The latest computer arrived today – an Asus EeePC 1005HA, the perfect Netbook
- Intel Atom N280 1.66GHz
- 2Gb RAM / 160Gb HDD / 1024x600
- Wired 100BaseT / Wireless N
- Bluetooth 2.0 (stereo audio)
- Camera, SD slot, microphone
- $400
The Perfect Netbook
The Asus EeePC 1005HA is a beautiful machine. For the same (little lower) price than Dell, Acer, HP, etc., you get the best in network screen resolution (1024x600), reasonable camera, great low-power CPU (hyper-threaded N280), super battery life (8+ hours real) quality HDD, maximum memory supported by the chipset (2Gb), wireless N (not G), and a bluetooth radio that supports my stereo headphones. This allows me to watch Hulu streaming video in [what Hulu claims is] HD quality while running on the treadmill for 8 straight hours with no wires attached to me or the netbook (Full Disclosure: I never really did that). It’s also great for the usual netbook stuff, i.e., “web application” tasks (checking email, IM/Skype, and clicking on stuff in a web browser).
First Boot Experience
The first boot experience was not too bad, particularly when compared to Dell or HP machines. However, Windows XP simply will not do (it looks like a tired old joke these days). After verifying that all of the hardware worked, running some disk checks, running some RAM checks, noting battery performance, CPU/motherboards temperatures, etc., it was time to install a modern operating system on this thing.
Asus ships the machine with several partitions on the drive. The installation media on stored on a secondary (not normally mounted) partition of the drive, and provides a method in the BIOS to “recover” from this media. I wish netbook manufacturers would ship “pure” windows installation media on a USB stick “thrown in the box” instead, and simply forget about the add-on crapware. However, I have to give Asus a little credit – they also partition the drive so that OS is on one partition and data is on another; I suspect that their “recovery process” re-creates the OS partition only, but I will never know. Either way, it is now time to wipe the drive along with Asus’ hard work. :-)
Windows 7 Installation
Note: I am using the RC build of Windows 7
The first step is to build a USB boot disk with Windows 7 32-bit media on board. This is quite easy to do (has been since the Windows Vista days) with the following steps:
- Obtain a command prompt in Vista (or later) with Administrative rights
- This is most easily accomplished by clicking the Start Menu, type “cmd”, then right-click “Run as Administrator” on the shortcut.
- Use diskpart program to prepare a blank USB drive [Warning: doing this to the incorrect drive is, well, …]
- Purchase a $14 4Gb USB drive, and plug it in
- run “diskpart” in the administrative console command prompt window
- type “list disk” to identify your 4Gb (about 4000 MB) disk
- type “select disk X” where ‘X’ is the disk identified in previous step [obviously important to select the correct disk!]
- type “clean” to wipe the drive [I hope you selected the correct disk]
- type “create partition primary” to create a primary partition [if you get here, then you likely got the right disk]
- type “select partition 1” to select the new partition
- type “active” to mark as active boot partition
- type “format fs=fat32” to format the partition
- type “exit” to quit; unplug and re-plug in the USB drive.
- Copy installation media contents to the drive
- Insert the Windows 7 DVD and simply copy the contents to the USB drive.
- Add some extra utilities if you like (I usually add some diagnostic apps)
- You now have a boot USB stick – much nicer than a slow DVD!
I poked around the BIOS a bit to figure out how to boot from USB on the Asus 1005HA. Although I found it in there, the manual later pointed out that pressing ESC during boot will display a ‘boot menu’ allowing me to select which disk to boot from – USB stick or internal hard drive. Nice. There is a little feature called “Fast Boot”, which I think I had to disable. Not exactly sure what this does, but most likely simply skips some POST steps and goes right to OS loader on same device as “last time”. It did speed up boot time; Asus probably has their act together here, although I wish they would call it something like “skip some power-on tests” rather than “fast boot” so we can make technical decisions rather than marketing decisions about such issues.
Anyway, I booted up from USB and a few minutes (literally) later, I’m up and running with Windows 7. Fourteen minutes, to be exact. Including wiping all disk partitions and formatting a single new one.
Windows 7 Performance
Hardware detection was perfect; driver installation successful for all devices. But are all hardware features available? Here is what I found. Asus does not support Windows 7 at this time, so specific Windows 7 drivers for the equipment cannot be obtained from Asus. I’m sure this will change when Windows 7 is released to the public in October.
The Results:
- All hardware devices were recognized by the boot media and drivers installed except for one – the ACPI Device, i.e., power management. This was corrected automatically after connecting to the internet for the first time. Three other drivers (Atheros wireless, bluetooth, and Intel’s onboard video) also took the opportunity of being on the net to updates themselves via Windows Update.
- Memory performance, i.e., transfer speed from RAM, was measured at 4074MB/s, which is not too good compared to a modern desktop. This is not reflected in the Windows experience score, so there is either something wrong with the measuring utility or I am too accustomed to max-scores of 5.9 on my desktop boxes (I wonder how good those machines really are).
- The “Windows Experience” numbers. Funny how well Aero works with only a 2.0.
- Processor: 2.3
- Memory: 4.5
- Graphics: 2.0
- Gaming Graphics: 3.0
- Primary HD: 5.4
- Network performance was measured with > 50Mb/s throughput under ideal conditions, which is excellent.
- The Synaptics touchpad is running with generic drivers. These leaves me without “special” touchpad features (like scrolling). I suspect this will change as October draws near. [Synaptics is a very mainstream touchpad manufacturer]. I’ll update to the Vista driver from the Synaptics web site when I get a chance.
- Subjective performance is very good: video is smooth from Web, SD card, and Hard Disk; Aero is perfect, including all the new peek and preview stuff in Windows 7; disk access is good; the little computer is quite snappy.
- Battery life came around 8 hours first cycle (fairly-heavy on–and-off usage), charges quickly when sleeping (1 hour or so if I remember correctly?). I have not gone through another cycle. My guess is that with Bluetooth and Wireless Ethernet on and cranking, you will get 8Hr max (less watching video this way), but you could get 10+Hours on an airplane ride with the radios off. Very nice. [Note: Asus markets as ‘Up to 10.5 hours’, which is a reasonable claim.]
- Visual Studio: Sorry, I have not installed and run this. I don’t plan on using the netbook for software development. I’ll drag around my “regular” notebook for that purpose.
What else to say? Not much. Great little netbook. Perfect for travel.