A couple of more mini-reviews / first impressions of Asus’ Eee PC 901 have started rolling out, this time from the LAPTOP Magazine blog and from NotebookReview.com.
Joanna Stern (she must be the official netbook person over at LAPTOP Magazine) got her hands on a retail Eee PC 901 from the computer market in Taiwan. Although the 8.9-inch Intel Atom-powered device she has is running a Chinese-language version of Windows XP, she was still able to put it through its paces. She posted a video of the 901, as well as her impressions of the netboook / sub-notebook and its design changes (improved hinges, improved trackpad, improved covering).
While she didn’t notice any changes performance wise between the Eee PC 900 and the 901 (although she didn’t run benchmarks), she did mention that, like the MSI Wind, the Eee PC 901 has an overclocking mode (that takes the 1.6GHz Atom up to 1.8GHz). Asus calls it their “Super Hybrid Engine” (while plugged in – when it’s unplugged the function slows the CPU down to 1.4GHz to save on the battery life). She has gotten upwards of 5 hours of battery life, beating the Eee PC 900.
Kevin O’Brien over at Notebook Review also got his hands on one at Computex (in fact he was running around with Joanna Stern looking for one), and has posted his impressions.
He felt that Asus has definitely been working on the build and design quality:
Build quality is better than ever, from the better paint finish to the stronger feeling screen hinge. With each revision the Asus Eee PC starts feeling or looking less like a cheap budget notebook and more like a high quality portable notebook
He did run a few benchmarks – with wPrime 32M time, the Eee PC 901 got an increase of around 45% performance (when overclocked to 1.8) over the Celeron M-based Eee 901
Read:
– LAPTOP Magazine Blog
– NotebookReview.com