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

Even though my Dell 600m is supposed to be "lightweight" at 5 pounds, taking it anywhere was a pain. With other items along, that bag became a real presence and a burden. So it often didn't travel with me.

Not so this little guy. It even comes along on an evening out. I have actually had to check my bag to be sure it is there.

I returned my first 900 20G because the 'E' key was not as responsive and needed a stronger tap. Many errors resulted. Even then I hated sending it back because I was so enjoying it. Quick and easy replacement process with DataViz.

The pros: Portability #1. Also that Linux is so clean and pure. I had never used Linux and was a little worried about adapting to it (I am, er, older), but it is straight forward. I love that it powers down in about 3 or 4 seconds, whereas the 600m takes forever. Similarly it powers up much faster than the 600m. Happy to live without all the 'bloatware' and virus risks. Screen is bright, large enough for my needs. Excellent Internet hot spot reception.

The cons: You know by now the keyboard is small. Battery life is this side of 3 hours (haven't run this one down yet). And it gets warm. I would add that Linux has the downside of not being compatible with Windows based programs. There are a couple things I use (e.g.Quicken) that I'd run also on my laptop. Tough call here. I debated, chose the 20G, then around the replacement/return, debated again and still went with the 20G. I use a Treo for my very mobile needs (recipes, lists, contacts, scheduling, etc) and keep all that backed up on the desktop. I ALWAYS have the Treo with me, so I don't need all that on the mobile Eeee. I will back up Quicken elsewhere. I can opt to install Windows or Windows lite if this incompatibility bothers me later. For now I am liking Linux.

I have run into one insurmountable compatibility problem around a mapping project. A solution workable with Treo Palm OS, Eee Linux, desktop Windows and my GPS unit appears beyond my capabilities. I can live with that, same as with the lack of Quicken backup.

Last, why not the 901? Well, the Atom is unproven, and I am cynical and wary of first generation efforts. Also the 901 weight is inching up there a bit. Why not the Wind? Processor and weight again - to me every ounce matters. And the Wind weight appears to be with the 3 cell battery.

I'm traveling this weekend and again for 3 weeks in September. No question the Eee is going along. I will have my files, photos, music, email, Skype and Internet all right there, trouble free, for under 2 pounds. Wonderful!

I wish that I could give 4.5 stars rating, with the condition that EEE PC 900 is used as a secondary computer. And I have used my wife's MBA for quite a while so I will compare the two. (Yes it's unfair but interesting, right?)

Good things first. I ordered 900 with a clear mind that it's going to be my secondary notebook computer and my usage is email, web browsing, remote connect and a few other things. I had a two-year old Dell D620 which still works fine. The 900 is light, with slightly better battery life (3+ hours), fast booting, extremely fast shutdown, inexpensive, and with camera builtin (good for video conferences on a trip). After the 900 arrives, it's just what I expected.

Now bad things first, most of which I already knew when I ordered the 900. First the keyboard is small. I am typing this review with 900. I guess I would type 20-30% faster with my D620 (or a desktop). Moreover, I pay more attention to my typing and that affects my writing/thinking a little bit. Not a big deal though. Most time I will write on my D620. On a trip or a working day full of meetings, fast booting and fast shutdown are more important than typing speed. And hopefully I can improve my typing on the 900 over time.

The battery life could be better. I wished that a single charge would be good for a whole day (5-6 working hours). This one is about 3-4 hours, so I will still need to take the power adapter with me and search (and sometimes compete) for a power outlet. The EEE PC 901 will do it, but I ordered 900 before I knew 901 would be coming (and don't want the trouble to return this fine looking 900).

It is warm and sometimes can be called hot. When the fan is turned on, there is a whipping sound. Not terrible at all but definitely noticeable. But in that measure it's better than the D620 and the MBA. The D620's fan is loud and non-stopping. The MBA can be very hot and the fan can spin crazily, much louder than the 900. (But both the 900 and the MBA are fine in a cool room.)

Now more comparison between the 900 and the MBA (Macbook Air, 13" display). First the comparison is unfair because the MBA is priced at $1800 and the 900 $550; please keep that in mind. The MBA works fine as either the primary or secondary computer. The keyboard is full size and first class quality. Typing on it is no different from a large notebook or a desktop. Actually, the MBA is thin and light but NOT small in area -- it is a full "area" notebook computer. If the price is not an issue and one wants just one notebook, MBA is the choice (and it's much better than 12" sub-notebooks from other vendors).

