Asus Eee PC 1008P Karim Rashid netbook reviewed, liked — despite high price tag

The Asus Eee PC 1008P Karim Rashid Edition is the most expensive 10 inch netbook you can currently buy from Asus. That’s largely because it’s super thin and sports a designer edition lid, more RAM and hard drive space than most netbooks and Windows 7 Home Premium. But is that enough to justify spending $500 for a netbook? Peter at Netbooked seems to think so. He published a detailed review of the Eee PC 1008P Karim Rashid Edition today.

First, let’s clear something up. The 1008P Karim Rashid Edition doesn’t just come with a pretty lid. It also has 2GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive, and runs Windows 7 Home Premium. Those things alone will clearly drive up the price of any netbook. The netbook is also slimmer and lighter than most. And while it has a relatively wimpy battery that’s only good for 4 hours, unlike the Asus Eee PC 1008HA, this model has a user replaceable battery, and even ships with 2 batteries in some parts of the globe — which means you get up to 8 hours of run time (after swapping out batteries).

I’m not a big fan of the plastic doors that Asus uses to cover the ports, because they’re sort of begging to be broken off over time. But it does give the netbook a streamlined look when you’re not using any of these ports.

Peter does point out that the fan is a little noisier on this netbook than many others. And the laptop can get rather warm at times. It also has just 2 USB ports instead of the usual3. But overall, he was pretty impressed.