ASUS EEE 1101HA review

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The ASUS EEE 1101HA is the epitomization of good looks combined with great battery life. It carries the same Seashell design like its 10-inch brother, EEE 1008HA. But, the ASUS has entering a bit late into the 11.6-inch netbook market, but that does not make it an unattractive deal by any chance. It is a great netbook.

Design

The finish, at least according to ASUS, is scratch-resistant. However, the one which we got for review was white in color, so won’t see the smudges. But, if you get the black one, you will be having a hard time in keeping the lid smudge-free as it is so glossy!

Its design appears to be very slim, but not like SONY VAIO X, which only has few mm of flab. (Sony VAIO X review)

Build

The build is very good and we expect nothing less from ASUS. It is about the same size as Acer’s 11.6-incher, the Aspire 751H. But, it is a bit heavy, mainly due to its huge 6-cell battery (more on that later).

Its battery does not protrudes out like the Acer Aspire 751H. It weighs about 1.38 kg with the battery-in.

Acer Aspire 751H review

Keyboard

The keyboard is great. Tactile feedback is satisfying. But there is one bugging thing. The right shift key. Even after 2 years of being in the netbook business, how could ASUS make such a mistake and that too in an 11.6-inch model, where they had ample space to fit a full size right shift key. ASUS, HP and Dell have been able to fit in a full size right shift key even in their 8.9-inch models. Crazy fact, isn’t it?

But, let’s not be too harsh. It is still very spacious and is great for typing documents, but you will have to get accustomed to its keyboard.

Touchpad

It is big and easy to huge, unlike Acer 751H’s tiny touchpad. It supports multi-touch gestures too.

Display

The EEE 1101HA has an 11.6-inches display with 1366×768, just like Acer Aspire 751H. Colors look great. Contrast ratio is satisfactory.

Although the display’s resolution is HD, but it could not play HD videos smoothly (see the performance section, later in this review)

Ports

ASUS EEE 1101HA has a USB port and VGA port on its left side.

On its right side, there is a SD/MMC memory card reader, Ethernet port, 2 USB 2.0 port, headphone and microphone port.

I am glad that ASUS did not use the flaps like EEE 1008HA. They were extremely annoying and prevented some of the USB devices to properly plugin.

Performance

The ASUS EEE 1101HA comes equipped with Atom Z520 processor that runs at a clock speed of 1.2GHz. Granted, it is not the fastest netbook in town, but since it runs Windows XP Home, the performance is pretty satisfactory.

However, when we tried playing a 720p video on it, the CPU was just not able to cope with it. The video was jittery and not smooth at all, much like a fast-paced slideshow. That said, we experienced no problems with the music playback. The playback was smooth and was without any problems.

Folks at ASUS understood this and rolled out a BIOS that allows you to safely overclock the processor by 32%.

Software

The ASUS EEE 1101HA runs Windows XP Home edition as its OS. ASUS has tweaked it quite a lot so that runs really fast. Also comes with it are a slew of ASUS utilities like EEE Docking bar which provides one key access to the EEE-branded software. EEE Tools are also bundled which lets you change the overall system font size, which is great for those who are getting old. It incldes parental controls too.

10GB of online EEE storage is also included. There is an app called EEE Splendid which lets you adjust the colors of the screen.

A 10-day trial version of Microsoft office is also included.

Battery

Battery life is fantastic on it. True, the processor and its huge battery capacity are the core factors for 10 hour plus of battery life. Atom Z520 runs at a much lower clock speed than the usual netbooks. ASUS has included its excellent Super Hybrid Engine which lets  you adjust the clock speed as required.

While browsing the web over WiFi, we were able to squeeze out nearly 7.5 hours of continuous usage. Note that we were using the netbook under high-performance mode at all the time. We found the netbook to be  a bit too slow for our taste in power-saving mode.

It takes around 3 hours to fully recharge a fully discharged battery.

Note: Apparently, the 1101HA is available in two battery capacities: 63Wh and 48Wh. The 63Wh is the one you should get. You can see the battery’s capacity by removing the battery from the unit.

Upgradability

Ouch! Only RAM can be changed by the user. Gone are the days,when you could upgrade the RAM, HDD and even wireless card of an ASUS netbook.

So the most you can do is upgrade its 1GB RAM to 2GB, which is the max that is supported by this netbook.

Final Thoughts

The ASUS EEE 1101HA is a good example of feature-packed netbook with stellar battery life. The ASUS EEE 1101HA comes with all the trappings of a regular netbook. If you don’t mind its slightly low performance and want a netbook with all day battery life, the 1101HA won’t be a bad choice at all

SONY VAIO P (review) sitting on ASUS EEE 1101HA

(+) Big, bright 11.6-inch display with 1366×768 resolution

(+) Cheap!

(+) Spacious keyboard, but takes some time getting used to

(+) Big touchpad

(+) Looks great in both white and black color

(+) Awesome battery life

(+) Compatible with Windows 7 (drivers can be downloaded from this link)

(-) Small right shift key (!)

(-) Slow, cannot play 720p videos smoothly. 1080p is out of equation here

(-) No access to its hard disk or wireless card

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