Rydertech

Netbooks have been with us now for around two years. The original Asus Eee PC was the progenitor of this diminutive computer class. I remember reading the reviews on Anandtech and Tom’s Hardware and thinking, “You know, that might be a cool little thing to have.” Little did I (or anybody else) know that these little computers would become as big a craze as they have. The final hurdle for widespread netbook adoption was lowered when Asus offered its first Windows XP-based model—the things sold like hotcakes and solidified the netbook’s legitimacy in the market.

That was in autumn 2007. It’s now autumn 2009, and the array of available netbooks is startling. Further, they have seemed to solidify around a narrow set of specs: a 10″ display, an Intel Atom processor, 1 GB of RAM, and a 160 GB hard drive are pretty much standard. The smaller sizes (e.g. those with 7″ inch screens, like the original Eee) have been surpassed, and the trend seems toward even larger models.

The Eee PC 1101HA(B) is one such model. It sports an 11.6″ display, and it’s not the largest Eee available—a 12″ model also exists. More detail will be given below. At this point I have to tell you that typing this review on this machine is masochistic at best, but I’m resolved to do it on principle. Just as a note, the (B) I keep appending to the model number is there because my model is a special, slightly stripped-down version sold exclusively at Best Buy.

Specs

The specs for this model are a little different from your typical netbook. Since it has a screen larger than 10″, due to licensing terms by Intel, it cannot ship with an N-series Atom processor. So, instead, it has a Z-series chip, which necessitates its own graphics subsystem, the GMA 500 (as opposed to the GMA 950 for the N-series chips). The 1101HA(B) has a Z520 chip, which runs stock at 1.33 GHz. Aside from this, the 1101HA(B) has pretty vanilla specs, including a 160 GB hard drive, 1 GB of RAM (which can be upgraded to a maximum of 2 GB), a webcam and integrated microphone, and assorted USB 2.0 and audio ports and a VGA output. The battery is a 6-cell with around six hours of life (I still haven’t formally tested this for myself, but if anything that’s a conservative estimate). All in all, this is a pretty standard configuration, except for the larger screen and lower-clocked processor/different graphics subsystem.

Aesthetics

This model sports what Asus calls the “Seashell” design, which is supposed to resemble, well, a seashell. Maybe the white model looks a little like a scallop, but that would be a stretch. The design is quite pleasing, actually; the top is rubberized and looks like it would hold up better than a shiny plastic finish; the bottom is matte plastic and the key- and screen surrounds are glossy plastic. Everything has rounded corners, and the quality of the various finishes is quite high. My model is black, but the 1101HA(B) also comes in pink, navy blue, and white. I’m not sure how it is on the other colors, but my model has little blue sparkles embedded in the plastic, which are only visible in bright light and which are a really subtle, classy touch. The inner surfaces tend to collect fingerprints like it’s going out of style (and I seriously hope it does; either quit with the glossy plastic or else develop a human who doesn’t leave fingerprints).

Status lights glow a rather cliche blue—it was cool eight years ago, but seriously I’d like for more manufacturers to migrate to the white LED status lights I’ve seen on several models, including my own HP. The battery indicator glows orange (cool, eh?) when the battery is anywhere from empty to 94% charged, and green when the battery is anywhere from 95% to fully charged. This is all pretty standard, but I figured I’d give you a heads up.

Form-wise, the case tapers from thick near the hinge to thinner on the opposite edge. This is a common netbook design, and it contributes to a reasonably sleek overall aesthetic. It might look a little chunky only because, on its scale, the height-to-width ratio of the thickest portion is greater than that of a standard notebook.

Screen and Keyboard

The screen is the main reason I chose this model over the 1005HA(B) sitting right next to it in the store: the screen is not only larger, but also brighter and higher in resolution. At 11.6″ and 1366 x 768 pixels, it’s like a miniature version of my HP’s screen, which is the same resolution but which measures 15.6″. In medium-lit surroundings half brightness seems optimal, and in dark or dim surroundings you can get away with even less. I’ve never yet come across a scenario where the maximum brightness setting is comfortable (though I haven’t tried it in direct sunlight yet and am glad the extra headroom is there). Let me tell you, though—with such a high resolution paired with such a small screen, text is absolutely microscopic. Full disclosure: to type this review I’ve used Firefox’s zoom tool to blow up the screen elements to buco mucho gigantico proportions which, all things considered, looks like regular type does on a standard notebook.

