Customer Reviews

ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005PE-PU27-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook (Up to 14 Hours of Battery Life)

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is the exact same netbook as the ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005PE-PU17-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook (Up to 14 Hours of Battery Life). The only difference is the cover, which is a matte black slightly rubbery material. There is a slight price premium, but I believe it is worth it as it attracts no finger prints and it appears it would scratch less. The inside, however is still the same glossy plastic as the other models.

Impressions So Far:

Very good tiny computer. Easy to use. Using the specs below, the following run fine: HULU 360p videos (slight stutter depending on computer load and connection speed), Open Office, 700~MB (avi) files, etc. High Def movie files 720p or greater stutter and can't be played. 480p Hulu videos will play, but it will be choppy. Computer stays cool. Contrast appears washed out if not viewed from a limited angle range. Keyboard and track pad are both very easy to use. 8.5 hours of battery under full load. It is an excellent netbook, but I gave it four stars because I feel the viewing angles could've been better and I wish the overclock setting on super performance mode was a little higher. You can overclock even more using third party software, and it will improve video playback, but it's a hassle. Don't expect the same processing power as a larger laptop or desktop and you will definitely not be disappointed.


Useful Information:

There are pages of reviews covering most of the technical aspects of this machine, so I will focus on what was the most difficult information for me to find on my own once I decided to purchase. I realize that many of you may not be technically savvy, so I will try to be detailed as possible.

What to Purchase

ASUS 1005PE-PU27 (Obviously)
Kingston ValueRAM 2 GB 800MHz DDR2 CL5 SODIMM Notebook Memory KVR800D2S5/2G (Optional)
SanDisk Extreme III 4 GB Class 6 SDHC Flash Memory Card SDSDRX3-4096-A21 (Optional)
*Edit* A few people commented they had trouble using the previously recommended Transcend 4 GB Class 6 SDHC card for ReadyBoost.
Although I had no problems using this product for Ready Boost, I have changed the recommended card to the above. YMMV. Thank you.

What to Do Once You Receive

1) Insert battery. Charge for 8 hours. Most people say Li-Ion batteries do not require conditioning. This is probably true, but the manual explicitly states to do this. Conditioning means that you will charge the battery to capacity and run it empty a few times. At best this will give the maximum amount of battery charge over the life of the battery. At worst, you won't be able to play with your new netbook for 8 hours.
Running the battery to 0% once in a while will also help maintain the accuracy of the battery meter. Remember this computer will auto shut off once at about 10%. Turn it back on and use until 0%.

2) Once fully charged, turn the computer on and follow the instructions. It is very straight forward. Select language, time, etc. This will take a few minutes as it finishes installing everything. Be patient.

3) Once you get to your desktop you can proceed to remove bloatware. What is bloatware? The extra programs delivered with the computer that at best take up space, and at worst, slows down your computer. Go to the "start menu" (little windows icon on lower left) and select "control panel". Under "programs" click the link that says "uninstall a program". This will bring up a list of all the programs you have installed on your computer.

This is all optional and may be harmful to your computer if done incorrectly. Please proceed with caution. Highlight the program you would like to remove and click on the "uninstall/remove" button on the top bar. Click yes to any menu. Each uninstall will take a few minutes. I removed the Trend Micro Antivirus, anything that says Microsoft Office (like 6 items), and the Chicken game and game client. These are all trialware and not very good. I will tell you what to use instead later.

*Next Steps require internet connection*

4) Go to your Asus docking menu. It's the menu on the top of the screen. Go to "Eee Tools" (last one) and click. Choose Live Update. Update whatever files it tells you to (it was just Vibe for me).


5) Update your Bios. You would think it would be part of Asus Live Update but it's not. Go to your "start menu". Click on "All Programs". Click on the "Asus" folder. Choose the "AsusUpdate for Eee PC" folder and click on the "ASUSUpdate" icon. A gold and silver menu will appear. Choose update through internet and follow the directions. Choose the latest Bios version and update. Simple.

6) If you are upgrading your RAM do so at this point. There are a lot of people complaining about RAM upgrading issues. Follow these instructions and you will be ok. Purchase the RAM mentioned above. It works and Amazon sells it. Why do the Crucial ones have so many problems? It could be they are CL6 and you need a CL5. It could be the older BIOS. It could be a lot of other things. Just buy the Kingston 2GB 800MHZ DDR2 CL5. Why risk the headache? It ships free from Amazon and it's about the same price.

Restart your computer. As soon as it turns on, click on F2 a couple times. You will get into the "BIOS SETUP UTILITY". Use your arrow keys to go right until you reach the "Boot" menu. Press down until you reach "Boot Booster". Press enter. Choose "Disabled" and enter. Click right to "Exit" menu. Choose "Exit & Save Changes".

Turn off your computer.

Turn it over. Use a phillips head screw driver to unscrew the small rectangular cover on the bottom. Remove the cover. You will see the RAM module with two metal clips on each side. Make sure you have no static charge on your hands. Use your thumbs to gently push the clips outwards to the side. Use your other finger to gently lift the top of the module up towards you. It should pop up so the module is now at a 45 degree angle. Pull the module out carefully. Take the new 2GB module and insert it in the same angle making sure its fully in. Don't push too hard. Just make sure its in. Then gently push the module down flat. The clips will fall into place automatically. Replace cover and screw.

Turn on the computer and get into the "BIOS SETUP UTILITY" again pressing the F2 key. "Enable" Boot Booster using the same steps as above. Start the computer as usual. You are done. RAM recognized. No shutdown errors corded or battery. Yay.

7) ReadyBoost (Optional) - ReadyBoost is a nifty little feature on Windows Vista and 7 that let's you use a solid state device like flash drives or sd cards to cache data instead of using your hard drive. Basically it may make your computer faster. 4GB is the most you can allocate, so anymore than this and you will use the rest of the space as extra storage. The ASUS comes with a little slot for SDHC cards so that is what I used.

Insert the SDHC card. Click on the "Computer" icon on your desktop. Right click on the storage drive. Should be "Removable Disk E:". Choose "format". "FAT 32" "Quick Format" "Start".

Right click again on the "Removable Disk E:" and choose "Properties" (last one). You should see a series of tabs on the top. Choose "ReadyBoost" "Dedicate the device to ReadyBoost". "OK" