Tech Olive

The netbook market is a very unique one. It’s is still so young that the devices are lacking in speed, but the trade-off is portability and long battery life. So, as it stands, there’s a mad dash for hardware developers to try and find the best balance of performance, portability and most importantly, battery life. All while trying to keep the devices in an affordable and competitive pricing bracket. So, let’s find out how one of Asus’ latest revisions of their wildly popular Eee PC line holds up in the ever-evolving netbook market.

Setting you back only about $340, the 1005PE is among the first of Asus’ Eee PC line to get the upgrade to Pine Trail processors, and the battery life is much improved as a result. Unfortunately, the new processor just doesn’t bring enough of a performance improvement over the previous Diamondville CPUs, but even still, the 1005PE manages a reboot of about 45 seconds with its fresh install of Windows 7 and, while it still struggles with HD video playback, you can follow our recent HD how-to guide and you will be using your netbook as an HD player in no time. The newer Eee PCs also makes the change to an ergonomic chiclet keyboard, which is much easier and more natural to type on.

Unfortunately, it was not all smooth sailing. When I first booted the netbook, the screen resolution was set to 800×600 by default. When I tried switching to its native resolution (1024×600), I was met by nothing but a gray drop-down menu that was locked at 800×600. It wasn’t until I headed over to the Asus website to download and install the newest drivers that I could actually choose the netbook’s native resolution. Is it too much to ask that a brand new Eee PC come with working drivers?

While the 1005PE came with a refreshingly minimal amount of pre-installed bloatware, there are still some preloaded programs, most notable are Asus’ own Eee @Vibe, which seems to be their attempt to compete with Windows Media Center as far as downloading and streaming all types of content. Also included is Eee Splendid; some “Video Enhancement Technology” presumably to be used in conjunction with the 1005PE’s 0.3MP webcam, but let’s face it, you’ll need more than this Eee Splendid to make your videos on this camera look good. The most useful of the collection seems to be the Eee Docking, which offers up a tool-bar style drop-down dock that gives you quick and easy access to the other Asus tools. However, it’d be tons better if you could add your own shortcuts to the dock.

As a true testament to the netbook’s usability, I threw it at my mother (not literally) for a night without any introduction or training period and told her to use it as she would the Windows XP-based desktop she’s accustomed to. After several comments pertaining to its “cuteness” factor, the test actually yielded some impressive results. In those hours of torture, she had no troubles whatsoever.  It seems that Windows 7 and the 1005PE are a fantastic combo for any kind of PC user, assuming their tasks don’t demand too much processing power.

Scores

Price: 8
The 1005PE is priced well when compared the other netbooks in the Eee PC lineup. However, while the new processing abilities alone are good, they’re just not quite enough yet to make this model a clear first-choice for new budget buyers. It’s still much easier to look to the cheaper models and wonder how much of a difference the extra money will offer you in terms of functionality.

Setup/Install: 7
While it may not be the first Eee PC in the world to come with out-dated drivers, I found it very annoying that I couldn’t properly use it until I had updated the drivers. Furthermore, any experienced PC user will want to also spend the first few hours of ownership removing, configuring and ignoring the pre-installed bloatware, but this is nothing new.

Ease of Use: 10
With plenty of applications and tweaks already applied, Windows 7 and the 1005PE together make a great combo for users of all levels.

Performance: 10
In a market where every little bit helps, some people were all too quick to write off the Pine Trail upgrade as too young or just not enough of a performance difference, but they’re looking at it the wrong way. While the performance increase is there, but quite small, the important thing to remember is that the performance upgrade came with increased battery life without the use of a larger battery, and that’s an impressive feat.

Features: 9
It’s hard to rate the 1005PE on this merit. On one hand, it’s packed with helpful programs and features that will aid any PC user in their daily activities, but at the same time, any power users will simply get annoyed by those very same applications and features for making the experience feel dumbed down or downright restricted. However, the improved battery life, fast boot times and the awesome chiclet keyboard are hard to ignore.

Overall: 9 Olives