanks for reading my review!

- Even with the extended capacity battery, the computer is very light and portable

- The battery life is great! My daughter watched movies for almost 8 hours on our plane ride home without a hitch or stutter. After being in use for nearly the entire flight, it still had 35% of the battery remaining. Another note on the battery, in the earlier 1005 netbooks, the battery would stick out past the screen on the rear of the netbook. That is no longer the case, on the 1005PE it is flush with the rear of the netbook.

- The keyboard is nice and decent size. I almost bought a Toshiba solely because I did not like the keyboard on the 1005HA version of this machine. Asus changed the keyboard on this model to a chiclet keyboard which is much better. I saw one review that thought the keyboard was flimsy. As far as I can tell, the Asus has no more flexibility in the keyboard than the Acer or Toshiba netbooks I looked at.

- Windows 7 starter and Asus Utility. I saw a few reviews where people complained about Win7 Starter. Again, so far no problems with the OS, it does what it is intended to do. As far as the complaints about changing the background on the desktop, Asus was kind enough to provide a utility that makes changing the background very easy.

- WLAN – since I bought the netbook, it has been in 6 locations that have wireless internet and it has jumped on the network easily each time regardless on encryption.

A couple more thoughts on netbooks in general:

- Netbooks are not desktop replacements or miniture laptops. They are intended to provide basic computing and internet needs. If you are expecting it to fly through huge power point presentations or apps that require a lot of RAM and processing power you will be disappointed. If all you need is a computer that travels easily and will allow you to surf the web, play music and video and run office programs, netbooks can be a very good choice.

- I would recommend that anyone who buys a netbook remove as much of the installed software as they can. I was able to remove alot of pre-loaded junk and the netbook ran faster. Here are a few program that I think every netbook should have: Firefox or Google Chrome for internet, vlc (Videolan) for music and movie playback, Open Office 3 for word processing, spreadsheets, etc and Foxit Reader for opening .pdf files.

Also, I have seen several recommendations to replace the 1GB Ram with a 2GB stick. I have not done this yet and it still works great. At the moment I have a 4GB SD card installed to see if there are any performance gains using the Windows Reafyboost function. So far so good.

The bottom line is that this netbook has exceeded my expectations and is a solid little machine. I would recommend it to anyone in search of a good netbook.

The carrying handles are soft and easy to hold.

Overall construction is typical Caselogic: very well made.

I have one small lament: no loops for a shoulder strap. My opinion is that all carrying bags should have loops o shoulder straps.

Other than that small item (and it is indeed a lament, not a complaint), the Caselogic LNEO-10 Ultra-Portable Neoprene Notebook Sleeve is an inexpensive, durable and expandable way to carry and protect your netbook.

Jerry

Here is an extremely useful, albeit technical, review of this particular Asus model AND of the Atom N450 on which it is based (if the link gets edited out by Amazon, go to anandtech and search for Asus 1005PE):

[...]

Please note that Amazon already has a less expensive Asus, the 1001P, listed on the website, in two versions as well, a more expensive Win 7 Starter edition with 250 gb hard drive and a less expensive Win XP edition with 160 gb harddrive:

ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1001P-PU17-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook – Up to 11 Hours of Battery Life

ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1001P-MU17-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook – Up to 11 Hours of Battery Life

The main difference is 3 extra hours of battery life, but there may be other feature diffences such as wirless n and bluetooth support.

I am thinking about getting the Win XP version of the 1001p which is quite a bargain. While Win 7 Starter actually runs quite well on these netbooks, and has a few nice features, Win XP is still slightly faster and less of a resource hog. To get my current Win 7 netbooks to match Win XP, I have to do a lot of adjusting (turning off auto indexing, turning off auto disk defrag, choosing Windows Classic theme instead of Win 7) and Win XP is still slightly faster. My main hope in getting a new N450 netbook would be that elusive grail of netbook owners, decent Hulu and YouTube performance (believe it or not, I can watch DVD’s and h.264 high rez content, but not the stinkin’ Hulu and YouTube content except at low rez, not-full-screen mode).

Early reports are that the N450 has about a 10% performance increase over the last generation Atom netbooks, and a 20% battery life increase, but as always YMMV.

