Review: Asus eee 1008HA Seashell

Filed under Reviews by on October 27, 2010 at 6:07 pm {no comments}


Today, we’re looking at the very first Eee PC netbook that looks nothing at all like its predecessors. Asus isn’t content with just labelling this an Eee PC.  The Eee PC 1008HA is the first member of the burgeoning “Seashell” line, a family that already includes this machine and the 1005HA.

Let’s take a look at the specifications:

  • Intel Atom N280 @ 1.66GHz, 667MHz FSB
  • 1GB of 667MHz DDR2 (2GB max)
  • 10.1 inch LCD (1024×600 resolution); LED backlight
  • Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics
  • 160 GB Seagate Momentus 5400.5 – 2.5 inch SATA, 8MB cache
  • 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi
  • Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
  • 1.3 megapixel webcam + Digital Array Microphone
  • VGA Output (via dongle)
  • USB 2.0 x 2
  • RJ-45 (Ethernet 10/100)
  • Headphone / Mic Input Jacks
  • MMC/SD card reader
  • Twin speakers
  • Gesture-enabled trackpad (multi-touch)
  • 92% full-size keyboard
  • 2.42 Pounds (with battery installed)
  • 1-inch thick
  • 262mm (W) x 178mm (D) x 18-25.7mm (H)

Quite a modest beast, but more than capable of running Windows 7 – The Atom N20 supports Hyperthreading, giving a 30-40% boost in performance. On the reverse of the machine, there is no flap to access the HDD or RAM Module. Also, although this model is of a higher model than the eee 1005 (in the same family) it has a non-removable battery that is rated for 6 hours. During our tests, we averaged 4.5 hours with wi-fi and bluetooth on and the LCD at lowest brightness setting. That battery by the way, is the same in the 1005 which *has* a removable battery. In a future Article, we will document a possible replacement of the non-removable 1008HA battery with an external one from the 1005 model.

Windows 7 Performance

Running Windows 7 Professional, the 1008HA perfoms admirably for a machine with only 1GB RAM. The internal HDD is 5400RPM with a SATA interface, although again it’s not user-accessible as there is no access flap on the reverse side. The GMA 950 supports Aero glass, and here’s the WEI:

Screen resolution is 1024×600, the 10.1-inch screen is glossy and has excellent brightness and contrast even at the lowest brightness setting. Turning it all the way up almost induces retinal-bleeding – watching movies  is a wonderful experience even on a small screen.

Boot-time with Windows 7 is between 15 and 20 seconds, which again is more than reasonable. Dual-booting Ubuntu is also an option, which surprisingly doesn’t  reduce boot-time that much, which only goes to show that that sata interface is being used to its full limits.

No access door on the bottom?!

Keyboard

The 1008HA keyboard, according to ASUS, is only six percent smaller than a full-sized desktop keyboard. Whilst typing is comfortable, the up and down cursor keys have been squashed into the space of a single key between the regular-sized (and freakishly big by comparison) left and right cursor keys.

The keyboard is not of the chiclet kind, but there are generous spaces between the keys to help avoid mashing words together when typing. However when the inevitable hand-cramp ensues (which it will) it sure feels like there’s more than a six percent difference. All in all, Asus strikes a successful balance between comfort and the rediculously good portability that the 1008HA offers.

Keyboard close-up

Wireless

The wireless features on the 1008HA are quite honestly amazing. With an RRP of only around £200, this is very much a budget product. Unusually for such a product, Bluetooth and Wireless N are thrown in. We tried copying mixed files over a wireless N network and got 6-7MB/sec which is very very good indeed. Onboard Bluetooth uses the Microsoft software stack and not some crudely integrated 3rd party solution. It is rated to 2.1 standard and turning it off only gains around 1% per hour, so we left it on all the time (though not discoverable – that would be a mistake!)

