My New Netbook!

The past few months we've really been working hard on "advertising" our family.  Between all of us we've got eight blogs, three websites, four Facebooks, one Twitter and numerous other projects we're working on all the time.  All this stuff is a great way to get our family and what we're doing out there, but we've had a problem.  All of us had to share one laptop. 

Mom told Hanna and I recently she thought we should really consider getting our own laptops so we won't keep her from working on her laptop.  I had enough money so I started looking into it.  I quickly realized how expensive laptops are.  The cheapest one I could find was about $330 but it didn't have a battery to power it once it was unplugged.  The average laptop I could find ran about $450.  Then I found something I'd never even heard of before, netbooks.  Netbooks are small, portable laptops that are designed for internet use.  They don't have disk drives, which is something I don't need.

I researched netbooks and found the Asus Eee line.  Asus has been a computer parts manufacturer for years, but recently they decided to combine all their great parts into computers of their own.  Asus is now known for their top-of-the-line computers and netbooks.  Asus actually came up with the idea of a netbook and was the first company to make one.


After looking up the specifications of all the different Eee netbooks and comparing prices, reliability, functionality, and performance I decided the Asus Eee PC 1005PEB looked like the best one for me.  It was $330 at Best Buy.  Wal-Mart had the same computer, but with the old Intel Atom N270 processor, for $280.  I then compared the N270 against the N450 processor in the the new one at Best Buy.

I finally decided to go with the one at Best Buy because of the N450 processor.  There were some complaints with the N270 being slow.  I also found I wanted 250 GB of hard drive instead of the 160 GB.  The 1005PEB at Best Buy had that, too

I was still open to a different computer, if there was a better one.  So we went to Best Buy and I messed around with a couple different ones and talked to a guy for a while about how the different netbooks would handle the things I wanted to do with them.

I left Best Buy last Friday with my new Asus Eee PC 1005PEB.  After letting it charge over night like recommended, I fired it up.  From the moment I turned it on I liked it! It is very similar to my Mom's larger Asus laptop so it was easy to learn how to use.

It has Windows 7 Starter which is just a simplified version of Windows 7.  Don't listen to some of the rumors I heard and read online about the Starter version not being able to "multi-task".  I personally have had email, and two blog managers open while doing Windows and Trend Micro downloads.  The computer works very fast while online or running a program.  It also has good graphics and a nice webcam.


Another great feature is the battery.  With the screen on full brightness and while working on it all day, with the engine on "super performance" mode (see below), the battery powered the computer for over seven hours!  I then tried it with the engine on "power save" mode, and the screen on low brightness, although while still working on it all day, and clocked the battery in at about 10 hours!  The engine that I mentioned above is technically called the Super Hybrid Engine.  It has three modes: power save, high performance, and super performance.  Power save mode makes the computer run as efficiantly as possible, high performance runs about average, and super performance makes it run as quickly as possible even though it uses a lot more power.  When I'm plugged in I always keep it on "super performance".

The computer also has three USB ports, an MMC-SD port, and a port so the computer can be plugged into a larger screen or a projector.

All in all, I would strongly recommend the Asus Eee PC 1005PEB to anyone who wants a small, affordable computer that will do just about anything you want it to.  I've really enjoyed this one so far and I know you will too.

The Amazon link on the left will take you to the exact computer I bought, red and all.