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 purchased this gadget with high hopes. I knew it was a toy but hoped for it to be a functional toy. After spending some time with the eee pc 900 I found that there are some serious hardware flaws.

The first hardware flaw is the wifi-card (Atheros 5700) and the on-board support (buggy to say the least). Its a bad thing when entire forums have been created on other sites to attempt and support the connectivity issues. Consider that the chipset it uses is not properly supported by the Open Source community and you will need to modify code on the machine right out of the box to enable proper SSID handling.

The second hardware flaw stems from battery power usage. After charging the battery the first time I was able to use the laptop on battery power for 45 minutes before it died. After the initial charge and drain I found that I was able to use the laptop for 35 minutes on a fresh charge.
On the third day of ownership I charged the battery and then turned the laptop off completely (after disconnecting the power supply). I returned two hours later to find the battery drained and was unable to turn the laptop on without connecting the power supply.

The deal breaker for me and what I consider to be the fatal hardware flaw is the write speed of the SSD. Here are the Stats:

Sequential read: 30.0MB/s
Reading 512KB files: 31.0MB/s
Reading 4KB files: 9.4MB/s

Sequential write: 7.6MB/s
Writing 512KB files: 1.9MB/s
Writing 4KB fiels: 0.03MB/s

As you can see the write speed is horrible.

I recommend not buying this over-hyped mess.

All those who say you cannot use XP are silly. I have XP pro loaded on the 20GB version (used an external CD drive to load it) used the provided instructions worked great. I loaded ALL OF MY OTHER programs on to the larger C drive (16GB) such as open office (great and free by the way!), firefox, thunderbird, skype (and the built in mic and speakers and camera work great for this!) etc etc. It all works fabulously. I will admit the processing gets slow when not plugged in and I have not figured out how to change this. The battery life is ok (2.5-3 hours), but you can but high capacity batteries for a bit more (they are just ugly and weight more than the AC adapter). I also upgraded to 2GB of ram (for @$40) and that was as easy as can be.

This is a great travel computer. No it is not a powerhouse, no it is not as slick as a Sony (but is is more than $2,000 less than one) and yes it functions MUCH MUCH better than a cheap, but heavy laptop trying to run any version of Vista (which basically just sucks).

Now of course I am waiting to see if and when the 901 and the 1000H come out....since this was so inexpensive I can afford another one!

This machine has already met my expectations even though I've only had it for 2 days. The build is good quality, certainly doesn't look or feel cheap. The keyboard is rigid and works very well. I use a mini 87-key keyboard as my main keyboard for my desktop PC so there was barely any transitioning to do and typing is quick and virtually error free. Only slight problem I have is the size of the right shift key. That needs a bit of adjusting to, otherwise all the keys are positioned and sized correctly, and the key movement is definite.

The screen is excellent, crisp and clear. If you use this machine indoors the screen brightness is perfect, no complaints. I haven't used it outdoors so can't comment. The viewing angle is really good, much better than my other bigger 14" laptop.

There is no noise, haven't heard the fan power up at all, and for the African climate that's very good. The touchpad works extremely well - even more precise than my other laptop, and the smart functions are a bonus. The left pad button is a bit stiff, no problems with the right one. I quickly learnt that one has to depress the buttons from the top and not from the side or an angle. They feel stiffer if you don't depress them directly from above.

The 900 is ideally sized. It hardly takes any room on your desk and the screen can be viewed from up to a metre and a half away. The network and internet connections are very easy to setup.

Still a bit uncomfortable about Linux, probably because I don't have any previous experience with using the terminal. However I am warming to using it. The Synaptic package manager works very well and provides additional applications within a few click's reach. I'm going to give Linux a chance as it is very responsive and will continue to be developed.
One piece of advice - don't try to install Kicker without first reading up on it on the various forums. I tried to install Kicker and the extended Ksmserver desktop and my File Manager and Network icons disappeared rendering my machine worthless. However I rebooted and pressed F9 a few times to bring up the 900's built-in recovery system. Everything was restored back to normal, although had to re-install Wine, so that was resolved quite painlessly. Linux beginners must read up about any desktop replacements before installing them, find out from other users' experiences.