Horsepower

this setup is plenty powerful to plow through basic, everyday tasks. Office duties, emailing, Web browsing and PowerPoint making are all very do-able here, as they should be. The Intel GMA chipset gets a lot of bad press, but performs admirably with not-so-old games, here are just some examples:

Plants vs. Zombies
Peggle

Quake 3

NEXT PAGE

Review: Internet Explorer 9 Beta

Filed under Reviews by on September 17, 2010 at 7:16 pm {no comments}



So here we go again with the browser wars.. Internet Explorer 9 boasts a new JavaScript engine named ‘Chakra’, HTML5 compatibility & hardware accelerated 3D-Graphics using DirectX10 and a GPU. Whilst impressive, these features have already started creeping their way into competing browsers over the last year or so. What’s even more interesting is that both Firefox and Chrome have been experimenting with these features since before IE9 was even announced.

Something to consider:

The implications of Microsoft releasing a new version of Internet Explorer are huge; the sheer number of IE users alone makes this worth considering. How many people do you know who associate the blue E with the internet  ie; if it is moved or deleted they’re completely lost? Although Windows 7 has the option of removing IE altogether, this isn’t done by OEMS, and the feature is buried deep and difficult to find. Internet Explorer 9 is going to be forced on these users through Windows Update.

Bearing this in mind, let’s get started by taking a look at the revamped UI:

Click the image to display a bigger version

Tabs

The first thing you will notice is the odd positioning of the tabs bar. I’ve taken the liberty of Opening a second tab, to demonstrate how actual little room there is for tabs, and why this is a bad thing.

During my everyday internet usage, it is certainly not uncommon for me to have 9 tabs open. For example, I read a lot of research material, and often leave tabs open to ‘work my way through’ during the day – I know many people who surf the web this way.

The screenshot below shows IE9 with 9 tabs open:

As soon as more than eight tabs are open, that orange arrow appears with the temptation of some fancy fullscreen tab-manager. In reality, tabs just scroll left and right. As far as UI features go, this is very counter-intuitive.

Additional note: note the wasted space above the tabs bar

To be fair, I cannot imagine many scenarios where your average user would be looking at more than eight tabs. However, Google Chrome has no problems displaying eleven or more tabs, due to their positioning in the above mentioned ‘wasted space’ ABOVE the address bar:

New Features

Speaking of the address bar, IE9 has finally done away with the seperate address and search boxes, replacing them with a single box that does both.

IE9 Integrates nicely with the Windows 7 taskbar, allowing you to drag and drop any website onto the taskbar to make it a ‘web application’ – a borderless website masquerading as a desktop application, launched with a single click:

Drag and drop any website to create a 'web-app'

In a blog post, Program Manager Lead Ted Johnson went into detail about what the upcoming software can do when it comes to hardware acceleration:

To view an example of Hardware Accelerated Browser features, click here.

Note the above link works on any browser, not just IE9.

Alright, so it’s not much of an example. But that’s because there really aren’t many situations yet where GPU-accelerated browsing is useful.

Following the announcement of IE9 containing Hardware accelerated features, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome also gained this ability:

Chrome 6 vs. Chromium 7 with GPU rendering

So by now you’re beginning to realise that IE9 is being pushed as a forced Windows Update, but actually doesn’t bring *anything* new to the table at all. Competing browsers stole all its good features as soon as Microsoft released the Preview download.  Slagging off IE9 is not my intention, but pointing out the so called ‘amazing new features’ is what you readers deserve.

THE VERDICT:

Internet Explorer 9 is the most solid version of Internet Explorer yet. It has really good security features, GPU-accelerated browsing is great, but only future-proofing since there are no requirements for this feature yet. Additonally, Microsoft took so long to release it that they gave their competitors plenty of time to implement the exact same features that were to make IE9 appealing. For the less technical among us, IE9 is nothing but a forced update with a pretty new skin. Memory usage is poor compared to small and lightning-fast browsers such as Google Chrome or Opera 10.6 — Microsoft will have to work hard to claw back their rapidly decreasing market share.