This emphasizes something that gets said about netbooks quite a bit, and it’s quite true: they are great content consumers, but somewhat poor content generators. This may be especially true of this particular configuration, on account of the resolution of the screen. It’s meant to be put right up against the user’s face; unfortunately, this isn’t a position that’s in any way comfortable for typing. Right now I’m reclining on my dorm room couch, with the 1101HA(B) (can I just call it the Eee from now on? it’s easier to type) perched at arm’s length. If Firefox didn’t have the zoom ability, I’d be going bonkers right about now. I tried writing this review a few days ago without the zoom, and it was a nightmare. So, just so you know, yes everything on the screen is bloody tiny.

That issue aside, the screen is very nice. It compares favorably to that of my HP dv6-1355dx, which has one of the nicer screens available on a sub-$1000 machine. The Eee’s screen’s colors probably aren’t particularly accurate, but then, this is the case on most monitors. Unfortunately, like most screens these days, it has a glossy coating and no semblance of glare reduction, so in certain situations reflections can be annoying. So far I haven’t found a situation where this is anything worse than a mild irritation, but it is notable.

The keyboard is in much the same vein. Mostly it feels very nice. The keys feel solid and are large enough (on account of the slightly larger form of this Eee) that even my neanderthal hands can comfortably type. Unfortunately, the layout isn’t quite the best. In particular the right Shift key has been giving me quite a bit of trouble. I end up either hitting the top arrow key (overshooting the Shift key), or else getting a slash (undershooting the Shift key). I’m getting better at this, but it’s quite annoying. The Samsung NC10 (which I had for a few days last year before it got stolen) had a much better keyboard layout in this regard.

The keybed on the Eee’s keyboard is nice and stiff; it’s possible yet difficult to flex it. Since there are only two dedicated buttons on the machine (the power/sleep button and the trackpad on/off button, which is inexplicably located about as far from the trackpad as you could get), everything else is achieved through function (Fn) key combinations. Things like brightness, volume, and wireless are assigned F-keys; a pseudo number pad is mapped to the keys on the right side of the keyboard. And the spacebar toggles a special piece of Asus-provided software called Super Hybrid Engine (more below). All in all, these Fn assignments are logical and an efficient use of the space available. Plus, I’m glad that there isn’t an analog volume control; these invariably gunk up and cause the audio channels to stick.

Performance

Let’s get this out of the way quickly: this machine (and indeed any netbook) is no speed demon. Let’s put it into perspective: High quality (NOT high definition) YouTube videos stress this machine to the absolute apex of its performance envelope, and if you’re not using High Performance mode in Super Hybrid Engine, the Eee is incapable even of this feat. Further, if you found this review while wondering why YouTube videos were so choppy, you need to download and install the latest graphics driver from Intel. The version that ships stock with the Eee was inadequate for me; this version, however, works quite well (Intel link).

For everything that isn’t YouTube (or WordPress, for that matter, which is simply molasses slow no matter what), the Eee performs surprisingly well. Much of what you’ve heard about netbooks being too slow to accomplish anything at all is simply Intel and Microsoft bilge—neither of them wants you to buy a netbook because the profit margin is much smaller for them. They’d much rather you buy a more powerful computer and pay a lot more for it. That having been said, it’s probably not a good idea to use a netbook as your primary computer. It will never play high definition video or make a good gaming computer. But if you can get past the low resolution (and/or microscopic type) on a netbook screen, virtually all everyday tasks (e.g. word processing, Internet surfing, IM, music management, E-mail, etc.) are doable.

