ASUS Eee PC 900 8.9-Inch Netbook (Intel Mobile Processor, 1 GB RAM, 20 GB Solid State Drive, Linux, 4 Cell Battery) Pearl White
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend The new Eee PC 900 offers you more options for your mobile computing needs. Incorporating a shockproof design and weighing 2.18 pounds, you will find it "Easy to learn, work and play" - making it your best outdoor companion anywhere, anytime. The large 8.9? screen size allows for more screen space - making it more comfortable on the eyes reading and editing documents when viewing a single A4 page without the… Product details and pricing info |
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65 Customer Reviews Posted
- Awesome piece of hardware!
- This is one of the best ideas and pieces of hardware I have seen in a long time. The 9" screen is just about the right size for laptop. The keyboard is a little odd at first being small, but once you are used to it, you can easily type with both hands just as fast as you can on a normal keyboard. I also recommend for anyone who uses Linux to look up how to unlock the "Full desktop" feature ........ it will enhance the experience quite a bit. For a normal user who just wants to surf, type up documents and IM, or chat on Skype and have both pictures and music portable it is excellent. Also, if you buy the Linux version and have a copy of Windows XP spare, the Linux manual gives instructions to install XP instead and back up the Linux part, so you will benefit getting this model over the XP one, as you will get the larger drive and the option to add XP if you ever feel like it (the Xnadros based Linux works just great though!). Awesome device and best buy I've made in the last few years.
- 2008-06-23, 2 of 2 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Great Travel Laptop
- Just purchased this item and decided to dump the mini-wannabee-linux that comes with it in favor of XP SP2. Install worked without a hitch, and the resulting windows laptop is quite speedy despite its lack of processing power - the fast solid state disk makes more than up for the slow processor in many cases. It plays quite nicely doing ppt presentation on various projectors - which, other than using it as a web pad and email on the go laptop is the main purpose I purchased it for. Compared to other lightweight options in the $2k+ range quite a bargain - and fully does the job.
- 2008-06-21, 4 of 4 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- I Really Wanted To Like This Thing, But...
- I love the idea of the Asus Eee PC. I've long wanted a nearly full-featured laptop in this size.
So after reading so many positive reviews for this I decided to go ahead and get one. Sadly, after a mere two days playing with it, I have an RMA to get a refund.
So what's my gripe with it?
Several things. Firstly, though this machine has "20GB" of storage, its 20GB is spanning two storage devices, it's not a single drive. The formatted capacity here is 3.74GB for the main faster SSD that the OS runs from, and 15GB for the slower secondary storage.
I purchased this version and installed XP Pro on it (since the XP version only comes with 12GB). 4GB is simply too small. After installing and updating XP, there was just no room left to install any apps I wanted, even after cleaning up the drive.
Secondly, the touch pad and buttons. The touch pad is WAY too sensitive and finicky, frankly it's just terrible. Even knowing this and trying to carefully tap click, it would way too often instead perform an extremely fast double click, and it would often repeatedly/consecutively do this. This gets extremely irritating very fast. Updating the touch pad driver had no effect for me.
As for the touch pad buttons, they are way too stiff. Perhaps they wear down after a lot of use, but I'd go insane before ever finding out.
Lastly, and the least excusable, is the battery life. For a device like this it's simply inexcusably awful. This is with the 5800mAh battery: with wireless OFF (FN + F2) and the screen dimmed down to its second most dark setting (which is really unacceptably dark for all but the very best-lit environments), this thing barely lasted over 2 hours. One more battery cycle to confirm this pathetic performance and I was ready to box it up and send it back.
I can forgive a lot of things regarding a tiny laptop, the small screen, small keyboards that are tricky to type on, etc. That is totally excusable.
But what a tiny laptop with a small screen, no optical drive, and a solid state hard drive should absolutely excel at is battery life, and this fails horribly. Less than 2.5hrs with a darkened screen and disabled wifi is just inexcusable.
If you're still really intent on a micro laptop, I still wouldn't recommend the 900, I'd highly recommend you just wait a few weeks for the Eee PC 901. It features the new highly efficient Intel Atom which uses far less energy and therefore improves battery life (hopefully Intel will develop a new efficient chipset to go along with it).
I still love the idea of an Eee PC and look forward to what Asus and other companies will have to offer over the coming year or so. If this had a minimum 8GB primary SSD, a far better touch pad and buttons, and the battery lasted 4+ hours with wifi enabled and the brightness halfway up, I'd love it. - 2008-06-19, 109 of 132 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- great small laptop for web users
- I bought this for my petite wife who has small hands. She wanted a new laptop, and valued portability, size, and battery life over speed and the ability to play games. This thing is heads above the competition on these fronts. The only complaint is that the internal web cam is blurry, but I think it's just a problem with my particular unit. It has Firefox for websites, and it has Skype for video chatting. There is also Open Office for editing documents, but you won't want to do much of that on this small screen and small keyboard. The processor is plenty powerful to do everything you want, and with 1 gig of ram, it's got plenty of that to handle all the multitasking you want. The speakers are small and very quiet, but they do get the job done. Overall, she is very satisfied with the product. If you are okay with a larger laptop with a bit less battery life, then you can certainly find them. You don't want to buy this if you want to play a lot of games, or if you want a lot of hard drive space to replace a desktop PC. It won't play DVD's either. It's just not qualified to do that. However, for the few functions it was designed for, it works flawlessly.
- 2008-06-18, 5 of 5 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- ASUS did it again
- These is a great computer, read on what it can do and dont expect a lot more, for those that install windows XP i recomend that first they try the computer with the professional desktop, it is very XP like and runs great, if you dont have the need for gaming or other heavy stuff, and are tired of carrying a heavy laptop around, and dont have thousands of dollars to get an air, then give Asus a try
- 2008-06-18, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
