Home > Consumer Reviews > ASUS Eee PC 900 8.9-Inch Netbook (Intel Mobile Processor, 1 GB RAM, 20 GB Solid State Drive, Linux, 4 Cell Battery) Pearl White

I got my 900 a few days ago through Amazon/DataVision, and have had trouble keeping my hands of it since.

Pros: Very portable; Takes a quick 25 seconds to boot; Clear screen with good resolution; Decent battery life--I got 3 hours, 20 minutes out of a charge running it in 30-minute increments over two days with the screen at about 50% brightness, which is bright enough, Wi-Fi running full blast, and goofing around with a couple of applications at the same time (i.e. internet radio running and reading pdf documents); Linux is super-easy to use--just have to get used to using tabs--takes about thirty seconds; I have experienced excellent Wi-Fi signal strength all over the house and yard---never less than 93%--I have 2200 square feet, two-story with a medium sized yard; Excellent track pad! ASUS got the track pad right--you can zoom in and out of pictures, single- or double-click, drag and drop, scroll up and down web pages, and even go back and forward to web pages (like clicking the back or forward arrows in your internet browser).

Cons: Super-long recharge times---it takes four hours to recharge the battery. Not great if you need a quick charge in an airport while on a layover. That's my only con right now

Recommend: Buy one and have fun! If I had to do it again, I would. I totally recommend this device. Check out http://forum.eeeuser.com before making changes or updates out of the box. I updated the BIOS, which is identified in the user manual, but several users say not to. Who knows? After the BIOS update, the unit works just fine.

I love the idea of the Asus Eee PC. I've long wanted a nearly full-featured laptop in this size.

So after reading so many positive reviews for this I decided to go ahead and get one. Sadly, after a mere two days playing with it, I have an RMA to get a refund.

So what's my gripe with it?

Several things. Firstly, though this machine has "20GB" of storage, its 20GB is spanning two storage devices, it's not a single drive. The formatted capacity here is 3.74GB for the main faster SSD that the OS runs from, and 15GB for the slower secondary storage.

I purchased this version and installed XP Pro on it (since the XP version only comes with 12GB). 4GB is simply too small. After installing and updating XP, there was just no room left to install any apps I wanted, even after cleaning up the drive.

Secondly, the touch pad and buttons. The touch pad is WAY too sensitive and finicky, frankly it's just terrible. Even knowing this and trying to carefully tap click, it would way too often instead perform an extremely fast double click, and it would often repeatedly/consecutively do this. This gets extremely irritating very fast. Updating the touch pad driver had no effect for me.

As for the touch pad buttons, they are way too stiff. Perhaps they wear down after a lot of use, but I'd go insane before ever finding out.

Lastly, and the least excusable, is the battery life. For a device like this it's simply inexcusably awful. This is with the 5800mAh battery: with wireless OFF (FN + F2) and the screen dimmed down to its second most dark setting (which is really unacceptably dark for all but the very best-lit environments), this thing barely lasted over 2 hours. One more battery cycle to confirm this pathetic performance and I was ready to box it up and send it back.

I can forgive a lot of things regarding a tiny laptop, the small screen, small keyboards that are tricky to type on, etc. That is totally excusable.

But what a tiny laptop with a small screen, no optical drive, and a solid state hard drive should absolutely excel at is battery life, and this fails horribly. Less than 2.5hrs with a darkened screen and disabled wifi is just inexcusable.

If you're still really intent on a micro laptop, I still wouldn't recommend the 900, I'd highly recommend you just wait a few weeks for the Eee PC 901. It features the new highly efficient Intel Atom which uses far less energy and therefore improves battery life (hopefully Intel will develop a new efficient chipset to go along with it).

I still love the idea of an Eee PC and look forward to what Asus and other companies will have to offer over the coming year or so. If this had a minimum 8GB primary SSD, a far better touch pad and buttons, and the battery lasted 4+ hours with wifi enabled and the brightness halfway up, I'd love it.

I had the EEE PC 4G and once I found out the 20G 900 was coming out, back to the store it went!! If you are on the fence between this and the 4G 701 for $399, I would say the extra $150 for this one is money well spent as you get a bigger screen, which is awesome, allows you to view a web page without having to scroll left or right, 5X the storage, 20 Gigs compared to only 4 Gigs on the EEE PC 701 and twice the ram. Same form factor, and definitely is a head turner. Only caveat is Linux was just not for me, so I slapped on Windows XP very easily using the instructions provided in the user manual and the driver disk provided by ASUS.

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RM1TN6CXDYUDY I'm Christian and I'm reviewing the eeePC 900 (which I love!) for an online talk show, GoodDayJoplin.net

Hopefully the review is helpful to you! This laptop is an amazing little laptop that can do anything a regular computer can. Give it a try, you'll probably like it.

I have owned my 20G for a little over a month and could not be more happy with it. It is exactly as advertised. I ordered the 20G to get the larger drive, but have replaced the installed Linux (which worked great) with Windows XP in order to run some specialized programs. The installation was smooth due to supplied Asus instruction manual and drivers. I loaded the XP on the 4GB faster "C" drive, and all applications on the remaining 16GB "D" drive - works great, plenty of capacity.
The 8.9" display is bright and clear and about as small as these old eyes can tolerate. The keyboard is small, but very usable. The wi-fi connection abilty is amazing - more sensitive than my other laptops - even between apartment buildings. I am writing this review from a motel room using wi-fi and even after 2.5 hours of web surfing the unit is only barely warm on my bare knees - no heat problem, as far as I can tell. The battery life seems to run between 2.5 and 3 hours - which is OK, but not exceptional.
I have read many reviews comparing this computer unfavorably to the MSI Wind or the new Asus 901. True, the Wind (when it becomes available)will have a bigger screen and keyboard, but I prefer the 900's lighter weight and smaller footprint. Yes, the 901 has the new Atom processor and longer battery life - but it also costs $100 more...getting pretty pricey. The model 900 is great ultra small, ultra light weight, remarkabley powerful portable "kneetop" PC. It is just what Asus deisigned it to be and they did a fine job in both design and build quality. I am very pleased and would recommend this computer with no hesitation