ASUS Eee PC 1008HA Netbook Now Available for Ordering on Amazon

I have written before about tiny "netbook" computers. You can read my earlier article, Is a $400 Netbook Useful?, at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2008/12/is-a-400-netboo.html.  I took my 2.2-pound MSI netbook to the recent NGS Conference and demo'ed this newsletter to many conference attendees on the tiny system. Now Amazon is accepting orders for what appears to be the hottest new netbook on the market but is not yet promising a ship date.

ASUS Eee PC 1008HA is being sold for $409.99 and includes Windows XP, a 160 gigabyte hard drive, one gigabyte of memory (expandable to two gigabytes) and a 10-inch screen. It also includes built-in wi-fi wireless networking, a wired ethernet networking connection, and a 1.66 gigahertz Atom CPU (central processor). It has a keyboard that is 92% the size of a standard keyboard which should be sufficient to meet the needs of touch typists. It also has a 9.5-hour battery! Yes, you can use it for nine and a half hours before charging it.

Like most netbooks, the ASUS Eee PC 1008HA does not include a CD-ROM drive. However, most netbook owners load software from a jump drive, from a plug-in external CD-ROM drive or from another computer by across a network connection. I have never had any reason to miss the CD-ROM drive in my MSI Wind netbook; I suspect the same will be true for the ASUS Eee PC 1008HA.

This tiny system is more than powerful enough to run any Windows genealogy program being sold today.

Amazon is now taking orders but is not yet promising a ship date. Most items that appear on Amazon do ship within 30 to 60 days but there is always a chance that this one might be an exception.

The ASUS Eee PC 1008HA is available in white or in black. Click on the links for more details.

Comments

[Bob Coret]

Amazons product page says the battery lasts 6 hours?
Eee 1000HE’s battery can deliver 9.5 hours (no personal experience).

[Karl Johnson]

I recently purchased the ASUS PC1000 and upgraded the memory to 2Gbytes. I have MS Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint), GenSmarts, The Master Genealogist, Second Site 3.0 and Clooz installed for genealogy work and Adobe Lightroom 2.3 for photography work. It is a little slower than my Gateway desktop but more than sufficient for what I need.

I also have a external CD/DVD drive for doing data backups and program installation.

BTW, I purchased the unit at Best-But for about $350.