I've been eyeballing this exact netbook (mini-laptop?) for a little while now. It's nice to see a review that answers those questions you simply can't get from a product description. Thanks!
Don't get me wrong though... I still love my current netbook (an HP actually, not a Dell). Nevertheless, a speculation that you made in a comment towards my review of that system has actually come to fruition. I do in fact find myself wanting more out of the system than it could ever produce. The netbook I have is still excellent for general computing, but I want those upgrades like a higher resolution screen, dual-core processor, and a graphics chipset that opens up gaming possibilities a bit more.
I'm content to wait until dual-core / nVidia ION is the norm in the netbook market rather than the exception. My current netbook will continue serving me very well until then and certainly into the future. However, it's tough to deny that its days are ever-increasingly becoming numbered, regardless of how much I might want to deny the fact. Like you, I also have a little one who simply can't wait to get her hands on her first computer, making an upgrade later this year for me pretty much a given. The current HP Mini 1000 will still get a ton of usage :-)
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Technology ASUS EEE PC 1201N
Technology ASUS EEE PC 1201N
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| ASUS EEE PC 1201N |
| Reviews - Technology |
| Written by Quebus |
| Wednesday, 06 January 2010 09:57 |
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Specs: 12.1” (1366x768) Display My appreciation for netbooks is pretty well documented on this site. In March of 2008 I reviewed “my first netbook”, an EEE PC 701 with Linux and a 4GB SSD. In September of 2008 I wrote “A Year Later” to reflect on a year of ownership with the 701. I mused about how nice the new 900 series EEE PCs were but I was standing by my 701. I broke down around mid January and purchased a 1000HA to address many of the first iteration’s shortcomings and annoyances. The 800x480 screen and native res was a little too small, as were the keys but in fact, that criticism is really a bit of revisionist history on my part. My first netbook was really a victim of its own success and utility – the more I used it, the more I wanted to use it for and that’s where performance became a limitation and an annoyance.
The 10 inch series gave me more “oomph”, more screen and more keyboard, reducing “Version 1” to the “Blackberry on steroids” I referred to it as in my review. From that point, I used my v2 quite happily until my new 1201N arrived today and truthfully, I probably could have continued using the 1000HA quite happily for some time had my daughter not been jonesing for a machine of her own. There were a few other enticing things that prompted me to upgrade too though: 1. Asus has not produced a “desktop res switcher” app for Windows 7 and the 1000 series EEE PCs. With a native res of 1024x600, the 10 inch netbooks solved the width headache of their predecessors but height problems remain as there are sites and apps (Flash applets mainly) that simply don’t cope well with a height of 600px. Under XP a handy app lets you switch to 1024x768 where your desktop scrolls - not super elegant but it works. I could possibly jiggle the XP version under Win 7 but given the tie-in with video drivers I elected not to. 2. The shift key. Yeah I have one of those earlier versions where the right Shift key is inexplicably not right next to the forward slash. Weird and very annoying. 3. Wireless N and Bluetooth. I have a home server, Wireless N network, Gigabit LAN and I map to network drives like crazy from all my machines. This is a huge boost network wise. 4. It goes to 11. Dual Core and the ability for “light gaming” plus HDMI and the ability to stream 1080p video just sealed the deal. Initial observations: Asus has gone with the “chicklet” keys this time around. They’ve put the right Shift where it belongs but still couldn’t resist the urge to fiddle with some others for what assume are esthetic reasons. Home, End, Page etc are stacked vertically on the far right – odd but far less a deal-breaker than the Shift key thing.
