ASUS Eee PC 1005HA: Refining the Netbook

You Say You Want an Evolution…

After putting the ASUS 1005HA through a bunch of tests, we're happy to report that there are some tangible gains in battery life relative to the previous 1000HE. Other than that, there's not much to differentiate the two models. That in a nutshell describes much of the netbook market: all of the various products are extremely similar in terms of features and specifications. The only real differences are often more subjective, but keyboards, touch pads, and LCDs can still make or break a product.

When we compared the ASUS 1000HE with the MSI Wind U123, in some ways the U123 was a superior product. For the same price users received a larger capacity battery that resulted in roughly 40% more battery life, and they didn't even increase weight by a noticeable amount. Outside of battery life, however, we felt that the keyboard and especially the touchpad were better on the ASUS 1000HE. So how does the 1005HA compare?

The keyboard remains the same as far as we can tell, and that's a good thing. The 1005HA keyboard gave us no complaints. The touchpad is a bit trickier. We didn't have any serious issues, but we routinely activated the touchpad shortcuts for scrolling unintentionally. You can always disable those actions, but we feel their benefits outweigh the occasional errant activation. The longer we used the 1005HA, the more comfortable we became with the touchpad. Overall then, we'd rate that 1005HA as being equal to the 1000HE/1000HA in the ergonomics department.

Subjectively, you know the netbook is slow as soon as you start using it (unless you're coming from a pre-2004 laptop or something without enough RAM). Launching Internet Explorer (or Firefox, Chrome, Opera, or Safari for that matter) takes noticeably longer. Opening and rendering web pages takes noticeably longer. Interacting with Windows in general is far more sluggish. The detailed PCMark05 explain in numbers exactly what you'll experience with a netbook. An entry-level $500 laptop is about 50% faster at rendering simple web pages (and the difference increases with lots of Flash content). Loading Microsoft Office is similar in that the initial start times are slower and menus and dialogs are less responsive in terms of popping up. If you have a task start using a lot of CPU time, the pauses become far more common and distracting -- in other words, heavy multitasking isn't a good idea.

Does any of this make netbooks a horrible platform? Is it too much or just something you notice when you come from a faster system? Relative to a modern desktop, a netbook is going to feel painfully slow at times, but for $300-$375 and a lightweight portable we don't think it's a bad trade. Don't run tons of web pages in tabs, don't open eighteen applications at once, and you'll be fine. The performance charts really tell the story: netbooks like the 1005HA are slow, but they're still "fast enough". Sometimes that's all you really need.

The most annoying aspect continues to be the low resolution LCD. The contrast ratio is great and it's at its best in movies; everywhere else could definitely benefit from a larger, higher resolution LCD. However, it will suffice for normal office use. Most web pages aren't designed for optimal viewing on a 1024x600 LCD panel - the majority of sites don't have a problem with the width, but the height is a real issue so expect to do a lot of scrolling. By the time you add the title bar, menus, tabs, address bar, status bar and task bar together, you're looking at about 1/3 of the vertical space without any useful material! Combine that with site banners and other content and you may not even get to the core of a website without scrolling down. That's why the touchpad gestures are useful, because you'll do a lot of scrolling on any netbook.

Incidentally, if you're looking for a minimalist browser, Google Chrome wins with only 83 pixels of vertical real-estate at the top (compared to 130 for Safari 4, 118 for Opera 9/10, 113 for Firefox 3.5, and 96 for IE8 -- click the above image for a full-size view). That's using default settings, of course, and it's possible to shrink down the vertical footprint of other browsers. The core problem of not having enough vertical viewing space remains, however, and fixing that issue isn't a simple solution. For example, the old 5:4 and 4:3 LCDs were nice on vertical viewing space, but they're not as nice for widescreen movies. Still, 1366x768 or 1280x800 LCDs would be a welcome addition for netbooks (and it's something already being addressed with other models).

We mentioned it before, but it bears repeating: one of the changes made from the 1000HE is that it's now much more difficult to access the hard drive. Users looking to upgrade to an SSD might prefer the old models, which appear to be selling at slightly discounted prices. On the other hand, the old models also offered lower battery life, so you have to pick your poison. Personally, the thought of adding a relatively expensive SSD to an inexpensive netbook doesn't make a lot of sense. Hard drive access will certainly improve, but the bigger bottleneck is usually the slow Intel Atom processor. You might also consider upgrading the memory to 2GB (around $30).

Once you start looking at upgrades, however, the attractiveness of netbooks starts to fade. In fact, the only reason to stick with a netbook at that point is because you really want the long battery life. Our performance results included a $500 notebook that runs circles around any netbook in every category… except size, weight, and battery life. Certainly notebooks are far more versatile than netbooks, and we really don't recommend anyone plan to use a netbook as their sole computer system. They're great for a small portable computer that you can easily carry around all day, take some notes, surf the web, etc. As soon as you try to do something more taxing -- moderate gaming, HD videos, or even in general use -- the performance benefits of entry-level laptops are readily apparent.

Our advice is to use a netbook as your second or third PC. They fill that role very well, and with a price tag of under $400 they are very affordable compared to high-end CPUs and graphics cards. If you're like us, you already have a powerful desktop you can use at home, and you might have a reasonably powerful laptop/notebook. What you likely don't have is a three pound computer that you can use all day long without the need to recharge. If you're in the market for such a computer, netbooks are a perfect fit. They won't be everything to everyone, but they definitely fill an important niche. ASUS continues to lead among netbook manufacturers, which is fitting considering they started the market a couple years back. The 1005HA may not be a revolutionary product, but it evolves the netbook just enough to make it worthwhile.