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 just love this little computer. I typically use it for tabletop gaming, and it is the perfect size to display the information that I need, while not obscuring my vision around it. And, compared to my other laptop (15" screen) this computer is actually portable. I can really take it anywhere. I took it with me when I got pulled into jury duty, and while I was there I found it easy to use my Netbeans IDE to write java code. The screen resolution is good, but things can still get a little cramped. When I got to jury duty I bee-lined straight for a power plug, thinking that I would need to keep this laptop charged... Over 2 hours later I realized that there was no power coming from the plug, but my little eee still had 65% battery left. I was impressed! The battery life is amazing. (note: I was not using sound or the wireless connection)

I did end up unlocking the desktop mode of the OS, so that it would run a bit more like a traditional computer. I needed too many extra programs, and it was too much work getting them to display in the normal eee interface.

I would actually rate this product just under 5 stars, as there has been one drawback. The touchpad on my computer does not work well - it is responsive only half the time, and I find that the cursor jumps around quite a bit. This was easily solved by getting a tiny usb mouse, which works great. Perhaps there is just something wrong with my touchpad?

Anyway, I highly recommend getting an eee if you need portability - it is great!

I bought the PC through Amazon, but they delegated shipment through Beach Camera. The unit arrived with a pretty nasty screen problem - The glass looks like it's covered with dust, but on the *inside*. It's as if they dipped the screen too many times in the anti-glare solution at the factory.
Needless to say, a cloudy screen is a fairly major problem when that screen is only 8.9" in size.
Bad units happen, and I was just one of the unlucky .1% this time around. It's not like I couldn't return the merchandise for a full refund, right?
I emailed Beach Camera, and was directed to their voice support line. I called them and was told, in no uncertain terms, that they did not accept PC returns under any circumstances. I hadn't realized this at the time of purchase since I'd ordered through Amazon, not the Beach Camera site.
I filed a complaint with Amazon, but was ultimately told that the case had been "closed" because notification of the Beach Camera non-return policy was made clear during the checkout process. I couldn't recall seeing this policy while checking out, and Amazon support was unable to tell me where it appeared in the process.
So now I'm stuck dealing with the manufacturer, ASUS. I've filed an RMA with them, so I'll see where that goes, but I'm not optimistic.
I'm certainly not going to buy anything from Beach Camera again (who wants to buy something online that they can't return if there is a problem?) and Amazon won't be the first Web site I shop at anymore.

The sad thing is that I've had really good dealings with Amazon over the years, including a similar dispute with one of their Z-shop dealers (another "we won't take back a defective product" issue). In the last case, Amazon settled the complaint - correctly - in my favor.

As far as the ASUS 901 device itself goes, discounting the bad screen, it's a really great gadget. It's a little heavier and bulkier than the 900s I looked at in the local retail stores (I couldn't find 901s for sale in my neck of the woods), but also more professional looking.
The installed Linux distro isn't that bad. The desktop is very functional and pretty intuitive for beginners.
The keyboard is cramped, so touch typing won't be easy, but it's pretty usable. Given the space alloted to the keys, it's the best you could expect.
The external speakers are okay, as is the built-in camera.
It's a little more sluggish than I would have expected from an Atom-based machine with a solid state drive, but not too bad. It runs YouTube videos fairly well, with only a hitch here and there. It does all other, less-demanding functions (such as Web browsing, mp3 and podcast playing, email, etc.) fine.
All in all, if the screen wasn't obscured, I'd be a very happy customer.

Update (10/09/2008)

I received a call from a representative of Beach Camera, and he said that he was willing to accept a return on the PC if ASUS would not take it back under warranty. ASUS is willing to take the unit back for repair, however, so hopefully the problem with the screen will be rectified.
I still disagree with Beach Camera's "no returns" policy, and think that Amazon should make such restrictions crystal clear during check out, but I will give Beach Camera credit for following up and being willing to go the extra mile to satisfy a customer.

I've been using a 901 for a month and, after some tweaking, I'm very happy with it. It's easy to carry around and the battery life is great (around 4.5 hours with wifi).

