Asus EEE 1000H vs £500 laptop

Craig321 · 6 Mar 2009 at 16:33

Originally I was going to go for a £500-600 laptop from Dell (or whoever is best at the time), but recently I've been looking at the Linux Asus EEE 1000H (going to either stick with Linux, or put XP on it myself - either way I save about £30 going for the Linux 1000H).

I really like the battery life it gives compared to the average laptop - reviews have stated over 4 hours with WiFi etc. turned on, and Asus claim up to 8 hours (obviously with all the power save features on).

The main use is going to be browsing, documents, possibly movies and hopefully a few older games.

My first question is: will it handle older games such as Warcraft III and Diablo II?

Second question: what are the benefits I'd see from buying a 'normal' laptop for around £500 apart from the larger screen and possibly better graphics?

The MSI Wind U100 seems to be the competitor to the EEE 1000H - anyone had experience with both, got any comments?

[Edit]
I'm liking the look of the Samsung NC10 - looks nicer than the 1000H and seems to have very decent battery life.

Thanks,
Craig.

balls · 6 Mar 2009 at 18:56

Well I personally don't have the 1000H, but the 901 happily played Diablo through an external monitor, so I can only assume that the 1000 will do.

Craig321 · 6 Mar 2009 at 19:38

Cool - I've been watching some videos and it seems even GTA SA works quite well on it, so the graphics are more than good enough for a few older games.

I'm set on the Samsung NC10 at the moment - looks a lot more stylish than the EEE 1000H and better quality as well. Loving the battery life you can squeeze out of it as well - over 4 hours playing movies!

Am I right in saying the NC10 has just the one slot for RAM? If so, I'll probably buy 2GB for it. Only £15 and I can't see it reducing the battery life by much at all. Might give Windows 7 a go on it (people have been saying it runs really well), so I think 2GB would be best considering the price.

Tempting to dual boot Windows 7 & Ubuntu Netbook Remix (or triple boot and put XP on as well

), just to play around with some different OS' to see what suites me best on a Netbook.

Rwac · 7 Mar 2009 at 20:58

Craig321 said:
Cool - I've been watching some videos and it seems even GTA SA works quite well on it, so the graphics are more than good enough for a few older games.

I'm set on the Samsung NC10 at the moment - looks a lot more stylish than the EEE 1000H and better quality as well. Loving the battery life you can squeeze out of it as well - over 4 hours playing movies!

Am I right in saying the NC10 has just the one slot for RAM? If so, I'll probably buy 2GB for it. Only £15 and I can't see it reducing the battery life by much at all. Might give Windows 7 a go on it (people have been saying it runs really well), so I think 2GB would be best considering the price.

Tempting to dual boot Windows 7 & Ubuntu Netbook Remix (or triple boot and put XP on as well ), just to play around with some different OS' to see what suites me best on a Netbook.

Windows 7 runs quite nicely on my HP 1000/702EA. Be aware that a number of programs do not seem to work on Windows 7 however. Windows XP runs nicely on it as well as Ubuntu NB Remix.

RobH · 7 Mar 2009 at 23:40

Craig321 said:
Am I right in saying the NC10 has just the one slot for RAM?

Yup,

RAM

RAM Slot

The blue one is really nice, they also do it in pink, black and white, the white one is not glossy though. I am running mine with 1GB of RAM at the moment and it seems to run fine, made the mistake of sticking 2GB in my ASUS EeeBox and it did bupkis, at least under XP.

I posted a load of NC10 porn in this thread if you haven't seen it: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17924160&page=46

Craig321 · 7 Mar 2009 at 23:41

Yeah, I had a browse of that thread, thanks

I'll probably go for 2GB if/when I get the NC10 - may as well, it's only £20 and looks simple enough

RobH · 7 Mar 2009 at 23:46

Yeah for the small amount it costs you might as well go for the 2GB, you could even sell the 1GB and get some of the money back. Under XP I haven't noticed any improvement with 2GB but I think Vista and Windows 7 make better use of it. It's probably because XP has a small memory footprint to start with and I don't do anything on my netbook which uses much memory. I haven't tried it with any games either so it may help out there as well as the GPU shares the memory (I think?).

Craig321 · 7 Mar 2009 at 23:50

Yep, IIRC the GPU shared the memory.

