Asus Eee PC 1001P Review – Entry Level Eee PC Netbook Variant

Pros

The Asus Eee PC 1001P comes with superb battery life, smart design and a catchy price of $299.

Cons

The Asus Eee PC 1001P being an economy Netbook doesn’t stand out from the competition.

Introduction

Asus along with its Eee PC have always been among the leaders in Netbook development. After all, Asus was the one who invented the Netbook market and to say the least, owned it for quite a sometime, while HP, Dell and several others dawdled whether to get into Netbook market or not.

Asus also is known for making some really quality Netbooks, with superb battery life, comfortable keyboard and touchpad’s, and for its high end models they provides Nvidia’s Ion GPU and dual-core CPUs. But the one thing that was missing from Asus was a plain, rock-solid Netbook with a magical price of $299. While most of the models from Asus priced above $350 or so, its competitors have been swooping the customers by offering priced lower than that and one fine example is of Acer.

But now finally Asus has entered the lower price range zone and has entered with bang. Ok, if you are confused then let us put it in another way, now if you want a Netbook with standard configuration of 1GB of RAM, an Intel N450 CPU, a 160GB hard drive and Windows 7 Starter, then don’t pay more than $299 for it. Yes, the last sentence is all true and the system we are talking about is the Asus Eee PC 1001P, the Asus Eee PC 1001P has got all the aforementioned elements and is priced $299. This makes it a hard to resist deal for the consumers and gives Asus its very first entry level Netbook, which is all set for the competition and even does not cost high.

The best thing according to us about Asus Eee PC 1001P is that the Netbook not at all looks cheap and though it comes with older version of Asus’s touchpad and keyboard, it still is as good as any of the non-premium Netbook we’ve used.

Design

The design of Asus Eee PC 1001P is almost identical to Eee PC 1005PE, which we considered the current flagship of the line and which also was the first Netbook with Intel Atom N450 Netbook that we reviewed. The Asus Eee PC 1001P with its slightly tapered front lips and smoothly curved edges of the lid has got the looks as good as any other mainstream system.

The Eee PC 1001P comes with a dreary check board pattern on the lid instead of the shiny black and gives it a classy look, which contradicts with its budget status. As a matter of fact the Eee PC 1001P looks more attractive than many of its expensive shimmering cousins.

But instead of the spacious Chiclet-style keyboard, which is like a trend these days and has been seen in HP Mini 5102. The Eee PC 1001P comes with older Asus keyboard design with flat-topped keys crammed narrowly. Although we would have liked the expensive Netbook version, but that’s totally a matter of personal choice and cant is taken as a deal breaker.

But the one thing that we really liked in this Netbook was its touchpad and even though it comes from the older Asus systems we liked it more than the Expensive Eee PCs. The touchpad here in Eee PC 1005PE is made up of the same plastic material, with which the rest of the wristrest is made up of and demarcating the touchpad from rest of the wrist rest is the tiny dots only. But here in Eee PC 1001P the touchpad has a conventional touchpad surface made up of somewhat smooth resistive material. This touchpad here is easier to use and reminds us of the touchpad’s in the full-sized full-size laptops. But the rather than having the left and right mouse buttons, both the models have got a metallic rocker, which is something I am not a big fan of.

The Eee PC 1001P comes with an archetypical 10.1 inch display with native resolution of 1024 x 600, though it is sufficient for a Netbook priced at $299, but still sometimes feels restricted. Especially while scrolling lengthy WebPages or office documents.

System Configuration

Price: $299.99 – $306.21
Manufacturer: Asus
Part Number: 1001P-MU17-WT
Notebook type: Netbook and   Budget
OS Provided: Microsoft Windows 7 Starter

Display Type: 10.1 in TFT active matrix
Processor: 1.6 GHz Intel Atoms N450
System weight: 2.8 lbs
Dimensions (W x D x H): 10.3 x 7 x 1 inches
RAM: 1GB, 800MHz DDR2
Built-in Devices: Stereo speakers and Wireless LAN antenna
Supported flash memory cards: MultiMediaCard, SDHC Memory Card and SD Memory Card
Graphics Processor / Vendor: Intel GMA 3150 Dynamic Video Memory Technology 4.0
Input device type: Keyboard and Touchpad
Audio: Headphone/Microphone jacks, Stereo Speakers
Optical Drive: None
Battery: 6 Cell Lithium-ion

Performance

The Asus Eee PC 1001P actually has an advantage over the other N270 and N280 Atom powered netbooks in terms of power effectiveness, but when it comes to actual performance there isn’t any serious difference. This means although the Eee PC 1001P will offer you extended battery life, but will not give any significant difference in performance.

So for the performance of Asus Eee PC 1001P we would say that the Netbook is fine for all the basic computing needs like light media playing, web surfing and e-mail, but anything above it will be a call for trouble. The strong point for Eee PC 1001P in performance will always be its battery life and you can easily count on it at any given time.

Support

Like all other Asus systems the Asus Eee PC 1001P also gets a standard one year parts and labor warranty and the standard telephonic tech support and online Web-based support is also available for the consumers.

Word from the Experts

The Asus Eee PC 1001P is an entry-level variant of prominent Eee PC Netbook. The entry level 1001P, is simply equivalent to little more pricey variants, and hence is a handy choice.