ASUS Eee PC 1001HA makes its apperance at the Global site

ASUS has now officially launched the EEE 1001HA. It carries the Seashell tag just like ASUS EEE 1008HA and ASUS EEE 1005HA. It carries an obsolete CPU: Atom N270 which was used by the netbooks of yesteryear.

Specifications:

• 10.1-inch 1024×600 display
• 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU
• 1GB of RAM
• 160GB HDD
• Wi-Fi 802.1 b/g/n
• 0.3MP webcam
• 3 USB ports
• Windows XP or Linux OS

(why no Windows 7?)

• 3-cell battery

Ouch! A 3-cell battery in the era of netbooks where each netbooks sports 6-7 hours of battery life? Stupid move, ASUS

There is no information regarding its availability or its exact price, but we expect it to low due to its shabby specs ($320-$350)

[EEE 1001HA official webpage]

SONY VAIO X quick analysis on basis of pictures – direct from Japan’s CEATEC 2009

It is not an unknown fact that SONY has done a great job with the extremely elegant-looking Sony Vaio X. When one looks at it, he/she immediately gets the impression of how sleek this netbook/mini-notebook is. Apart from its nicely designed keyboard, it has a great touchpad with two left and right click buttons too that do not require much effort to register clicks.

Thanks to the great engineers at SONY, they did not go for the flaps to make it look streamlined (like the case in ASUS EEE 1008HA). The two USB 2.0 ports are fully exposed to the user. Also present is a the Kensington lock, power port and earphone jack.

Click on read more to read the full report!

ASUS EEE PC Seashell Range noticed with Windows 7 in Italy’s Online Stores

Looks like very soon ASUS is going to announce Windows 7-based Seashell netbooks. Current Seashell models (1005HA (299 Euros), 1008HA (399 Euros) and 1101HA (399 Euros) ) are being spotted in some online stores.

The EEE 1101HA is complemented with Windows 7 Home Premium instead of Starter Edition like the 1005HA and 1008HA. Reason being the fact that in most of the countries, it is being sold with Windows Vista Home Premium. Also, looks like all of them will be undergoing HDD upgrades too. 160 GB are things of the past now and 250GB HDD will be used as new standard. Also 2GB RAM will come as default instead of 1GB.

Commentary: ASUS Eee PC currently comes with Windows XP and it is nice that ASUS is on toes in rolling out Windows 7 based netbooks. The Seashell netbooks, especially EEE 1008HA and EEE 1005HA, both have enjoyed enormous success and Windows 7 will make things only better.

Also read: EEE 1008HA review

ION-Powered 12-inch ASUS EEE PC 1201N Netbook coming soon

ASUS is very soon going to unveil its first ION-powered netbook, EEE PC 1201N in the month of October. Having an 12.1-inch display, this netbook is surely not going to be as compact as the current seashell line of netbooks by ASUS (read our EEE 1008HA seashell review). Packing a respectable 1366×768 resolution, it also has a GeForce 9400M G ION chipset coupled with an Intel Atom N270 processor (1.6GHz). It has 250GB HDD and 2GB RAM.

Along with standard radios (Bluetooth, WiFi-n), it is backed by a decent 6-cell 5200mAh battery that is rated to give you up to 11 hours of runtime. It will be bundled with the Windows 7 Home Premium OS and will be priced at $499

For Pro Xandros Linux users only: Change wallpaper

Nobody knew that changing the wallpaper in Xandros would be so difficult. Anyway, karmatronic at eeeuser has come up with a python script that lets you easily change the wallpaper of your Xandros-driven EEE.

Note that you need to install python-qt4 on your EEE to use it.

Unlike most netbook websites, that are covering nothing but JoliCloud Linux, we have actually covered and REVIEWED other more popular Linux distros for the netbooks

1. Read EEEbuntu 3.0 review
2. Read Ubuntu Netbook remix review

Get the script from here

Julong = Eee Box clone

If the netbook clones were not enough, here come the clones of nettops! Meet the Julong Eee Box which is an, um, an EEE box clone. Unlike most of the recent nettops, this does NOT have an ION or ION LE chipset. It uses the bog standard Intel Atom N270 processor, 160GB HDD, 1GB RAM, 3 USB ports and VGA port. No HDMI.

Available at price of $150 USD in China, we cannot complain much.

WiFi not working under UBUNTU on EEE 1008HA? – here is how to fix it

I’m sure most of you must have loaded the UBUNTU NBR on your EEE 1008HA just to discover that you are not able to connect to the WiFi network. Well, do not worry. Just follow these steps to get the Internet working:

1. Download Ethernet drivers from here from another computer having access to Internet connection and install them on your EEE 1008HA
2. Reboot
3. Now, on your EEE 1008HA, with Ethernet cable now plugged in, download Wireless drivers by typing this in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-jaunty

Reboot again and WiFi will now start working.

ASUS EEE T91 user manual

User manuals are great for knowing about the features and functions about a device . We have just found out that ASUS has made its manual online and is available for download.

By looking through its manual, we were able to learn about the new ASUS utility: EEE Docking Touch Tool Bar, which is used to give the user access to frequently used functions.

Another interesting utility that we came across was the Touch Gate utility, which lets you do some basic functions like opening applications stored on your EEE in a very finger friendly manner.

[Get user manual from here]

Performance comparison: XP versus Windows 7 on EEE 901 – XP still wins!

Windows 7’s release is just around the corner and is destined to finally replace the aging Windows XP on the netbooks (and notebook). Johnny at his personal blog has compared the performance of both Windows XP and Windows 7 on his EEE 901 netbook, which comes with standard netbooks specs (Atom N270 processor, 160GB HDD and 1GB RAM). However, he has swapped the hard disk for a fast Runcore SSD drive and is using 2GB RAM instead of 1GB RAM. So your mileage may vary.

Windows 7 actually shows modest gains on XP in SSD performance. This wasn’t surprising, given the press coverage that has been dedicated to this very topic. However, this is where Windows 7′s dominance ends. XP bests it in every other measurable way on the 901.

That said, Windows 7 is going to be a worthy successor to Windows Vista, which just was not given “thumbs up” by most of the IT professionals and computer savvy folks. I have tried Windows 7 on every computer I have and I must say that I have been very pleased with its performance. 

Cracking panel issue in the EEE 1008HA netbook

ASUS has commented on the cracking panel issue that has affected some of the EEE 1008HA netbook. ASUS says that they had seen the defect before it reached the hands of consumers. Fortunately, there is nothing to worry about as the defected netbooks won’t reach the consumer market.

Asustek noted that the cracking was not due to faulty design or manufacturing, but because it has been using panel components from a secondary supplier