The 900 is thick, twice the thickness of the MBA and slight more than that of the D620 (the D620 has 14" display). A strange thing is that when holding the MBA and the 900, the MBA feels the same weight as the 900 but the actual weights are 3lbs vs 2lbs. I am not sure why, but possibly because of how they can be held. Holding the 900 at the battery compartment is the most comfortable. I also feel 900 has at least the same volume than MBA. Is the thickness a bad thing or not? Hard to say. When I put them in bags both are just fine.

Overall, I think 900 is almost perfect as a secondary computer (and perfect with 5-6 batter time). However, I won't use it as a primary computer. Keyboard and display are two reasons. Another reason is software. I have installed many software on the D620; I can do that because of its large hard drive and memory. And the D620 runs windows XP. I won't install Windows XP on the 900 -- that will slow it down and defeat the purpose of having fast booting and shutdown times.

Asus created a hit with these machines for a very simple reason - it is what a lot of people want and need in a small, simple computer. As a writer, I have been looking for something like this for years, even trying to use a Dell Axim 51 PDA and folding keyboard (way too awkward - long life battery wouldn't work with keyboard, etc.). I knew that a small, simple computer could be done far more cheaply than was currently being offered, and that a lot of people wanted it.

The subsequent overwhelming success of "netbooks" or "net tops" has proven Asus right and all the industry pundits not only wrong, but totally out of touch with their customers. (Not unusual for marketing in a captive industry.)

I waited an entire year while Asus and others worked out the bugs in these designs, did my research, and thought I was getting a good deal. I was wrong.

While I was reasonably happy with the machine at first (when it was still working), I quickly became aware of serious faults. The touchpad was way too sensitive and would frequently launch applications when I was simply trying to move the cursor. I tried adjusting the pad sensitivity but that didn't help much. I eventually went to an outboard mouse.

I was happy to have Linux instead of Windows, but soon became annoyed that the particular mix Asus was using was awkward and tied me into using only the software they provided (unless I wanted to install another Linux distro - or dig into the command line). The interface was laid out oddly and included a bunch of children's junk I didn't want or need and couldn't get rid of.

Even with those problems I was reasonably happy with the machine. I found the screen usable (far bigger than the Axim PDA), and the keyboard not too difficult to type on (I am no speed typist). And while the instructions for moving files in the (small, inadequate) manual had errors, I was able to find out the proper information online and in Linux books.

More problems began to crop up. It didn't like USB devices much, and tended to lock up when I tried to use any. I tried upgrading the OS on the Asus site, and that only caused more trouble. The machine began to hang on bootup, and the battery began to fail to hold a charge when the machine was off.

When the problems became so severe that I could not get the machine to boot up at all, I tried to contact Asus to RMA it for a working machine. I have sat on the phone for up to 45 minutes, only to be greeted by a person telling me there were no people to help me, and could they call back. Right. I'm going to take time off from work to wait around until they decide to help me.

Then I tried their online help. I tried looking up the problem in their online FAQ and database, and got the message that "their server was busy, please try again later." Okay, things can happen, so I tried to email their techs, and found that the only way I could do that was to "join the community" by filling out a long online form that asked for all kinds of personal information (marketing crap) which had nothing to do with my computer or its problem. That is not only stupid, it is illegal (FTC, Title 16 part 700.7).

At this point, I was fed up. I can understand that a few lemons get out despite the best quality control. I can understand a reasonable amount of delay in getting help exchanging the machine for one that works. But Asus simply puts up way too many barriers to good customer service in this matter, and they have created one very unhappy (and vocal) EX-customer. For a $[...] item, I would just write it off. For a $[...] item, this is completely unacceptable, and I intend to take my complaint further.

I looked around and found that MSI had a barebone desktop version of their netbook, and I bought it (for HALF the price of the 20g, I might add). I have had no such problems with it. Just for chuckles, I looked at the MSI online trouble reporting and it was far easier and less invasive than Asus. Asus has been a very good marketer for MSI in this case.

I am extremely disappointed in Asus. I have had great luck in the past with their motherboards, drives, cards, and support for same. I understand from articles online that the laptops go through a different customer service process than their computer components, and that it is riddled with serious problems. Roger that!

I will no longer recommend Asus products, and will give my business to companies like MSI, who try harder to do things right. The only power I have as an individual consumer is to vote with my hard-earned cash. I am very patient, but I do have my limits, and my brand loyalty is extremely hard to win back once lost. I don't like getting burned or wasting my valuable time. Bad job, Asus.


