ASUS Eee PC 1005HA: Refining the Netbook
by Jarred Walton on August 20, 2009 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
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.
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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.
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GeorgeH - Friday, August 21, 2009 - link
Thanks for those perspectives, they're much appreciated. I should probably just go buy one and judge for myself, but $200+ for another doorstop is a little steep. :)I guess for the time being I'll just stick with LGA775/AM2 for my low end needs.
JarredWalton - Thursday, August 20, 2009 - link
Honestly, employees get paid so much more than the computers they use (in all but a few situations) that there's no way I'd recommend "going green" by using Atom-based systems. Let's just estimate that computer-related tasks end up taking 10% more time on average (because multitasking is going to be more limited on such PCs). If you pay someone $20 per hour, you've now wasted $16 per day per employee.Even if it's only 5% and $8 per day, considering a 200W PC uses around $0.16 in electricity during an eight hour shift, cutting that down to an 8W netbook and spending a penny a day on power means that your net costs have still gone up $7.85 per day or more based on lost productivity.
Unless you're power constrained (i.e. in a data center), I think the whole green movement is just a bunch of marketing and political mumbo jumbo. Other "green" CPUs like Core 2 Duo would be far more effective at saving money over the course of the year.
Then again, the biggest source of lost money for companies is probably employees wasting time rather than waiting on their PCs. :-)
yyrkoon - Thursday, August 20, 2009 - link
"Dont expect to spend sub-$400 (not yet anyway) and still expect all the sweet things most commenters are asking for here"I did exactly that, 3 month ago. But it was not a netbook, it was a full blown laptop, even if low powered. $399, free shipping. But, I did add to the cost by having enough foresight to order a 4GB upgrade for it ( $50 ). It will definitely not win any speed records, but at least it *will* run Photoshop, play video without skipping a beat,and play game titles such as GTA San Andreas, or Titan Quest with no problems. All while using a maximum of 40W full load. Idle is only ~17W. Battery life is only ~2 hours, unless you turn it down to energy conservation mode, but that does not bother me one bit. As a matter of a fact, playing no games, and turning the power option down, I have had it last 8-9 hours, but I was not constantly using it like I often do while gaming.
Also, at the same time I was looking at an Asus C2D system, with 4 GB RAM, and one of the newer 512MB/1GB N120 nVidia dedicated graphics cards in it. It was not sub $400, but it was sub $800. This is something that I personally did not ever expect to see, and wished at the time - I had the cash to divert towards. Sadly, I could not :(
Anyhow, this all just lends to what I have been thinking ever since netbooks have been on the market. Which is: "Why even bother". You can get a decent laptop, for close to, or the same price, and get much better performance for your price. These laptop also may not be built like an M1 Abrams, but if you're careful with them, they will last a good long time.
qwertymac93 - Thursday, August 20, 2009 - link
im just waiting for amd's 45nm notebook chips, or at least their dual core neo's. the ones used by hp are custom, i want dual cores for everyone! is it too much to ask for a sempron 140 that uses 10watts or a 240 that uses 25?BigLan - Thursday, August 20, 2009 - link
It looks like the xvid and x264 pass 1 charts have got mixed up - I'd be really suprised in any of the laptops could only manage single digit xvid encoding.JarredWalton - Thursday, August 20, 2009 - link
The x264 encoding graphs are correct; there are no Xvid encoding results - I assume you mean the DivX results? x264 is much more complex than DivX, true, and the second pass in particular can take a very long time. However, the x264 encoding results are for a 720p video (graysky x264 HD Benchmark) while the DivX results are for a 1080p file (done in single-pass, quality-based, preset of 5). The settings and video source definitely have an impact on how quickly DivX encoding will run; a regular single-pass DVD encode is going to be about four or five times as fast in DivX. I'll add the video file information to the charts for clarification.Mithan - Thursday, August 20, 2009 - link
These netbooks are all fine and dandy, but they still have not made one I want.What do I want?
-1.6Ghz+ CPU
-11-12"
-Higher than 1024x600 resolution (1366x768?)
-Preferably an ION chipset, but I can still live with the 950.
There are a few 11-12" Netbooks on the market, but they all have that crappy 1.2Ghz Celeron or ZA520 chip or whatever it is called.
No, I dont want a 15" Laptop, even for the same price.
I guess the wait goes on...
Voldenuit - Friday, August 21, 2009 - link
What about CULV C2Ds and Athlon Neos? Ultraportable, ultrapowerful and ultraaffordable.qwertymac93 - Thursday, August 20, 2009 - link
ever heard of the samsung nc20? its via chip is actually a little faster then the atom n270 despite its low clock speed. the only drawback is its $100 more then most atom notebooks, but it does have a 12 inch screen!Visual - Thursday, August 20, 2009 - link
Well I am a bit more hard to satisfy than you then. the 950 is definitely not enough, i'd not say that even for the GMA 4500... but at least it would have been a step in the right direction.I also am ready to pay a bit more to have it convertible with a simple touchscreen... and pay even double if it were a really good touchscreen - at least 1024 pixels in vertical for adequate portrait operation, with multitouch, decent amount of pressure levels, both pen and finger sensitivity and ability to distinguish between the two.
Bonus points (and price) if it also distinguishes between the two sides of the pen or has a button or two on it, though buttons on the screen bezel can do the trick as well - they just need to be accessible in tablet mode. I think they are a must-have for emulation of hover functionality, where you're not forced to click and/or drag every time you touch the screen to move the "mouse" somewhere - anyone that has ever used a touchscreen probably understands this, so I really can't believe it's not a standard feature of every tablet by now.