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Look mum, no moving parts! The Asus Eee PC 900A Netbook.
No comments · Posted by Dr Ron in Blogging, Internet, Market Research, Technical
Moving parts. When it comes to computers, they’re the bane of support personnel the world over.
Why?
Because moving parts fail. They wear out. Bearings in cooling fans get hot and seize, heads in hard disks seek and search, read and write for only so long, rubber belts perish and contacts in switches wear down over time. That’s not to say that components like memory sticks and video cards don’t experience failure, but they’re not subject to the same type of failure that you see in mechanically complex components.
The answer? Enter the latest phenomenon in personal computing: solid state drives, or “SSD” devices designed to replace old-fashioned hard disks in personal computers.
SSD’s have several advantages over hard disks. They’re robust, and they’re not susceptible to drops, bumps, dust and environmental factors the same way that hard disks are. They don’t need the same level of cooling. And because there is no mechanical delay in reading/writing data, they’re noticeably faster than hard disk drives, especially on a heavily fragmented “disk”.
They are, however, still expensive when compared with traditional hard disks. The current Wikipedia article on SSD’s suggests that they may be 10 times dearer than hard disks, on a cost per storage unit basis.
The Asus Eee PC 900A Netbook
This is one of the new-model Asus netbooks, designed for easy net access and mobile computing. It was time to retire my old Acer TravelMate, and I’d been looking around for a replacement for some time. I had been using an Acer Aspire 1 at Tech Talk for a few months, which has been graciously loaned to me on an ongoing weekly basis by my wife.
The main feature that appealed to me about the Asus Eee PC 900A was the 16 GB SSD. Now 16 GB might not seem like much, with many personal computers being shipped these days with 320 GB or even 540 GB hard drives. However, I considered my needs for the Asus: internet access on-the-go; web browsing, email, social networking; and maybe even video-streaming for the TTR webcam. I don’t need heaps of data storage to do any of these things. More and more these days I’m relying on online data storage through services like adrive.com, Zoho and Google’s Gmail.
Let me point out that this is not a replacement for my desktop computer, and wouldn’t be suitable for grunty applications like video editing, audio editing, Photoshopping (is that a word?) and other activities that do require plenty of disk space.
First impressions
The Asus Eee PC 900A is small. It’s certainly much smaller than the boat-anchor TravelMate. The Asus is equipped with a sharp 8.9″ LCD, a QWERTY keyboard to match and a track pad with a nice feel. The left / right “mouse buttons” feel a bit plasticky but do the trick. It has a built-in 300 kilopixel webcam, yep that’s just 0.3 megapixels, which is probably good for Skype video calling, or Yahoo Messenger, and that’s about it. Actually it sounds worse than it is.
The 0.3 megapixel camera sounds worse than it actually is.
There are also 3 x USB ports, a VGA port, a 100BaseT ethernet port and audio in/out jacks on the left-hand side. Connection to an 802.11b/g wireless network was quick and easy thanks to the inbuilt Atheros wireless adapter.
Four bright LEDs on the front-right of the Asus show power status, battery status, SSD access and wireless networking status.
What the Asus doesn’t have is Bluetooth connectivity, which may be an issue for some people with Bluetooth peripherals. It’s not an issue for me however.
Also the Asus doesn’t have a DVD drive or mass-storage interface like a firewire port. To install software, the current trend with these smaller netbooks is to install “over the network”, via ethernet or wireless, or use installation packages on a USB memory stick or external hard disk.
Four bright LEDs show power status, battery status, SSD access and wireless networking status.
Performance
The Asus is equipped with an Intel Atom 1.6 GHz processor. With 1GB of RAM, and the nice fast 16 GB solid state disk drive, performance is very good. It feels like a fast notebook, not a sluggish under-perforrming laptop. The Windows XP operating system is responsive, quick to switch between applications and tasks and quick to start programs. Booting from cold-start to a usable desktop takes about 30 seconds. Windows shutdown with no applications running is faster still.
Shipping & Installation
I purchased the Asus from a home-electrical retailer in Melbourne. It came pre-installed with Windows XP Home edition, pre-validated with Microsoft. So if I wanted to save my XP Home licence and load an alternative operating system, too bad. Hmmm.
The installation also shipped with an ASUS edition of Star Office 8, and the latest version of Skype.
Wireless networking was activated out-of-the-box and connected easily to my home wireless network.
The Asus is shipped with a power supply, a protective pouch, cleaning cloth, support CD and the usual Owner’s Manual and warranty information.
Conclusion
I’ve only been using the Asus for a few days. But so far, I like what I see.
Many technology bloggers (like this one) have been critical of Asus and the seemingly confusing range of netbooks currently on the market.
My opinion is that the Asus Eee PC 900A fills a niche product hole and should sell well. It’s a fast, light-weight performer utlising modern SSD technology and is ideal for professionals on-the-go.
Once it’s combined with a USB-style mobile broadband adapter on a competitive data plan, the Asus Eee PC 900A will be a useful tool for the modern-day “mobiley connected” professional.
