Customer Reviews

Perfect for what I need!
I originally bought the MSI Wind U123, and found that I could buy this netbook for $30 more, so I went with it. I had the MSI Wind for a few days before I received the Asus, and I found a huge difference between the two.

1. OS comparison

The MSI runs with the XP OS, while the Asus comes with the Windows 7 Starter. After reading some reviews on how some people weren't happy with the Windows 7 starter, I was a little worried before receiving it. Wow was I wrong.

This netbooks runs very quickly with windows 7, and it's much more user friendly than XP by leaps and bounds. The major drawback I kept hearing about the starter edition was that you couldn't change your background, well that problem was quickly erased after I downloaded Desktop 360. The program allows you to change the background of the netbook, and gives you more desktop space as you can literally move your desktop around from side to side, or 360 degrees. It's a free program and doesn't use up much system resources. Even if I had Windows XP, I'd still use the 360 background. So that complaint is non-existent.

2. Overall comfort

The keyboard on the MSI is more comfortable than the Asus, but not by much. It all depends on the person's preference. The keys aren't as loud, and it doesn't bend as much as the Asus. One bonus for the Asus though is that the keys are more spaced apart, and the control button is at the correct spot, whereas the MSI has it at a spot I'm not used to, and replaced it with a function key. Again, not really a big deal, but it makes typing easier, I find anyway.

One huge knock against the MSI, which really put me off, was the heat that it transmits! The bottom of it was so unbelievably hot, that you couldn't even touch it! It was so uncomfortably hot; that issue right there would of made me buy the Asus. I had this netbook running on the Super Hybrid option for a good two hours, and wasn't any hotter than touching the palm of my own hand. I was able to comfortably sit with it on my lap and work away.

3. Battery life

The Asus blows the MSI away! The battery life on this thing is incredible. The 11 hours of life is a bit of a stretch, maybe if you had it on the power saving mode, and doing minor things, but you can at least 8 hours, and that's with it over clocked, compared to the MSI 6 cell battery, which would give you maybe 3-4 hours, with breaks in between because the thing would be either burning your legs or the table that you have it set on.

4. Performance

They say there isn't a noticeable difference between the N280 and the N450, but I find that there is. WebPages with the Asus opened up quickly, while the MSI had troubles with WebPages that were running with PHP scripting. I have a website that is PHP, which runs scripts from an SQL database, and the difference in speed was very noticeable. The MSI had trouble loading and completing the scripts, whereas the Asus ran just as fast as my desktop computer.

Youtube videos were sometimes choppy with the MSI, but with the Asus, I never had any problems. The sound from the Asus was loud, clear, and had some bass to it, not that much, but still noticeable, whereas the MSI was low, sounded like it was coming out of a tunnel, and no bass whatsoever.

5. Verdict

All in all, I'm very happy with this netbook. It's not something you want as your primary computer, but if the budget is tight, then it could possibly function as one, as long as you're just interested in doing basic things.

It's the perfect laptop to take on the go, and connects effortlessly to any Internet hub. I looked and looked and looked, and I couldn't find a better netbook for the price in Canada.

nice battery life, fast cpu, super lightweight
battery - got this for the nice long battery life, i get around 4 to 8 hrs on full performance power setting, and around 14 hrs much for the whole day on balanced power setting. i also wanted something really lightweight specially convenient for travelling and on-the-road without plugging in the A/C cord. i was thinking if i should get the more expensive 1005PE-PU17-BU with the claim of "Up to 14 Hours of Battery Life" for longer battery but i saw some reviews in CNET that it also just lasts around 8 hrs on full power, so it's not much difference except that 1005PE-PU17 has bluetooth.

operating system - express gate with its own power button is nice, i wanted to triple boot this with linux (i prefer kubuntu - kde ubuntu) but in my research i found out the express gate power button will lose its functionality. so i opted to just create a usb flash drive with kubuntu and modify boot bios settings to boot first usb drives if present. works great, it's fast in kubuntu. if i want to use windows 7 or express gate, i just remove the usb flash drive. only problem is once i boot again to win7, bios will set it back to original settings with local hard disk as primary boot OS. wish there's a way to make the bios config as permanent to seek USB flash first, then HDD second.

keyboard - up, down, left, right keys are too close to each other, i keep pressing the control key instead with my big fingers. it would be nice if they made them standard size and spacing, even just for the arrow jeys. although the function key beside the arrow keys are convenient for quick navigation, i've quickly learned it's convenient to just press with two fingers the combination keys FN + left arrow (for home), FN + up arrow (for page up), FN + down arrow (for page down), or FN + right (for end). there's also another FN key on the left side of the keyboard.

exterior finish - nice and pretty. glossy top cover and granular finish at the bottom. but fingerprints mark easily the glossy finish. i wouldn't mind if the top was also granular same as the bottom.

cpu power - the 1005PE's N450 cpu is better than N270 or N280.

recovery - F9 recovery is easy to do, just make sure you figure out how to backup that hidden recovery partition coz i haven't figured which is the best way to do it still. will probably copy the whole partition via kubuntu dd commands. but the eeepc forums do make a valid argument, why is there no DVD recovery included in the box, this is in case the hard disk totally fails and the recovery partition is corrupted also.

useful recommendations -
1) google for pendrivelinux for more info on USB flash drive linux. download Universal USB Installer and select your flavor of linux, i prefer kubuntu in all my computers, dual or triple booting with several OS (windows, kubuntu, fedora). kubuntu 10.04 LTS (LTS=long term support) is the latest version. there's also kubuntu netbook edition but it's just the same as the full version, only essential packages are included in netbook edition. but even using full kubuntu version works well with my asus eeepc 1005PE.
2) go to [...] for lots of info regarding your eeepc netbook, there's one specially for the 1005PE. asus also has its forum and knowledgebase website for eeepc.

Great value for your money
ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005PE-MU17-WT 10.1-Inch White Netbook - Up to 11 Hours of Battery Life

I've had it for about a month and so far so good, this little thing delivers.

Pros: the screen is very bright and glossy finish is beautiful. The battery life is amazing, I regularly get 5 hours or so watching videos on fullscreen with low power settings, while around 7 to 8 hours surfing the Web. The Atom N450 processor works like a charm and the computer doesn't get hot at all, which is great. The weight is also splendid, perfect to carry around effortlessly. Webcam is ok, nothing fancy there & the keyboard is very responsive and you do not need to adapt to it at all thanks to the great design.

Cons: As for the small drawbacks, the touchpad isn't great. Your fingers can easily slip off of it but you get used to it. The 1 big touchpad button instead of 2 isn't great either & a bit hard to click, so there is room for improvement. The stereo output, coming from under the front end sounds good as it's on a flat surface, otherwise it can sometime sound uneven.

Other comments: I can't comment on Windows 7 Starter as I installed Windows 7 Ultimate right out of the box which is running perfectly. The 1GB memory seems perfectly fine, although you can somewhat notice that 2GB wouldn't hurt either. Also, I bought the white edition and it looks very good, doesn't look toyish at all.


Conclusion: The value for the money here is simply amazing, if you're looking for a netbook, you have to consider the EEE seriously. This is without a doubt, the most well rounded of its class available on the market today.