Asus 1008HA
The Asus 1008HA is an extraordinarily well designed netbook – and it’s much lighter and thinner than the vast majority of other netbooks out there. Asus have achieved this by making the battery non-replaceable (a move that Apple chose for it’s range of MacBook Pros) and it’s allowed them to make the netbook even more portable. Some people may not like the idea of not being able to change the battery (especially on long haul flights and the like) but it still has a very good battery life in between charges – around 4 hours if you’re browsing around on the Internet, sending emails and have a few small applications running (or 5.5 hours according to Asus, although that would involve having Wi-Fi off).
The 1008HA also mimics Apple’s MacBook Pros in another way – the trackpad allows for multi-touch gestures. It’s incredibly easy to pinch to zoom in and out of images, and multi-touch really makes every day tasks that little bit easier. The trackpad button takes some time to get used to, but once you’ve got it it’s great.
There’s also a suprisingly large amount of storage space, considering it’s a netbook, with a massive 250 GB hard-drive, capable of storing thousands of songs and hundreds of films. It’s really easy to pick up and take with you (as it’s designed to), and it looks amazing.
The only major downside to this netbook is that it’s not quite as fast as some of the others – it’s got a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N280 processor which, while not terrible, doesn’t keep up with some of the competition. That aside though, it’s a perfectly functional, very well designed and highly portable netbook that’s at a great price.