Just wondering about the resolution really - I'm disappointed the 10.2" NC10 only provides the same amount of screen space as my Dad's 8.9" EEE

RobH · 8 Mar 2009 at 00:03

Craig321 said:
Just wondering about the resolution really - I'm disappointed the 10.2" NC10 only provides the same amount of screen space as my Dad's 8.9" EEE

It uses the same screen as nearly all netbooks of the same size, its a standard 1024 x 600 LED Backlit. It does take time to get used to but it's not too bad, here are some usual apps running on the NC10:

Word 2007

Foxit Reader (PDF)

OcUK Forums

Google Earth

lsg1r · 8 Mar 2009 at 00:43

Just for your info more than anything, theres a new nc10 with bigger touchpad and larger capacity battery (still 6 cell) been announced, not sure if its the higher priced one on ocuk but it should give around 8 hours battery iirc.

RobH · 8 Mar 2009 at 00:53

lsg1r said:
not sure if its the higher priced one on ocuk

No, that's just the HSDPA version, although why it costs so much more I don't know.

Craig321 · 8 Mar 2009 at 01:25

RobH said:
It uses the same screen as nearly all netbooks of the same size, its a standard 1024 x 600 LED Backlit. It does take time to get used to but it's not too bad, here are some usual apps running on the NC10:

Word 2007
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i207/huntr2/word_nc10.jpg[/IG]

Foxit Reader (PDF)
[IMG]http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i207/huntr2/pdf_nc10.jpg[/IM]

OcUK Forums
[IMG]http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i207/huntr2/ocuk_nc10.jpg[/IG]

Google Earth
[IMG]http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i207/huntr2/gearth_nc10.jpg[/IG][/QUOTE]

That's looks like an alright size actually, I didn't think you'd get so much page space in Office 2007 considering the size of the bar at the top - good to see it fits nicely, and you get a decent amount of space for web pages :)

[quote="lsg1r, post: 13638097"]Just for your info more than anything, theres a new nc10 with bigger touchpad and larger capacity battery (still 6 cell) been announced, not sure if its the higher priced one on ocuk but it should give around 8 hours battery iirc.[/QUOTE]

Way too expensive, for what you get. An extra £150 for slightly longer battery life and some other small improvements. I'd want at least a faster processor and more RAM as well as the other improvements for £150 extra.

I guess the HSDPA model allows you to put a sim card inside to access the internet?

I'll probably pick up a cheap laptop mouse as well when I buy it (for games, or when I'm sitting at a desk using the laptop).

lsg1r · 8 Mar 2009 at 11:27

Craig321 said:
Way too expensive, for what you get. An extra £150 for slightly longer battery life and some other small improvements. I'd want at least a faster processor and more RAM as well as the other improvements for £150 extra.

I guess the HSDPA model allows you to put a sim card inside to access the internet?

I'll probably pick up a cheap laptop mouse as well when I buy it (for games, or when I'm sitting at a desk using the laptop).

Well it looks like the ocuk one is the 3g model without the upgrade. I've seen the larger battery model on engadget listed at $470 iirc which isn't that bad when the normal one is about $435 from the same site it's referencing.

Craig321 · 8 Mar 2009 at 13:12

Does the larger battery model have a special name at all? All of the ones listed just say 6-cell.

As far as I can tell OcUK only sell White, Pink (coming soon), Blue, Black & the HSDPA version - can't see any version there with a larger battery without the HSDPA. I'd rather just get an HSDPA dongle if I needed internet 24/7 - my Dad got one for £30 and it works perfectly.

The original NC10 is basically the HSDPA model without a sim card slot.

All the review sites seem to really like the NC10 - build quality especially. Think I'll have to go for one considering it handles Windows 7 quite well

lsg1r · 9 Mar 2009 at 17:57

according to the site in question its reference is NC10-11PBK (black one by the looks of it) and has a 9 hour 40 minute battery life with xp. Its 1.6 atom, 1GB ram, xp and 160gb drive.

RobH · 9 Mar 2009 at 18:39

Craig321 said:
Does the larger battery model have a special name at all?

Just figured it out, it's the rumored "NC10 Special Edition" that a few people were on about in the other thread. It is exactly the same as the standard NC10 but the trackpad is slightly larger and it has a 5900 mAh compared to the standard 5200 mAh. I think it's also only availiable in black.

Craig321 · 9 Mar 2009 at 19:26

RobH said:
Just figured it out, it's the rumored "NC10 Special Edition" that a few people were on about in the other thread. It is exactly the same as the standard NC10 but the trackpad is slightly larger and it has a 5900 mAh compared to the standard 5200 mAh. I think it's also only availiable in black.

Sounds good if they don't put a stupid price tag on it