ASUS Eee PC 1101HA

The Eee PC 1101HA is the latest model in ASUS’ ‘Seashell’ range of netbooks — the first, the Eee PC 1008HA, was announced last March. Like its sibling, the Eee PC 1101HA has a sleek, slimline chassis that’s clearly been inspired by the MacBook Air, but the design has been tweaked in several subtle ways to address usability and portability.

The most obvious change is that the Eee PC 1101HA is bigger and heavier than its forebear, though not by much. The weight has gone up from 1.1kg to 1.38kg, while the case has grown by several millimeters in every direction. The main reason for this extra bulk is the screen, but ASUS has dropped in a few other features to take advantage of the extra case space, too.

Netbook screens have traditionally topped out at 10”, but exceptions have been made — the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 had a 12.1”, 1280 x 800 screen, for example. ASUS has taken a similar tack with the Eee PC 1101HA, although it’s opted for an 11.6” LED-backlit display. Nonetheless, this still has a native resolution of 1366 x 768 and has no problem with tall dialog boxes or overly wide web pages.

The screen is bright and crisp, and visible at its lowest brightness setting — which is great for stretching battery life out. The problem is that the screen’s glossy coating means that reflections tend to obscure the image with the brightness set this low, and you’ll need it set to maximum if you want to use the Eee PC 1101HA outside. In other words, ASUS would have been far better off using a matte screen. They may not look so lush, but they are usable anywhere — and that’s an important feature for a netbook.

The other big change is that the Eee PC 1101HA has a removable battery — the Eee PC 1008HA’s was fixed. This arrangement is obviously preferable if you like to use a laptop long after its original battery has reached the end of its life, but the battery life is long enough to pretty much remove the need to carry a spare battery around ‘just in case’.

When running Battery Eater’s Classic test (heavy use), the Eee PC 1101HA’s 4400mAh battery lasted for an impressive six hours; in Reader test (light use) mode, it ran for eight hours and 10 minutes. This is impressive stuff, particularly when you consider that the Eee PC 1000 needed a bigger, heavier 6600mAh cell to achieve similar results.

Although ASUS has no doubt made across-the-board improvements to squeeze so much life out of so little battery, some of the credit must go to the Eee PC 1101HA’s Intel Atom Z520 processor. This frugal little chip consumes less power than the other netbook processor of choice, the Atom N270, but it’s also less powerful — 1.33GHz, compared to the 1.6GHz of the N270. The difference isn’t dramatic, but it was enough to render the Sony VAIO P Series pretty much unusable with Windows Vista. Fortunately, ASUS has sensibly stuck with Windows XP for the Eee PC 1101A, so the slower speed isn’t too pronounced.

Unfortunately, there’s another catch with the Atom Z520 processor — its associated chipset can’t handle more than 1Gb of RAM. So, while the single (already occupied) SODIMM slot will happily accept more than a 1Gb memory module, the computer will only recognise the first 1Gb.

ASUS hasn’t used the case chassis space to fit a larger keyboard, but the one on the Eee PC 1101HA is only a whisker away from full size anyway. The supplied PR photos don’t show it, but our model had full-size Return and Backspace keys, but half-size Shift keys — a minor annoyance. The keyboard itself is the traditional (rather than the chiclet) kind, and while the keyboard is flex-free, it feels oddly hollow. The wide, flat keys come to a sudden stop at the end of their travel too, and although this isn’t a big deal, it makes typing a little bit more of a chore than on some other netbooks. If you’re buying the Eee PC 1101HA for a lot of typing, it’s worth trying before buying — or at least buy online so that you can return it if you don’t like the keyboard.

At around £379 Inc VAT, the Eee PC 1101HA is well-priced and its large, high-resolution screen just about compensates for the underpowered Atom Z520 processor. It’s a bit too big to call a netbook and too puny to be considered a laptop (and it remains to be seen how the chip copes with Windows 7), but if you’re looking for a long-lasting and inexpensive portable for nothing more than standard productivity and internet tasks, it’s certainly a tempting proposition.