Keyboard - They keyboard is the major drawback of the 70x/90x series of eee pc's mainly because of its size but partially because it flexes when you type. Occasionally the flexing results in a ddouble character being typed. However there are two things you can do to improve the keyboard. Turn on key debounce detection to prevent repeated character strokes. Insert 10 - 12 layers of aluminum foil under the keyboard to shore it up (I'm not kidding, this works very well). Info on both changes can be found on eeeuser.com's forums. One thing you can't really change is the keyboard layout which is is somewhat modified from a standard keyboard to get everything to fit. The right-shift key isn't next to the "/?" key as the up-arrow gets in the way. This doesn't really bother me as I tend to only use the left-shift with my quasi-touch-typing. The change which frequently screws me up is that the "`~" key is up on the top row of keys between Esc and F1. This leaves the "1" key as the first key on the numeric row, shifting all the number keys left by one position with respect to the rest of the keyboard. I'm slowly getting used to this but I still type "@" when I really mean "!". In general, the 10" netbooks have bigger/better keyboards. The Aspire One keyboard (which I've tried) is quite easy to type on and feels solid.

Trackpad - The trackpad is a decent size considering the overall size of the laptop. The multi-touch works nicely for scrolling. The buttons are below the trackpad which I prefer to having buttons on the left and right like the Aspire one. I tend to use tap-to-click so I mainly end up just using the right button.

SSD - One thing I didn't realize when I bought the 901 was that the 20GB solid state drive is actually a 4GB fast drive and a 16GB slower drive. The fast drive is used by the operating system leaving the slower drive for your data (music, movies, docs etc....). This is a price control measure as 20GB of high-speed SLC flash would be expensive...and I'd rather have 4GB of it than none at all. Faster flash modules are being sold by third-parties for eee pc's for under $100 and the price are coming down quickly.

OS - The default Xandros GNU/Linux OS is fast to boot and gives you ready access to the web, mail, music, videos, office editing. However, if you want to install additional programs you're limited to those available via Asus's free download service. New software you install resides on the slower 16GB SSD. One neat trick Asus did was to use a union file system that allows modifications to be made on top of a read-only version of the operating system. If anything goes wrong, it is easy to blast the machine back to the original OS as it shipped from the factory. One downside, is that the read-only OS takes 90% of the fast SSD. As updates are installed, the new files don't actually replace the old ones and more space is gobbled up. After using the default OS for a couple of weeks I installed Ubuntu-eee (one of several Ubuntu Linux distributions tweaked for the eee) and I've been much happier. While the factory restore option is now gone, I have 1GB free space on the fast SSD for additional programs. I can also install pretty much any software package available for Ubuntu rather than just those allowed from Asus (which tend to be out of date).

Screen - The screen is reasonably bright. The resolution is good enough for viewing most web pages. Videos play back full-screen nicely.

Camera - I never use it. But it's nice to know that it's a whole megapixel better than the 0.3 megapixel cameras.

Other - One nice perk to owning an eee is there is an active community of eee users. eeeuser.com contains lots of good information about using, troubleshooting, and modifying the eee.

It took me a while before deciding exactly what Netbook to purchase. I did some research and compared a few models and went with this one (although I hear a new model 901 is coming out soon, so I'd wait for that one if I was you).

To put it simply, using this Eee PC is the first time I've ever enjoyed using a laptop. I bought this because my old Sony Vaio is a beast. It's much too heavy and the battery lasts only about an hour and 45 minutes tops. The Asus Eee PC's battery life lasts about 5 hours (but this is only an estimate because I've never actually let it run all the way down).

Everyone loves this thing, I've gotten more compliments and questions about it than any other product I've ever owned.

The only problem, and this is stressed in any review you'll read, is that the keyboard is very small. I knew this going in to it and was prepared because I have really small hands anyway. After a while you'll get used to it, but switching back to other laptops was kind of tricky because I was so used to the smaller version.

