Asus EEE PC 1005HA (Netbook)

I've been an ASUS buff for a long time. They make decent desktop machines, notebooks and mobos. Lately the trend has been to the sublaptop machines commonly called Netbooks. These things are small! I've had bigger paper-based notebook organizers. The ASUS EEE 1005 HA can do all of that, and then some – to say the least.

For those with previous iterations of the ASUS 1000 series, not a whole lot has changed, except the longer life battery, faster CPU and FSB – which means another extra hour or two of computing, up to 10 hours or so, and improved performance from the chipset.

My machine is an ASUS EEE 1005 HA-PU1X with the N280 (1.66GHz) chip and 667 FSB.

Okay, so I'm a geek. Can't leave well enough alone. The first thing I did after unpacking it was lose the 1GB DDR2 memory stick and slide in a 2GB PC-6400 5-5-5-15 stick. At less than 30 bucks, it's worth the breathing room. The mouse is a bit tiny for my hands, so I just used a Bluetooth. If you've got a spare 7200RPM SATA drive handy, that's a definite kick in the butt to the speed over the 5400 that comes with it. However, for most school applications, the drive and memory it comes with are fine. I suppose XP is okay if you have to use it. But if you want a screamer, it doesn't take a lot of money or time to upgrade. As ever, be sure to check to see you have the latest BIOS.

It came with Windows XP Home, although why on Earth someone wants to send a 10 year old operating system that is no longer supported with a brand-new machine evades me. There are rumors that Microsoft has another operating system that replaced XP, and another on the way, but I've not tried them. If you have an OSX machine, a 16GB thumb and a bit of time, you can make this machine a hackintosh will a little fussing around. Or just use a real operating system like Unix. The older ASUS Netbooks came with Linux, I have no idea why they changed. In any case, putting Redhat on it isn't a bad thing to do.

It's small, with a clam-shell design that fits in your hand like a schoolbook when closed for carry. And it's shiny. Very shiny. My personal opinion is that it made it slick so you can skin it. Look for after-market skins to come out, or just mod it yourself. Either that or carry a chamois cloth, because every single fingerprint shows on the case and screen.

Bottom line is I like this little thing. A lot. Granted, mine is a bit souped up than out of the box, however, the good news is that you can do stuff to it as money and time and your own technical expertise allow. Would I recommend it to a friend? Absolutely.

And you can get it on eBay.