Overall, very happy. No reservations about the hardware, webcam works fine, battery lasts a long time, screen and smartpad are good. Just have to adjust to Linux, but have come a fair way in just 2 days, so looks promising.

Update for this review:
My purpose for this machine is Bible study and was a bit worried when the E-Sword modules didn't install, however one can install GnomeSword from the Synaptic Package Manager and one can update it with Bible, Commentary, and Dictionary modules from within the program. I installed the IceWM start menu (web address is wiki dot eeeuser dot com slash howto:useicewm) which looks like the XP start menu and my friend edited the Menu using VI (can use nano or the text pad) to create a program group and a link, making running GnomeSword very easy. The application is saved on the system as gnomesword2. Gnomesword meets all my study needs, so no need for E-Sword. I also installed Bible Reference Exporter (available at theChristadelphians dot org) and run that using Wine. The Linux Eee 900 now meets all my requirements.

UPDATE - Having used it for some time now, I find the eee 900 to be really good, the machine is reliable. What isn't good is the Linux OS. To add support for some devices you have to first find the solution online, this takes many hours. Then you tinker with the hard coding of the system files. If you get it wrong and reboot, the machine is bricked and you have to resort to reformatting the drive and restoring the system to factory defaults, ie. all your data is lost, all settings, programs etc. all gone. After three times, my system doesn't seem to be the original and support for some packages has vanished.
My conclusion is that Linux is not ready for the commercial bigtime. It's still in major development. People who have the time and don't mind the occassional big setbacks are welcome to use Linux, but for everyone else - save yourself from agonising frustration. Windows is much, much better.

I bought the Linux version and after playing with it for a little while I booted from an external floppy drive with a Windows 98 boot disk, deltreed the Linux partitions, rebooted and fdisked and formatted the 4 GB C: drive and then used an external DVD drive to install XP Pro using an nLite custom slimmed down version. I also installed Office 2003. For $43 I bought a 2 GB RAM stick and replaced the 1 GB that came with it. I also bought a 16 GB SD card for $45 online to give additional storage.

Comments from observers: "Is that a toy computer?" No...it is full-featured and lots of power. I like the Asus 900 EEE weight factor as my primary laptop is a Dell Precision M6300 that is huge. My wishes for improvement: WiMax and Bluetooth so I'll probably get the new versions and this one may get passed on to a relative.
The lack of a CD drive is not critical here to me, but some may find it limiting. External DVD drives are cheap though. The onboard Atheros wireless chip is good in the room the router is in, but range is less or even impossible through walls that many larger laptop wifi chips would connect. I have a cheap external USB wifi thumb device that I use when the router range is beyond the internal chip. Three USB ports are nice...I have a USB mouse, but would prefer Bluetooth capability to save even that port use.
All in all I think most people will find it a great ultra portable as long as they realize battery life is less than three hours (which is about like most regular laptops). There are heavier third-party batteries that can deliver much longer usage and I would never buy the standard 4-cell battery at the prices I have seen. The newer models promise much greater battery life and bigger SSD capacity so Asus has a winner indeed. Get ultra portables down to VCR prices in five or less years and we'll have one in every classroom student's hands in America. That's a multi-billion dollar market even at $100 a unit.

I'd debated about Asus computers for a year. Then I heard rumblings and rumors about the 9" screen and that sealed the deal.
I've had the computer for a month. It's not Windows, similar but not the same. For surfing the web, e-mailing, Open office (word type documents) it is great. It boots up in 10-15 seconds and shuts down as fast. I take this thing everywhere. It has great range for wireless internet, I use it in parking lots all over the place. The price is close to low range laptops with all the expected features (dvd player, bigger hard drives, etc), but we've got one of those, plus a desk top.

This is my take everywhere computer and I'm very happy with it.