UPDATE: July 2009

Well, after 6 months of trying, I am still no further along on the path to having a working 20g. I will regale you with the gory details:

Using a search engine, I was able to drill into the Asus web site and find a place to report laptop trouble directly. I filled out the (this time) reasonable form and was assigned a case number and given phone numbers to call (not toll free, by the way).

I called one of the numbers and got a real live human in just 90 seconds. I began to get hopeful. When I gave my case number, there was silence for a bit, then I was asked if my laptop was and Eee product. As it was, I was informed that I was at the wrong Customer Service (confirming that Eee products are not handled by regular Asus CS), and would have to call the toll free number on my machine. The person was very apologetic and I sensed a touch of familiar disappointment in his voice. I think he really wanted to help me, and was frustrated that he couldn't. This is the kind of service I had come to expect from Asus in the past.

I tried, yet again, to reach someone at the other number, and after 8 minutes of waiting, was speaking to a person. Not a native English speaker by any means, but I could understand her with some effort. She could not find my case number and had no idea what it was, so she asked for the serial number of the machine. I gave it to her, but she could find no record of it. (Odd, considering they had built it, shipped it, invoiced it, been paid for it, and even paid me a rebate based on that number.) When I told her how long I had been trying to get help, she asked why. I told her that it had taken me that long (6 months at this point) to reach someone. Dead silence on her end.

After having me try several times to do all the reboot and reset procedures I had already done many times before I even called, she finally gave up and took my phone number, promising a call in 24 hours. I gave her information about my work schedule so they could reach me at home, and waited.

A week later (on a Sunday) I got a call from another woman who wanted all the same information and procedures done all over again. At this point, I stated I had already done all that, and that what I needed was an RMA number to ship it in and get it repaired. I was fairly certain it was a hardware problem, and no amount of rebooting would help.

She agreed and gave me an RMA number. She asked for my email to send instructions for returning the machine and told me I would get and email in about 20 minutes. That was three weeks ago today, and guess what? No email, and no call about my email bouncing and did they maybe have the address wrong.

This has been going on for so long that I am beyond anger into laughter. Customer service this bad is the stuff of comedy routines. Contrast this with the nearly immediate replacement of a web cam I got from HDE, a much smaller firm (who obvious cares about its customers, UNLIKE Asus). Customer service this bad is beyond incompetence and into deliberate malevolence. I am now going to turn this situation over to any and all legal processes and agencies, and complain to all the customer rights groups. I am even considering legal action against Asus. I would love to drag them all the way into rural Oregon small claims court, just for the aggravation of costing them 10 times the money they have stolen from me. (And I do consider it theft/fraud at this point. They have violated at least two federal laws.) I estimate that, including my time in dealing with this, my non-working 20g has now cost me nearly one thousand dollars. Oh, and my warranty is almost up, as if that means anything with these people.

I have also confirmed reports on the Net that Eee buyers are considered second-class citizens by Asus.

I'm not happy. Asus has taken a loyal customer and turned them into a bitter enemy. How stupid is that? Not only that, aside from my reviews here, I advise a non-trivial number of other people on technology - Asus have lost my vote of confidence forever, and I will be VERY vocal about it. Brilliant marketing strategy.

Avoid Asus products like the plague.


UPDATE August 2009:

Got a Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu Hardy Heron, and it blows the Asus away, even when it worked right. I should have just waited. At this point, I don't know if I will waste any more of my time on the Asus or not. Not much likelihood of their honoring the warranty. ON the other hand, that's why they continue to get away with this kind of garbage.

Don't read bad reviews (one star ones), are from people with bad skills in computers.

THE GOOD:
> Little machine that you can put even under your long coat
> Low power consuption (my powerful desktop pc is like a dragon)
[note: imagine a world with 34 Watts computers, this will cause more inexpensive energy prices, low oil prices, less CO2 = less hurricanes and inundations, my powerful desktop pc consumes 350 Watts. Now my energy bill goes down using the eee pc, and I can leave it downloading stuff 24 hours]
> High screen resolution with small pixels (1024 x 600 8.9'')
> Browse web pages without need the horizontal scrolling (due to 1024px)
> Easy to handle with your hands (very confortable at the pivot)
> Web cam and microphone integrated
> Jacks for your earphones and microphone
> VGA output
> 3 USB ports, 1 SD/MMC card port, 1 ethernet port
> Wifi integrated
> You can upgrade it (ram, etc.I buy a touch screen for this little machine)
[note: there are unused/used internals usb ports. if you know about electronics (im engineer) you can use it to put some internal upgrades and/or use usbhubs, look for instructions on the web]
> Perfect and easy to read instrucctions
> You can install windows xp using a usb memory or a sd card (instructions in the web), even with ubuntu and compiz ;-), or if you are not so skilled in computers, using a usb-dvd unit
> Video hardware supports 3D applications (not a nVidia card but works)
> very light (two pounds)