THERE ARE TWO IMPORTANT things you need to know:

1. It’s very likely in the next two weeks, netbooks are going to come out with the Broadcom HD chip in them, for $30 extra, which will allow high def output, all the way up to Blue Ray quality, and also an HDMI port to allow easy hookup to your living room tv. This would mean high quality streaming video on an external display. This is probably the single biggest reason to wait.

2. Even if high def video isn’t important to you, Intel is supposed to be releasing a 1.8 ghz version of the Atom in February or March, and given the cycle of aggressive product adoption and pricing, the extra performance might be worth waiting for.

Your budget for one of these, by the way, should be about three duckbills for a basic model like the 1001P and no more than four duckbills for an Atom based netbook with some bells and whistles.

And if your machine doesn’t come with 2gb of system memory, while single applications run well under Win 7 and two applications run well simultaneously under Win XP, you should budget for an upgrade to the maximum permitted 2gb at some point.

Oh by the way, I rummaged around on the Intel website and also found out that the old N270/N280s only support 32 bit Windows but the new N450 supports 64 bit, which is really cool.

EEE 1000 fits inside the main compartment well and the power adapter fits inside the other pocket. It is not as smooth and flat when the power adapter is put in the pocket, but it is convenient for grabbing everything as one set.

The straight out of the box Windows Performance Rating and Information:

Base Score: 3.3

Processor: 3.3

Memory: 4.6 (2 GB)

Graphics: 4.2

Gaming Graphics: 5.2

Primary Hard Disk: 5.9

System type: 32-bit operating system

64-bit capable: Yes

Processor cores: 2

Graphics:

NVIDIA ION

Dedicated graphics memory: 256 MB

Dedicated system memory: 64 MB

Shared system memory: 575 MB

Total available graphics memory: 895 MB

Primary monitor resolution: 1366 x 768

Direct X version: DirectX 10

The hard drive is partitioned into two drives (100 GB and 123 GB). I actually prefer to install all of my software on one drive/partition and save all my work on another. So, I like the fact that this arrangement is already setup and running when the machine arrives. You also get a year of access to a 500 GB virtual drive. The virtual drive seems to work well, but, if I need more space, I’ll purchase an external drive so that access to my work doesn’t rely on an internet connection.

Without making any changes, I hooked up an external optical drive and installed Adobe Design Premium Creative Suite 4 and gave the system a workout by doing a homework assignment on it. I had Flash, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Word 2007, Firefox, and Internet Explorer all running at the same time. It met my demands and far exceeded my expectations. Among other things, I have since added the standard Apache server (for PHP and mySQL development), Flex 3, and Microsoft Office Professional and SQL Server. This powerful little netbook does everything I ask it to do and seems ready for more. It’s a great system for designers, developers and business professionals.

As is standard with Atom processors, the processor is the bottleneck for the system performance. Except for about a 5-15% lag when doing intensive processing, I haven’t noticed a real performance dip when comparing this netbook to my desktop systems (Dell Inspiron and Dell XPS). Adding an extra 2 GB of RAM would improve the system performance and is something I plan to do very soon.

The touchpad is very responsive and, unlike many systems, it doesn’t pick up my wrist movement very often (I touch type). It also has a function switch to quickly turn off the touchpad when needed. The keyboard keys are well spaced and it took me very little effort to adjust to the layout. The lack of a number pad bothers me a bit, but it is understandably necessary on this size of a system.

I prefer matte screens and was a bit worried about the glossy screen giving me literal and physical headaches. The screen glare is minimal even when I have a lamp behind me or beside me. Glare might be a problem if I sat with my back to an open window with streaming sunlight pouring in. But, it handles standard room lighting well.

I haven’t tried any 3D games on it, so I can’t say how powerful it would be as a gaming machine. It works for standard casual games and should run most 3D games on lower settings. I feel more limited by the 12.1″ screen size than the processor and graphics card when it comes to gaming: I prefer games on a 20+ inch screen.

Cons: The transformer box on the power cable gets hot enough that it’s painful to touch. The power cord attachment is also a bit loose and has disconnected a few times when I moved the machine. The vent on the left also gets hot enough that it might be uncomfortable for a left-handed person to use an external mouse positioned near it. The sound from the speakers is a bit tinny, but fantastic through headphones. It needs a more powerful battery as I only get about 2 to 3.5 hours of battery life before it needs a charge.