Think of the Atom processor as a 1.3 GHz Pentium M, which is about where it sits, performance-wise. Legitimate, full-on laptops used this Pentium M processor during its lifetime, and while it was no speed demon itself, it got the job done. Basic multitasking isn’t out of the question; while writing this review I had foobar2000 playing through some music and the audio never skipped, nor did the interface slow down. YouTube video watching is best done single-task, though; even so much as moving an open Task Manager window an inch or so on the screen while a video was playing was enough to cause stuttering.

Graphics

This particular model uses the Intel GMA 500 graphics chip which, while theoretically more advanced than the more common GMA 950, suffers from generally poor drivers. The latest ones from Intel aren’t bad, but really this chip needs some love before it reaches its full potential. The Windows UI runs snappily enough, and scrolling in documents and webpages is pretty painless, but as mentioned before video playback pretty much maxes out this platform—processor usage while playing a YouTube video on high quality hovers around 85%. But it works, and for me, this is the most computationally-intensive task I plan to conduct on my Eee.

Overclocking

For those situations where you need just a little bit more performance, Asus includes a utility called Super Hybrid Engine. On the surface it appears to be a bog-standard power management utility, except for the intriguingly-named Super Performance mode. This mode actually allows you to overclock the entire system—since it raises the front side bus (FSB) clock the processor and memory (and, indirectly, the graphics chip, which draws from system memory) are both affected. The overclock percentage ranges from 5% to 30% and can be set in the BIOS. Press F2 repeatedly when booting, and don’t be discouraged when the first ten times you do this it ignores you and boots right into Windows; the timing is ridiculously tight. Once there, search around until you find an option for overclocking. Set your percentage and hit F10 to save and exit. In my testing, I didn’t have any stability issues, and at the top setting it almost—almost—made HD video on YouTube possible. Alas, it’s still a chop-fest—maybe with better optimized graphics drivers it can happen. One thing that does happen in this mode is the fan spins up pretty loudly, which is to be expected. The unit never gets hot or even warm, however, so obviously that fan does a great job dispersing the heat.

Wireless

Wireless seems pretty solid, and since this is a netbook, that’s pretty important. I haven’t had any dropped connections that I can blame on the Eee—only Wayne State’s block-headed decision to make the suite rooms into little Faraday cages, and thus render them almost completely shielded from those harmful, carcinogenic wireless networks. Your options are B/G/N, the latter two of which I’ve experienced and which both work fine. The receiver picks up networks at quite a distance, too; on the way home from the store I got out my Eee for its maiden voyage and in the subdivision near my house it found several dozen available networks.

Sound and Speakers

The on-board speakers are pretty terrible, but they get the job done. The audio circuitry itself is surprisingly good, if a little weak. Whilst writing this review I listened through my favorite Genesis album, A Trick of the Tail, and I was very pleased with the way it sounded on my headphones. On account of the weak volume (and the low level of the album itself), I had the volume jacked all the way up to maximum, and there was neither distortion nor any audible circuitry noise. The audio on the Eee is more than acceptable.

Battery Life and Portability

As I mentioned earlier, the battery life has been pretty impressive so far. With brightness on half and when using High Performance mode, I once made it all the way through about five-and-a-half hours before plugging my Eee back into its adapter; in Power Saving mode and with the screen turned all the way down I imagine around seven hours is possible, depending on usage.

Weight-wise, this one continues Asus’s trend of coming up toward the heavier end of the computer category it pioneered; the 1101HA(B) weighs just shy of three pounds. I guess that’s not entirely fair, considering this is a larger model; the 1005HA(B) weighs 2.4 pounds. Its external dimensions of around 11″ x 8″ x 1.4″ mean that the Eee is much smaller (and lighter) than a standard textbook.

Both the battery life and weight contribute to a machine that is extremely portable. Throw the Eee in a bookbag or carrying bag and you’ll forget it’s there. Set it on one of those obnoxious school desks/chair contraptions with the little nine inch wide strip of “wood” that passes for a tabletop, and unlike your peers’ gargantuan standard notebook computers, your Eee won’t be in constant danger of tipping over the side. Plus, netbooks are still novel enough that the Eee makes a good conversation starter; when I had my Samsung NC10 quite a few people were intrigued by it, and I expect the same will be true of the Eee.

