EEE PC 1000H

[Adross]

Hey everyone,
I am currently a university student undertaking an Information and Communication Technology degree(similar to computer science) and I am looking at buying a netbook in the coming weeks. I am thinking of getting the eee pc 1000h(unfortunately, the 1000 which ships with linux and the 40 gig ssd is not available in Australia).

Is this a bad idea? If not, am I better to buy it domestically or ship it from overseas?

[Adross]

Note to self: Not a bad idea. Not even at all.

[firefly2442]

I've got the 1000 model (not 1000H) and I really like it. I wish the resolution was 1024x768 but overall it has been fantastic. I've seen and played with earlier eee's and I think the construction and feel of the hardware is much better. The only bad thing is the price (kinda steep) and all the fiddling I had to do to get Ubuntu working smoothly. I would suggest checking out the forums here:

http://forum.eeeuser.com/

Good luck.

[Lord C]

I'm trying to hunt down the 901 Linux. Anything but the black lol.
Ideally I'd love the green, but it really is Limited Edition. The white is hard enough to track down right now.

The 1000 price and size are just that bit too much imo, it gets to the point where for a few more pounds you may as well get a full-on laptop.

The 901 wins for me, with the 1.3mp cam, 6cell battery and 20gb ssd. Sexy. So much better than the 900. And compared the hp, acer and dell, I think it's the best stats wise.
The only down-side I can see is that damn tiny keyboard. But I imagine you get used to it. I did with the iPhone at least.

Thanks for the link btw, they have a pre-order section on those boards. Useful

[Drinky]

I've been looking at this a lot myself as I'm planning to buy one soon. It depends on what your criteria are. For myself I want 16-20GB SSD rather than a hard disk, bluetooth, webcam, reasonable keyboard layout and will run Ubuntu comfortably (I expect 8.10 to make this easier than it is on Hardy right now).

In general, I think most people would compare the Asus Eees (I refer to 901 more than anything), the HP MiniNote, the Dell Inspiron Mini 9, the Acer Aspire one, the MSI Wind (or one of the re-badged Winds - the Advent 4211 and Medion Akoya Mini E1210. Same spec but cheaper).

A good round up is of the main players is here, (see the image on page 9 for a raw spec comparison) but in general it's much of a muchness. There are up and downs to each:

Eee PC - affordable, on average the best bang for buck machine, supports wireless N, 20GB SSD, small keyboard.
HP MiniNote - Top end specs for an ultra-portable, highest resolution (1280x800), nice keyboard, no webcam, Via processor generally slower and hotter than Atoms, expensive. Linux version runs SUSE Linux Desktop 10 - kinda old now. Dependant on availability of Via drivers in your distro for graphics support outside of the shipped distro.
Acer Aspire One - cheapest of the 5 here at around £200, great screen allegedly, Linux versions only have 512MB RAM and 8GB SSD, said to be great for the price as otherwise specs are similar to the others, mouse button either side of mousepad not below, no bluetooth, no 3G and unclear whether it will be available later. If it had bluetooth, forthcoming 3G, more memory, 20GB SSD and had the mouse buttons in the normal places and remained at the price of the Eee 901 or less, I would get this. If all of those things were true and it remained at it's existing price I would have bought it already.
Dell Inspiron Mini 9 - good specs once specced up, easy access to internals for hacking/modding, expensive for the specs compared to the others especially when you have to spec it up 16GB SSD, have to wait for Ubuntu, increased SSD size and 3G options in the UK at least, but only for a few weeks. If the SSD was the same size as the Eee 901 but the price was the same and the keyboard layout wasn't weird I would get this one.
MSI Wind/Advent 4211/Medion Akoya Mini E1210 - good specs, Advent and Medion are the same hardware but cheaper, good keyboard, no SSD option, heavier than most, Linux option due sooner or later, if you like Ubuntu requires at least Ubuntu 8.04.1, some use Sentelics mouse pad rather than Synaptics pad and no way of telling up front without powering it on and Windows Mouse Control Panel adds confusion with the Sentelics pad reporting itself as Synaptics pad. Sentelics pad doesn't support scrolling and can only turn off tap-to-click with updated driver from manufacturer. Make sure yours has bluetooth, some don't. Otherwise very good machines for the price (if you get Advent/Medion). I would get an Advent if they had an SSD option rather than HDD and I could guarantee my model had Synaptics touch pad and bluetooth.

All of this is pretty much subjective depending on what your requirements are. I haven't even compared battery life. Outside of the distro shipped on them, not all hardware is supported yet in the mainstream distros (wireless, suspend/resume and in some cases audio are the main culprits), but this is expected to improve. Myself, as I want an SSD, I'm looking at the Asus Eee 901. If I wanted a hard disk I would go for a re-badge of the MSI Wind. I saw the Advent for £270 the other day. The Dell loses for me on price due to the small disk and the base price of £300 for Windows XP. Ubuntu version is alleged to be around £269 when it ships but I want a bigger disk so I'll see what the price is when specced with the 16GB SSD and whether I can cope with the weird keyboard layout. If the Acer Aspire had a larger SSD, more RAM, bluetooth and 3G I wouldn't be having this conversation.

I think I lost the point of your post somewhere here... Where you get one of these from in Australia, I don't know, I just thought I would point out some options. Another option is that Lenovo are shaping up with the IdeaPad S10 which probably won't have a Linux version and is HD based.

[bas r]

You've really done your research well drinky!

I can give you a small review/pro's&cons of my experience with the Asus eeepc 900, and the MSI Wind/Advent 4211.

My mother in law (!!!) owns an Asus eeepc 900, and I have toyed around with it for a while.
Pro's:
It has a pretty good build quality, feel strong.
Seems to be pretty fast because of the flash disk.
Very good linux support. (She owns the Xandros version)
Good battery life.
Con's
Small storage (especially when you want to dual boot, in my case an unfortunate necessity)
Small annoying keyboard. I have slim fingers (history of piano playing), and still it was just too small for me.

I have an Advent 4211, and am the sys-admin for my girlfriends MSI Wind (both synaptic and dual boot Ubuntu/WinXP, because of our research specific programs than only run on Windows).
Pro's:
Big enough harddrive for dualbooting and some files.
Almost a full size keyboard, so more comfortable than the eeepc 900.
Very easy to unassemble for upgrading internals.
Con's
Seems to be more fragile than the eeepc, because of the used plastics.
Batery life no more than 2 hours.
Bigger than the eeepc, so less portable.
Drive access seems to be a bit slower.
Because of the wifi-card, which has no native linux drivers yet, installing linux can be a pain, however I've swapped both RealTek cards for Atheros one's that work out of the box. Installing Ubuntu is now as easy as this: http://bas-r.nl/?p=3. The harddrive is supposed to be affected by some bug, which is fixed by this: http://wiki.msiwind.net/index.php/Ubuntu_8.04_Tweaks#Fixing_Suspend_.26_Hard_Drive_Clicking

Overall, I think that if you need portability, no dualbooting, and you won't use the netbook for very long periods of time (less than 30 mins), go for the eeepc. On the other hand, if you want to have a little bit more comfortable netbook and need to be able to dualboot and you're prepared for a bit more work on the linux front, go for the MSI Wind (or clones).