INBOX:LAPTOPS HAVE been with us for many years now and, since their arrival PC makers have been trying to work out the best way to shrink them still further.
First they tried making them just plain smaller. Ignoring the size of human fingers, some, like Sony, shrank them to eye-wateringly small sizes.
Next they flattened them, and thus we got the MacBook Air which famously slid effortlessly into an A4 envelope.
Now Asus has come up with a new take on this theme – an ultra-thin netbook.
The Asus Eee PC 1008HA – otherwise known as the Seashell – appeared at the CeBit show last March. It has curves like the MacBook Air and, although it’s not as thin, it’s heading in that direction.
It also has something which is increasingly reminiscent of the newer MacBooks – a built-in battery that you can’t take out and replace. That may mean it does not appeal to everyone. But fear not, an alternative model, the 1005H, will have a removable battery and will also be cheaper. The catch is that it will be thicker and heavier than its skinny cousin.
The integrated battery may not appeal to some but that makes it larger, affording a very reasonable four or five, perhaps even up to seven hours’ runtime if you do the usual things like dimming the screen and switching off WiFi.
If the battery dies inside 12 months Asus will collect the 1008HA, fit an new power pack and return the machine.
The 1008HA has 160GB hard drive and Asus’ Super Hybrid Engine utility, which is a long-winded way of saying you can slow down or boost the 1.66GHz Atom N280 processor, which has 1GB of memory to play with. So Super Performance mode will make its cheap Atom chip run at 1.71GHz. To save power and get more battery life you can instead run it at 1.4GHz.
The Seashell’s screen is a fairly standard 10inch gloss LED screen with an inbuilt 1.3Mp webcam and two microphones to improve Skype calls. What’s nice about this netbook is that it has a full-sized keyboard which extends almost the full width of the machine.
It has two USB ports, Ethernet, a 3.5 audio in, headphones port, and a VGA connector.
At around €441, it’s a tad over the usual Netbook prices, but then this is slim, portable and quite powerful. In fact, if you want a really slim netbook, the 1008HA is the only game in town
