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You know, when retailers started selling the Asus Eee PC 1000H for $450 just a few weeks after I picked one up for $550, I was OK with that. After all, I was still happy with the computer and figured it was worth the price. But now, just a few short months later, you can pick up an Eee PC 1000H with a larger hard drive for as low as $340. And it kind of feels like someone’s trying to rub it in.
Anyway, if you’re in the market for a 10 inch netbook with a 6 cell battery that’s good for 4 to 5 hours of run time, now might be the time to pick one up. Newegg has a special on open box Eee PC 1000H models. The store is selling them for $339.75, with a limit of two per customer.
This particular model has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, a 10.2 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, 1GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive. And I’m not bitter at all.
via SlickDeals
Deactivated Item – no longer available
Or without charger…
I got my Eee 1000H from mwave in an open-box deal, for $359 a few months ago. However, let me just say, I think the reason it was returned was because the keyboard has a nasty glitch that causes double-key entry randomly (like I type “Hello” and it comes out “Heello”). I was told that it was covered under the manufacturer’s warranty and could not be returned. So I sent the Eee to Asus for repair, following their RMA procedure, they apparently did not feel that my problem was serious enough to fix, and sent it back to me without fixing it. So, just a word of caution about open box, you might end up with a previously returned item that has some sort of problem.
Ouch! The field of customer service is wide open 🙂
There are tonnes of things that can go wrong with the 1000h/1000ha. I bought one, had the double tap keys (heello happened a lot!) and screen flicker at low brightness every time the hard drive LED flashed. I RMA’d it, and got sent another one. This one has no screen flicker, but the sensitive key problem remains. Apparently, that is *really* common, but easy to fix with some windows filterkey settings… (of course, windows only, backtrack still has some issues).
Anyways, my point is that open box online purchases are a bad idea. If you have a problem, AND it is covered by warranty (or RMA), then you have to ship it back and hope they send you a better one.
Why else would an online retailer have open box computers? Returns! Why else would they have returns? … Problems!
I would buy open box from a big-box store. No problem – I could inspect the computer, play with it a bit, and make sure it was peachy. But even though newegg is awesome, this is a hassle you don’t want… The chance of having a problem is high enough that you’re better off spending the extra on a new one, since you’ll spend the same on shipping when you return the open box for replacement/repairs.
Having said that, I love my 1000ha. It has replaced my primary laptop simply because it is so small, yet still so easy to use. Battery life isn’t as good as my workhorse laptop, but it has a 12 cell extended battery which gets about 7-8 hours. This 6-cell lappy gets about 4-5, depending on settings … but also charges in half the time!