Included Software

Asus was quite good about not bogging down the Eee with crapware. There are a few pieces of Asus software, the only one of which I kept was Super Hybrid Engine (though the Update utility, which checks for new versions of the BIOS, might be useful and I plan on reinstalling it). Skype and Adobe Reader were also included. I don’t plan (for the time being) on doing any video calling, so I uninstalled Skype; also, I never use Adobe Reader (I prefer the lightweight Foxit Reader, instead), so I uninstalled it as well. Microsoft Works is included as well, and though I don’t plan on using it, if I had some burning need for it it’s the only thing I can’t just download and install again, so I figured I would leave it be. Overall, Asus shipped a fairly clean system. There might have been a few other things on here I had to get rid of, but I was done about half an hour after I started, which is about one sixth of the time I spent deleting crapware from my new HP notebook. Good deal, Asus; I appreciate it.

Linux Compatibility

Ouch. That’s all I can say. I was extremely disappointed when I tried installing Ubuntu 9.10 on my Eee. It turns out the GMA 500 graphics chip has very poor Linux support (even worse than its Windows support), and though a serviceable driver exists, a bigger problem is wireless networking—using wireless will result in a frightening crash after about two minutes. The screen becomes a frenzy of multi-colored lines and the system requires a hard reset. Given that the whole point of netbooks is portability, this pretty much makes it worthless. I’ll keep trying different things, and maybe I’ll find a solution. Even so, the experience is far from enjoyable. Windows draw painfully slowly, scrolling is choppy, and Ubuntu laughs—laughs when you attempt to activate Compiz effects. Surprisingly, YouTube videos play decently, but even adjusting the volume via the keyboard is enough to make the video go choppy.

Clearly there’s room for improvement.

Keep in mind this is an ongoing issue, and that, of course, Ubuntu isn’t the only Linux distro. However, I’ve scanned the Internet and found similar horror stories for Fedora and openSUSE users as well, so it looks like for the time being Linux is a no-go. Which is really sad considering that the original Eee PC debuted with only a custom Linux OS; clearly the netbook category has sprawled far from its roots (or Intel licensed a dinky graphics chip with awful, closed-source drivers for Linux, which is exactly what it did).

Final Thoughts

If I had to give the Eee PC 1101HA(B) a score, I would say it hovers between 3.5 and four out of five. The Linux woes are really what kill it for me; I am not entirely averse to Windows XP, but I was looking forward to rocking Ubuntu on my Eee. That might still happen over the lifetime of this computer, but keep this in mind if you were planning on using Linux on your netbook—paradoxically, the Eee isn’t the best option. For Windows XP operation, though, once you’ve cleaned up the system and installed the updated Intel graphics driver everything should work well. The 1101HA(B) is an odd creature; it has a larger screen than the traditional netbook, but it has a much higher resolution, too, so on-screen elements actually appear smaller than they do on traditional 10″ netbooks. Firefox mitigates this somewhat with its zoom tool, but for those who don’t see so well this thing will give you major headaches. As far as the keyboard is concerned, I would have thought with the extra space afforded by the larger screen Asus could have designed a slightly better key layout. It’s not hideous, but the right Shift key in particular is troublesome. Over the course of this review I’ve gotten much better at typing on this keyboard, though I still make quite a few mistakes (I’ll blame some of that on the extreme typing lag in the WordPress interface).

Overall, the 1101HA(B) is a slightly different take on the traditional netbook. I really like mine, rough edges and all, and I look forward to using it for years to come. Depending on your needs, other netbooks (Eees or otherwise) might serve you better. Shop around. More than anything else, you need to try out a netbook in person. Type on it. Check out the screen. If your store has Internet access, watch a YouTube video to see if it plays smoothly. Add your personal experience to your product research and make a decision. The Eee PC 1101HA(B) (mostly) works for me, and it might work for you, too.