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Asus Eee PC 1201N-PU17-BK 12.1 inch Intel Atom 330/2 GB/250 GB/W7HP Netbook Computer (Black)

User Reviews about ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1201N-PU17-BK 12.1-Inch Black Netbook - 5 Hours of Battery Life

This netbook has already been replaced by the 1215N so I'm not sure how useful a full review is, but my experience has been exactly as predicted after reading online reviews before purchasing it. I wanted a netbook with a bigger screen resolution and this fit the bill. The battery life is not great, especially when running Linux (Ubuntu 10.04 fwiw), but I knew that beforehand and 3-3.5 hours is good enough for me. If you want more, this netbook is not for you. It's plenty quick enough as a general purpose PC, running Windows 7 and Ubuntu with no problems, and the nVidia Ion GPU means full HD videos are no problem. The keyboard takes a little getting used to but is accurate and quite light. It gets excellent wireless connections compared to other laptops. The screen is very pretty but very reflective... it would be MUCH better with a matte screen. I don't care much for the ultra-glossy fingerprint-magnet finish, but that's a minor gripe. Overall I'm very happy. -- Good buy if you know what you're buying

Yeah it's pretty good.. but it doesn't last the 5 hours like the title says.. it lasts about 4 if you're lucky. The performance is okay, considering it's a Netbook and all. But the images look great, it's a pretty good price for a nice computer that you will use for traveling and such. -- It's good...

From the point of view of a non-gaming business user, this little machine offers extreme portability and reasonable battery life with no serious performance compromises. As of mid-summer 2010, it was the best value I found in the "high-end" netbook category. As I will describe below, I was able to tune it up to serve as my primary machine.

My understanding is that major industry players have colluded to keep options meagre and performance limited for "high-end" netbooks. Unfortunately, this machine is no exception. It is burdened with various performance draining options out-of-the-box. I got significant performance gains with tweaks such as disabling visual effects (right click on desktop... personalize), bloatware bootup (command prompt... msconfig), and search indexing per various online forums. But the most egregious hog seems to be "Boot Booster," which has unnoticeable effect on boot speed but eats up 1.2 of your 2GB memory. Get a PC-savvy friend to help with your tuneup if you're uncomfortable with tasks like changing BIOS settings!

As many have suggested, I also set up "ReadyBoost" on an 8GB SDHC card (originally from my camera). This supposedly helps the machine avoid frequent reads on the harddrive, though I haven't noticed a huge difference even with many programs and browser windows open. Still, ReadyBoost is a quick and cheap way to juice up the machine, esp since there is no way to install more memory. The only potential gotcha there is having to format your SDHC card to NTFS first (if it's larger than 4GB) to fully use its capacity.

My last gripe is the highly reflective screen. If there's any hint of sun in your work environment, you'll see your face better than the contents of your work. I was able to find a protective anti-glare sticker from an eBay merchant in Hong Kong that essentially solves that issue.

I realize all of this may sound like a pain. But it is worth juicing up this machine to happily replace a clunker laptop on the road. It's so light, I have to check to make sure I have it in my bag sometimes! After five weeks of near-daily use, I give it four stars assuming performance tweaks and glare fix. -- Extreme portability for the business user, but needs tweaking for primetime