Home > Consumer Reviews > ASUS Eee PC 900 16G (8.9" Display, Intel Mobile CPU, 1 GB RAM, 16 GB Solid State Drive, Linux) Pearl White

I have the 900HDB, which is exactly like this one, except it has a 160gb hard drive in place of the SSD drive. If you're not steadily beating on your netbook, I recommend the HDB version, as it can be easily upgraded. That being said, here's my review:

I started out with the Asus 1005HAB and returned it within 4 days. I was not impressed with the Atom N270's performance, nor was I fond of the "bumpy" trackpad. On a whim, I decided to try this lil guy out, as it was $50 cheaper, smaller, and had the Celeron 353 processor, which most people think is inferior to the Atom as far as performance is concerned. It's not.

In fact, clock-for-clock, the Celeron is more than twice as fast as the Atom. It takes the Atom, running at 1.6ghz, to even come close to the performance of the Celeron 353. Notice I said "come close" and not "equal". Even before the upgrades, which I will mention in a moment, this 901 was much more peppy and responsive. The downside, is you loose a bit of battery life compared to the Atom. I found that I lost about 20 minutes, but still see a 3 to 3.5 hour battery life, which is pretty darn good considering.

Now, onto the upgrades. I upgraded the RAM to 2GB via Patriot brand CAS 4 memory, and swapped the hard drive out to a Western Digital "Black" 320GB, 7200 RPM hard drive, and this thing absolutely flies!Both upgrades were easy as pie and took all of about 10 minutes to install. The hard drive and RAM are easily accessed behind a 4-screw cover on the bottom, whereas the 1005HAB could only be RAM upgraded without having to take apart the whole computer.

A lot of people hate the small keyboard(I think it's 82% IIRC) on this model, but I use it daily and although I do fat-finger a key every now and then, find it to be more than sufficient. I wouldn't want to use this for hours at a time, day to day, but for most activities its fine.

I highly recommend this lil guy and highly suggest the upgrades. Not only is it faster, but I now have double the hard drive space! And the upgrades cost me less than $150! If you decide to buy the model with the SSD, I still highly recommend upgrading the RAM. It makes quite a difference!

I got this so I could do more writing in more places. I was constrained to an eleven-pound Dell contraption before I bought this, so dilapidated and broken that using it was rather like pulling my own teeth out with tweezers.
This was more or less exactly what I wanted from a writing computer. Ultra-portable, reasonably fast, and cheap. The Linux operating system that came with it works surprisingly well. The only issue I take with it is the compatibility problem that the web browser and other programs occasionally run into. Sometimes, when running multiple tabs/windows and changing pages quickly, the browser freezes up completely, and I have to kill the process to continue surfing. Since the computer comes with 1 GB of onboard RAM, it shouldn't have a problem running as many instances of Firefox as I do.
But luckily, killing a process in Linux is painless. Unlike Windows, which asks if I'm SURE I want to kill this process, sometimes up to three times, and takes 5-10 minutes to do so, Linux ends it right away with no wait and does a pretty good job of garbage collecting, so the computer continues to run effectively (whereas Windows almost always requires a reboot to clear the RAM).
One other thing, the operating system runs into issues if the computer is powered on for an extended period of time (for example, when one is spending a week to finish a chapter for a second draft of their novel). I opened up my computer one day to discover that my task bar disappeared (the little bar at the bottom that displays which programs are running), and the Open Office document I was working on wouldn't work. I had to reboot to get it back. It was a very small wait time, though, as the operating starts up in under a minute, easy, and Open Office, bless its heart, managed to save th document I was working on (Which Microsoft Word has NEVER managed to do correctly, when I use it.)
But other than that, this computer is a little miracle. There's a slight learning curve when learning to type, but give it a week and you'll be typing just as fast as a full-sized one. This thing is going to change the history of computing. Laptops are AFFORDABLE now, who would have thought?
It's worth the money, no matter how you put it.

I had my computer for a total of 5 months, during which my computer was in the shop being fixed 3 of those months, on 4 separate occasions. I had an IMPOSSIBLE time contacting anyone at ASUS with any knowledge of what was wrong with my computer (during the final time to have it in the shop) and when they did FINALLY contact me (3 months later), I was told it was my fault the computer screen was broken, and that they refused to cover the damage under warranty unless I paid for all the repairs myself. I refused, and am now having my computer returned to me still broken. DO NOT BUY ANY PRODUCT FROM ASUS UNLESS YOU DON'T MIND GOING CRAZY, TRYING TO DEAL WITH HORRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE, AND DISHONEST WARRANTIES THAT WERE SUPPOSED TO COVER REPAIRS FOR A FULL YEAR, YET DO NOT EVEN COVER A FULL 6 MONTHS!!!!!! BUYER BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!! :(

As someone who does a lot of international travel I was very excited about this tiny computer that sounded like it had great features. I bought it in August, 2008: one year, one replacement, two times sending the replacement in for repairs, and many frustrating hours on the phone talking to a company that clearly doesn't care about its customers I still don't have a usable product.

I plan to never buy anything from Asus because of the experience I've had.

The first computer I got would randomly shut-down while I was using it. I noticed this problem within 30 days of purchase so Amazon.com quickly and easily replaced it for free. The replacement EEE PC I used while travelling and noticed it started to make a very distracting and unpleasant grinding sound after 10 minutes or so of use. I dealt with that during the three week trip by basically only using my computer for a few minutes at a time!

Then when I picked it up again months later before my next trip I decided it was too annoying to both to travel with it again, so I brought along my very big and heavy but still reliable normal laptop. When I got back I checked on my EEE PC netbook and it wouldn't even turn on.

I contacted Asus, they gave me an RMA # and I sent it in to be repaired. It came back very quickly in the mail: now it turned on but still made the same grinding sound. I was very upset about spending all the time and money to send it in and the issue wasn't addressed at all. Talking to the customer service rep they seemed to have no surprise or remorse at the fact that the they had failed to fix the problem with this a replacement computer itself. They just said they can give me an RMA # so I can send it in to have it repaired.

I came to the conclusion that the customer service people at the E PC netbook division are there to listen to people complain about this product that seems to have a lot of problems and then issue the customer an RMA # to send it in and have it repaired. They seem to provide no other service.

Anyway, after a lot of hesitation I decided to send it in again, why not? Well, they once again did not fix the problem. Now after many more hours on the phone trying to talk to managers as well, I am in the end told they can only give me an RMA # for me to send it in for repairs. They're finally offering to pay for shipping. But not only are they unwilling to give me a refund for a product that has simply not worked and they have not fixed, they seem to have no concern for the terrible experience I've had.

As I think someone else noted I think Asus simply treats netbook customers as 2nd class citizens. It's a cheap product probably with a small profit margin and they don't want to "invest" in customers service.

Again, as a result they've cost me a lot of money, time, and frustration and turned me off to the whole Asus company.

Other ASUS machines have corrected this flaw, but this one still has it.
I had to return this to Amazon because of what I consider a fatal flaw in the keyboard design. You'll notice that the up arrow key is just below the
enter key. On most keyboards, the shift key is below the enter key so if you miss, nothing bad happens. On this terrible machine, it was fairly often the case that when I tried for enter, I got the up arrow and it threw me into a different part of the document. It was unbearable. Avoid this machine if you value your sanity.