The good: New slim design; clever hidden ports and connections; thin LED screen.

The bad: Near the upper end of the Netbook price scale; hidden ports and VGA dongle can take a little effort to access.

The bottom line: Asus reinvents its iconic Netbook with the slim, attractive Eee PC 1008HA, a bold experiment that largely works.

Read full review of the Asus Eee PC 1008HA »

By Dan Ackerman, CNET.com
Jun 1, 2009

One inescapable current Netbook trend is falling prices. With a perfectly serviceable S$699 (US$503.31) 10-inch system coming from Dell and subsidized Netbooks from mobile phone companies, the current standard of S$699 (US$503.31) for a nicely equipped minilaptop is starting to look like the maximum the market will bear. At S$798 (US$574.60), the 1008HA slips over the line, although the difference is more psychological than practical.

To get down to about 25.4mm thick, some engineering sleight-of-hand was required. The VGA output uses a dongle, the Ethernet jack is angled to fit into the thin body, there's a custom-molded (non-removable) battery, and an LED display shaves a few millimeters off the lid.

Editors' note : This review is based on tests done by our sister site CNET.com. As such, please note that there may be slight differences in the testing procedure and ratings system. For more information on the actual tests conducted on the product, please inquire directly at the site where the article was originally published. References made to some of other products in this review may not be available or applicable in Asia. Do check directly with your local distributor for details.

Design

With the minilaptop competition heating up, even Asus--the company that practically invented the Netbook--has to step up its game. While the internal components will be familiar, the new Eee PC 1008HA (also known called the Seashell) represents a radical design change from the boxy Eee PCs we've seen before, with a slim, tapered design that makes it one of the best-looking Netbooks we've come across.



The slim design of the 1008HA is a close cousin of the HP Mini 1000, but the former feels even thinner, thanks to a tapered front lip. Helping to shave a little size off from the system are space-saving features including a pin-size power adapter plug, an angled Ethernet jack, and a mini-VGA port that requires a small dongle to use--cleverly hidden in the bottom of the chassis. Rather than a potentially smaller SSD drive, there's a standard 160GB HDD inside, augmented by a free 10GB online data storage subscription for backing up files to a remote server.

We've seen the 1008HA in white, but our review unit was a glossy black that was prone to picking up fingerprints at an alarming rate.

The flat, wide keyboard, similar to what we saw on the recent Asus Eee PC 1000HE, is among the better Netbook keyboards we've used, and the full-size right shift key is one of those things you don't realize is very important until it goes missing. The touchpad is demarcated by a rectangle of raised dots on the wrist rest and works well, although we found ourselves going into the touchpad settings and jacking up the default pointer speed. Above the keyboard are two quick-access buttons for turning off the Wi-Fi antenna and disabling the touchpad (handy if you're using an external USB mouse).

Features

The 10.1-inch LED screen offers a 1,024 x 600 native resolution, which is standard for a Netbook. The backlit LED allows the lid to be very thin and also uses less power than a more traditional LCD screen. A system tray app cycles through some other resolutions (1,024 x 768, 800 x 600), but displays usually look best at their native resolution.



The 1008HA offers a fairly standard set of ports and connections, lacking only the ExpressCard slot we've seen on some high-end Netbooks. But bear in mind that all the ports are hidden behind hinged plastic doors, so to even plug in a USB key you will require to flip open one of them. The tiny, angled Ethernet jack is impressive--you should try plugging a cable in at least once to see how it works.

Tags: Netbook, Keyboard, data storage, Intel Corp., Eee PC 1008HA

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