Home > Consumer Reviews > ASUS Eee PC 901 8.9-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 20 GB Solid State Drive, 20 GB Eee Storage, Linux, 6 Cell Battery) Pearl White

I received my Asus Pearl White 901 Eee with Linux OS two Fridays ago, and when I opened the box, I was thrilled! It looked so cute and seemed so solid and as if I'd bought the perfect thing to take to the library for writing. However, when I looked at the keys on the keyboard, they were incredibly small. I double-checked the description on Amazon's website, and the keyboard was described as "95 percent the size of standard notebooks, making it more comfortable to type for larger hands". Not a chance that keyboard's 95% of a standard notebook. Then I checked the descriptions for the 1000 models with the 10" screens, and they had the same wording, despite the fact that the keyboards on the 10" models are considerably larger and consequently easier to get used to than on the 901. So that was a big strike and a real annoyance to me--Amazon needs to be careful about these cut and pasted descriptions, because they're very misleading.

I loved the Linux at first, and it did seem incredibly simple. After a day or so it began almost to seem too simple--and not particularly attractive. And the word processing system that came with the OS was a "kernel" system, with no spell check. Pretty useless for me. I took the machine to the guys at Columbia University Tech Support Center and they tried to install Open Office--they couldn't do it. These are some pretty smart tech guys, so I decided the machine was too much trouble/defective and returned it to Amazon within 6 days of receiving it. I'm assuming I'll get my full payment plus shipping back due to the misleading info about the keyboard.

I bought an Asus 1000HA instead, with Windows XP Operating system and 160 g. hard-drive. Have installed Office on it, and a beta of Windows 7. The keyboard is SO much bigger (by the way, I have tiny hands--I don't know how bigger people manage with the 901), and the machine is altogether a different and better beast.

I would definitely buy from Amazon again--provided I get my full refund--but only after double checking their descriptions against something I can actually see and touch.

This product is perfect, it is exactly what I suppose to receive based on the informations on the web.

Although SSD helps protect precious information from losing, I am more concerned with the size of the SSD.
However, ASUS offers free online storage for solution.

When I first got this eeepc, I was very impressed with it. Great portability, good boot time. I didn't worry about the small keyboard, though it is inconvenient when trying to type out an angry review...pardon any typos. The problem comes when trying to watch videos. The included mplayer is horrible. My videos are slow and skip like mad. At first I thought it was the laptop, but found out it was just a buggy player. "No problem, I thought...I can download a different one." I was referred by several people to VLC, and I thought it would be a simple act of downloading the program, double-clicking to install, and watching movies. No. FAR FROM IT. In order to install VLC, I had to go to an online chatroom to find a linux guru, who patiently coached me through the install process. I had to open up a text file, add some ftp addresses to it, run some crazy linux code to download packages, update something, then install....it was like a programming language! Finally, VLC worked for me....until this morning, when I saw that Firefox needed to be updated. So I clicked on update, and now VLC no longerworks. I went online to see that everyone else was having the same problem. I can't even reverse the update, like I can with Windows.

I've had it. I am now forced to purchase Windows XP and install it, if I can, JUST SO I CAN WATCH MOVIES ON MY EEEPC!!!!!

I thought I was getting the good deal...a bigger SSD with Linux...no problem when all I'll do is get online, check email, and watch movies right? WRONG!

Get the 16GB SSD with Windows XP, and buy a 4GB flash drive. Linux is worthless to people like me who don't know how to use it.

Out-of-the-box there seemed to be a lot of things wrong with the software and not hardware. This series of netbooks seem to utilize a stripped down version of Xandros Linux and I just wish that there was more time spent in researching and properly implementing that same operating system. You can read my detailed review here: http://blog.hydrasystemsllc.com/2009/02/19/a-review-of-the-asus-eee-pc-with-xandros-linux-pre-installed/