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4 out of 4 people found this review helpful
4.0 stars
"Excellent for what it was made for"
Pros: long battery life, portability, Bluetooth, Wireless N
Cons: carzy right "shift" key, finger print magnet, poor website driver support
Summary: As soon as I received this laptop, I opened it by removing "TWO" screws and I can easily to access the memory, hard drive and wireless card. This is a dream for anyone wanting to do some upgrade. I removed the 1G memory chip and replace a 2G DDR2. Of course, I replaced the 80G ( 40G + 40G partition which I am not too crazy about) with my new Samsung SSD 32G drive. I downloaded all the needed drivers for installing XP pro. The BIOS has some tricks there.
You have to hit "Esc" key in order to choose external Optical drive. The F2 key for "choosing booting priority" will not do a search of what kind of optical drive you have. I had to read the manual (I know I know) to get that straight.
I installed XP pro and experienced troubles that Drivers provided by Asus website were NOT 100% correct. The video and audio drivers are definitely NOT, so be aware.
So, I use the restore DVD (that's a plus) to put the XP Home to the SSD 32G drive - ended with 2 partitions (16 + 16G) which is annoying since I want a full 32G - one drive partition.
I ended loading Ghost and back up the "C" drive and then partitioned the Samsung SSD in to 1. "Restore" by Ghost is a piece of cake. Now I am very happy with the modification I did. The performance is excellent. Booting time: 5 seconds to BIOS, then 37 seconds to XP. Shut off is 41 seconds. I think the ATOM processor is a bit slow compared to my other dual-core laptops with SSD drives ( 25 seconds to boot, 15 seconds to shut off)
The video streaming/mp3 compression were OK and the screen is somewhat small ( 1024 x 600) so I have to scroll to read the whole word page and web pages. The touch pad is good for it's function but not too sensational - wish it will have "gesture" function.
3+ pound is a little heavier than I expected and I am still waiting MSI Wind as it has only 2.6 lbs with well-known Mac hackable ability.
This laptop is definitely for second laptop - portability and long battery life(I got 5.5+ hours on one straight use, and a whole day use while close the lid to move to different locations via "sleep"). With all the needed hardwares: bluetooth, SD card reader, webcam, wireless N. No firewire nor express card though. Now, I am comfortable to carry this when I travel and for work, to access internet and using word processing etc.