The whole thing is very “shiny” – the shell, the case, the screen and being a person with a somewhat oily complexion, I’m not sure how I feel about that yet. The “HD” backlit screen is beautiful though but I’m not sure that the “shininess” hasn’t made it less visible from different angles than its older cousin. My netbook tends to live on my kitchen island and as such, I tend to use it both sitting and standing up. My initial sense is that with the fairly fierce lighting in the room, I am having to tilt it (or myself) a bit more than I did with the old screen having the “oldschool” matte finish. Also of note is the much thinner profile of the netbook generally, which I attribute to Asus’ assumed desire to keep weight down. For comparison, with battery in, the 1201N weighs nearly the same as the 1000HA (3 lbs roughly) despite moving up the food chain from a 10” screen to a 12.1” screen. It’s an interesting component in the “tale of the tape” but more on that later... The Windows 7 preload is a bit bloated. Neil wrote that Dell did not flog him with crappy trials but sadly, Asus has not followed suit. I have a significant amount of ballast to throw off the deck but frankly, the Dell is more the exception than the norm. I would nuke and pave but as is the current state with most machines, you are stuck with a hidden OS partition and given a “recovery disk” rather than a conventional OEM copy of the OS to go with your sticker. It’s a criticism but not one leveled specifically at Asus or this netbook.
As expected, the 1201N is noticeably “zippier” on many tasks but owing to Windows 7 and “Aero”, it is somewhat "status quo" in some areas versus the Atom N270 twinned with XP in my 1000 series netbook. While Quake 3 Arena is far from an ideal benchmark at this point in time, it is quickly accessible, familiar to me and provides some context given that I ran similar tests on the EEE PC 1000HA. It is also in keeping with claims that “light gaming” is feasible with the new “premium” netbooks featuring the N330 and ION graphics. Within the first few hours out of the box, I installed the game, set the resolution to 1366x768 (as I did to 1024x600 with its predecessor) and made no other tweaks. The 1201N ran the stock demo at 100.2 fps versus 62.3 fps for the 1000 series netbook. Whether Q3A is taxing or not, what the ION and N330 have brought to bear are indisputable – at the same pricepoint and roughly 12 months later (adjusting for a higher screen res), the measurables suggest this machine is nearly twice as fast.
Conclusion: Within the first 24 hours of ownership it’s very difficult to talk about “conclusions” but I do have a number of observations and musings. I am happy with the machine thus far and believe I will continue to be for some time but I am decidedly less comfortable placing the moniker of “netbook” on it than I was with its older cousins a year and two years ago respectively. The reality is that manufacturers have blurred (or in some cases, completely obliterated) the lines between “laptop” and “netbook”. Peruse the product lines of any producer and you’ll soon see that there is little separating this “netbook” from the smallest “laptops”. If you browse Acer’s offerings, you’ll see a product list that would almost rival a Chinese menu in length, with different colours, feature sets, platforms and screen sizes. It’s truly out of control. As a machine claiming to be a netbook, I’m not sure Asus hasn’t gone too far with the EEE PC 1201N. When I look at power, features, in/out ports and screen/keyboard size, let’s face it - this is a full-featured laptop so I guess we’re left with one tenuous connection to the netbook genre – weight. I don’t want to say the 1201N is flimsy exactly but it’s darn close at this point. In many ways it reminds me of a boxer who wants to fight down a weight class and is trying to make weight by starving and jogging every day with garbage bags on under his tracksuit – it works but you can’t simply run to McDonald’s for three Big Macs after weigh-in and hope that all your strength and endurance will return (okay, sloppy analogy but you get the idea). Similarly, you can’t build a notebook with a 12.1” screen, a dual core processor, 2GB of RAM, nVidia gfx and all the other trimmings and then put it on a diet to call it a netbook when for all intents and purposes, all the other “measureables” say it’s simply a smallish laptop. At the end of the day, size is subjective. I had a friend decide earlier this year that he wanted a laptop and described his wants, needs and habits in a way that seemed to echo how I use my netbook. I was surprised obviously when he showed up at my door with an 18.1 inch-screened, multimedia behemoth for me to assess and clean up for him. It was huge in size and weight, a nice machine if you wanted to watch Blu Ray onscreen in 1080p but for all other things? Way too big. He returned it and came back with a 17” version. It was (predictably) much the same unit but a little less in every category. That one too was returned after about a month of ownership – still too big. I’m thinking this might be the answer. It will do “everything” provided that “everything” doesn’t include folding for NASA or ripping and encoding feature films to hard disk in a matter of minutes and it will do what it does without crushing your thighs or ruining your eyesight. It’s not exactly a netbook… more like “the third bowl of porridge”.
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