Asus Eee PC 1000HE
Asus started the netbook craze with its tiny, 7-inch Eee PC. Shortly thereafter, every notebook manufacturer except Apple produced at least one tiny and inexpensive laptop just like it. Nowadays, netbooks are not that tiny anymore - little by little they have increased in size from 7" via 9" and now the standard screen size of a netbook is 10 inches. Even a couple of 12-inch models have been released.
Hardware
What they all have in common is the hardware - with a few deviations it consists of an Intel Atom CPU at 1.6GHz, 1GB or RAM, a 160GB hard drive and integrated GMA950 graphics. The Eee PC, however, has been upgraded with an ever so slightly faster 1.66GHz Atom processor and a higher 667MHz FSB speed instead of earlier models which had 533MHz.
The speed increase is not big enough to be noticeable, but you might feel better purchasing an upgraded model. Asus' main selling point with the 1000HE is the battery life. According to the manufacturer, you should be able to keep it alive for 9.5 hours without resorting to an outlet. To achieve this formidable battery life, you need to use aggressive power-saving schemes, no Wi-Fi and turn the brightness all the way down. In our general usage test it still delivered more than 7 hours, which is still more than acceptable.
Design
As far as the design goes, the Eee PC 1000 HE stays with the concept we've seen in previous Eee netbooks. The keyboard is almost full size (92%) and the trackpad buttons are slightly tilted in the front. The entire casing of the netbook is glossy, which enhances the overall look but also attracts fingerprints easily.
On the whole, the design of the 1000HE focuses on usability; it's not spectacularly thin like some of its siblings, such as Asus S101 netbook, but it certainly gets the job done with flying colors. Besides, keeping the design simple also helps keep the price to a minimum, which is often the deciding factor for a netbook buyer.
Connectivity and Features
The ports have been placed on the left- and right-hand sides of the laptop - none at the back. On the right is a memory card reader, 2 USB and VGA and on the left is another USB port, Ethernet, and audio line in/out.
Asus G50VT
Dedicated gaming laptops are not that common, and for good reason; the hardware required to play high-end games takes up a fair amount of space, the components require more power - resulting in shorter battery life, and they are usually very pricey. Our review sample however, is an exception to the last rule, as it's the Best Buy edition of the Asus G50vt - more specifically named G50 VT-X1.
It's equipped with a somewhat slower Core 2 Duo processor than the regular model and you will have to settle for one hard drive instead of two, but it still has the most important component from a gamer's perspective, and that would of course be the Nvidia 9800M graphics card.
At 7.3 pounds, the G50 is quite heavy for a 15" laptop, but considering that most laptops with these specs come in 17-inch frames, it's actually a "thin and light" gaming laptop (relatively speaking).
If the funky patterns and LED lights aren't enough to hint at this being a gaming laptop, the "Republic of Gamers" logo might. For some the design might stand out a bit too much, but it clearly has a lot of personality.
Gaming Performance and Benchmarks
But let's move on to the important parts of the test: benchmarks and gaming performance. The Vista Experience Index has never felt entirely relevant, especially on newer models, as the score often maxes out at 5.9. Our G50 actually scored a 5.9 on everything but the CPU, which stayed at 5.2. In PCMark Vantage it got 3935 points, and in 3DMark Vantage E8541 - both very impressive figures.
To try out some games, we fired up Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3 and FEAR. All of them were fully playable of course. FEAR delivered an average framerate of 45 FPS on high detail settings and 1024x768. UT 3 was no problem either - the framerate stayed between 50-60 FPS with fully maxed out settings. Crysis presented more of a challenge. To achieve comfortable framerates we had to turn the settings down to 1024x768 and medium quality to get around 33 FPS.
Asus also provides a utility to do some "extreme overclocking." This only applies to the CPU and doesn't affect gaming performance by much, however. We noticed an increase of about 2 frames per second with the utility turned on.
All things considered, the G50VT X1 is a great laptop for gamers on a budget. The only issue we had was with the LCD, which didn't provide high enough resolution and had slightly washed-out colors.
Asus G50VT Technical Specifications
* Processor 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
* Memory 4GB DDR2
* Harddrive 320GB
* OS Windows Vista Home Premium
* Weight 7.3 lbs
* Screen 15.6
* Screen resolution 1368x768
* Graphic Card Nvidia 9800M GS
* Battery Life 1.5-2 hrs