The little slip case it comes with is nice, but has no strap or handle or lanyard attachment. It's basically made out of the same material a beverage "koozie" is made out of, so if your laptop is particularly warm when you put it in, it will stay that way and won't cool down. This was almost a problem because when you turn it off the screen goes blank just a few seconds before the rest of the computer actually turns off (other laptops do this as well). I closed the lid before it was completely shut down which sent it into sleep mode, but I thought it was off. I had it in the slipcase for about 2 hours, and when I took it out again I realized that it was still on, and it was blistering hot. Not just the bottom but the lid and screen, everything, you could have fried an egg on it, it was literally too hot to touch. The little fan had been running like crazy inside the slip case trying to cool it down but was blowing nothing but hot air because of poor ventilation and so was basically cooking the machine. I thought the thing was broken for sure, but I waited a few minutes for it to cool off before turning it on again. It worked perfectly, and has since, there doesn't seem to be any damage, but I won't be making the mistake of not making sure the computer is turned off all the way before putting it in the case again.

Overall, I'm giving it 5 stars. It's everything I wanted and expected; if you buy this expecting something without researching it to see exactly what it can do you will most likely be disapointed. It's not the fastest thing in the world, and does lag when you try to do too many things at once, but, again, I knew that would be the case.

When looking for a portable computer to join me on the road, I was most concerned about:
* (Exceptional) battery life
* (Small) size and weight
* (High) exterior durability/build quality
* (Solid) keyboard
* (Good) wireless hardware/software
* (Low) noise and heat
* (At least) a 1024-pixel-wide display
* (Reasonable) disk space

At the time of research/purchase, the EEE line seemed to meet these requirements better than the alternatives I read about, especially battery life. The units are small, the 6-cell batteries really are great in the Atom-based models, the power brick is tiny, a carrying case is included in the package, etc.

The tough call for me ended up being whether to get the EEE 901 or the EEE 1000H. At the time, the 1000H was significantly cheaper, came with a larger (and more traditional) storage unit, had a larger keyboard and screen, with nearly the same battery life, and had Windows. (The the Windows version of the EEE 901 really did not sound appealing given the low storage space on it.) I got to try out the Acer Aspire One at a local Best Buy, and felt that the keyboard size was just right. The knowledge that the 901's keyboard was smaller than the Aspire One's worried me, though when I saw pictures online comparing the overall size of the 901 to the 1000 to a normal-sized laptop, it seemed almost pointless to buy something just a tad smaller than a normal laptop, vs something significantly smaller and still usable. Also, the 901's keyboard has been around for a while (used in all EEE models except the 1000 up until that point), and reportedly felt a lot sturdier, even if it were smaller.

The Windows question: while I am a die-hard Linux fan, I felt that it might be more practical having Windows on a portable machine that has to go everywhere---on rare occasions, you might run into things where you really wished you had Windows for. Plus with the hard disk in the 1000H, it would be easy enough to partition and dual-boot. If you bought a model loaded with Linux and wanted Windows on it, (I guess) you could try VMWare or something similar or try dual-booting off of the internal SSD's, but you'd still either have to buy it or steal it, neither of which are good options. You really can't beat the value of having it come with the machine.

Ultimately, I decided on the Linux version of the EEE 901. It has just the right amount of built-in storage space, is completely silent when using the battery, has a solid-feeling keyboard, easy-to-read screen/resolution, excellent battery life (5 hours when demanding a lot from the wireless non-stop) and overall is just right for my needs. The build quality is great---does not feel or look cheaply made. And it's so lightweight, and it fits everywhere---in the car, on a coffee table; produces very little heat; it's small enough to have two on your lap at once, if you're into that kind of thing. I only wish it were capable of playing MSNBC's and CNN's live video streams. YouTube, Hulu, etc work fine. This is currently my *only* computer, and I've been using it all day for a month. I browse the web, do email and write software (on a remote system). Though the keyboard is small, it doesn't suffer flex in the way that the 1000H's apparently does, and I can touch-type on it at a satisfactory speed---maybe just a bit slower than I would on a full-size keyboard. As a fair warning, I do have smaller-than-average hands. And even with that "advantage", I did buy an external full-size USB keyboard to use when I really have to do some serious typing. But the portability factor of this model is just superb, and the built-in keyboard is really satisfactory 90% of the time. It definitely beats having a larger machine to lug around, even if the built-in keyboard were a tad larger.

Finally, a note about wireless: The included wireless software works fine and is easy to use. Reception could be better, but I have nothing to compare it to. So let me put it this way: whenever and wherever I have needed to get online, I've been able to.

Way to go Asus, you really got things right with the EEE 901!