THE BAD:
> Heatsinks are below of the keyboard and the pad (you can feel the heat), video processor and bridge chips consumes a lot of power = HEAT
> You need like a week to use the keyboard like a pro (of course, is little)
> Battery life 2.5 hours only (I buy this and not the eee 901 since I don't care about battery life because *I use it at home* and the celeron processor is faster than the atom ). Anyway you can find a 10400mAH battery for 40 dollars (7 hours of batery life!)
[note: I'm not totally sure about performance vs atom, since some benchmarks said that the 901 is faster, and others said that the celeron is faster than the atom, but then WHY THEY CHANGE BACK TO THE CELERON M with the avanced models like eee pc 904HD ? ]
> Pads buttons fells cheapee
> No caps led diodes indicators (you need to install a app like firstcap in xp) and for linux there is one in the dvd (included)
> No integrated bluetooth (the eee pc 901 have it)
> No DVD burner/reader (of course, there is no space to put one)

RECOMENDATIONS:
> Change the desktop colors to 16 bits (increase perfomance a little, battery life a little too, and reduce heat)
> Reduce the screen brightness
> Turn off virtual memory (with 1GB of RAM, it is not necesary)
> Turn off unnecesary windows services (annoying and memory eaters)
> Delete all windows unnecesary files (like drivers that you will never need, like virtual memory, they use a lot of hard disk space)
> Buy a inexpensive usb bluetooth device if you need it (you can find it at amazon, they are very tiny *for laptops*)
> Buy the 10400mAH battery if you need more battery life (more money *40* but it worth)
> Install both, windows xp and linux http://www.eeebuntu.org/, with compiz too for 3d desktop stuff
> Buy a 32 GB SD card or extra storage if you need it (not necesary at all) = more money
> Get and install the touch screen (optional but trekkies like me love it) = more money too
> Buy a slim usb dvd-rw, usb powered (more bucks, not necesary at all)
> Asus are launching advanced eee pcs every month, SO YOU CAN REPENT OF WASTE YOUR MONEY and not wait a little bit. VERY BAD TACTIC MARKET. Anyway THIS IS THE MOST SUPPORTED EEE PC now, you can find a lot of things from fans to touch screens and internal upgrades.

OVERALL 4.8 OF 5

THIS LITTLE NOTEBOOK, IT IS A ULTRAPORTABLE DEVICE ! some people expect 120GB or hard disk, 2GB of ram, 256MB of video memory, etc. If this is your desire, buy a laptop with thats features, not this one.
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EXTRA: [How to see HD 720p hardly encoded video without frameskipping]
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) = crap, and in this era HD videos are more and more common. You will realize, that you actually can't play high definition videos with the wife of the Atom processor, the Intel Graphics Media "Accelerator" (GMA). Frame skipping and audio cuts, will be totally a mess.
Can be frustrating, but there is a solution:
> Deactivate deblocking filter on all the codecs that support it (H.264/MPEG-4 AVC)
How ?
Install klite codec pack, and at the end of the setup, choose deactivate deblocking. If you use build-in codecs player programs such GOMPlayer, there are options for quit deblocking filters. This way you can play even 720p hardly encoded videos, you will see some blocks here and there, but no frame skipping or audio cuts.
Enjoy your hardware.

This is a wonderful little laptop. (Kneetop?) Everyone who sees it wants one but I think Asus has done everyone a a major disservice with their over-simplified toy Linux installation. All you get are the screens you see in the product description and there's no real desktop. And there's only a handful of programs available for this particular unit from the Asus repository. Yes, there's a real desktop available but you'll have to open a Terminal window and dig around in the files to make this happen. (Remember DOS? It's a lot like that.) There's lots of instructions out there on how to do this. Some instructions work. Some just return arcane error messages. My advice--if you want this box to run any really useful form of Linux, be prepared to install your own favorite flavor. And be prepared to spend some time getting everything to work, like the microphone and the camera. Ubuntu might be the easiest but like everything in the Linux world, there's a lot of different choices, some better than others.