I’ve been using an Asus Eee PC 1008HA for the past few days, and there’s one thing that’s become abundantly clear. This thing is small. I mean, really really small. It’s thinner, lighter, and much easier to carry around than the Eee PC 1000H I’ve been using for the last 9 months or so. It also has a nicer keyboard, a slightly faster processor, and gets about the same 5 hours of battery life.
But there are a few disadvantages, (aside from the fact that it’s so thin that I’m sometimes tempted to throw it like a frisbee when it’s in my hands). In order to maintain the sleek aesthetic, Asus put plastic doors over the USB, VGA, and Ethernet ports. These doors are held on by little bits of rubber that feel like they’re bound to break eventually if you use these ports on a regular basis. You also need to plug in a proprietary adapter to use the VGA port, which is kind of annoying, but not a big hassle if you don’t use your netbook with a monitor very often.
The biggest problem is that aside from that proprietary VGA adapter which fits into the bottom of the case, there’s not a single component that’s easily removable: Not the RAM, hard drive, or battery. If those things matter to you, this might not be the right netbook for you. Fortunately Asus is expected to come out with a slightly thicker and heavier Eee PC 1005HA soon which will have removable components. But I have to say there’s something incredibly compelling about holding a netbook as thin and light as the Eee PC 1008HA. It’s almost cool enough for me to overlook the non-removable battery.
I’ll have a complete review of the Eee PC 1008HA in the next week or so. But in the meantime, you can find more photos of the netbook hanging out with my Eee PC 1000H at the Liliputing Community. For lazy readers, there’s also a slideshow after the page break, but you can also see higher resolution versions of the images at the Liliputing Community. And I suppose this is as good a time as any to remind you that the Liliputing Forums have been expanded into a whole social networking site. When you sign up you can create a profile page, follow other members of the Liliputing community, share your own photos, and participate in discussions about netbooks, nettops, technology in general, or anything else you like
hi, Does the 1008HA have in built HSDPA ?
That’s wild how much smaller the 1008HA is! I probably would have picked one of these up if I could easily upgrade the RAM. Really don’t care about the HD as 160GB is plenty and that the battery is non-removable. It is a good looking netbook no doubt!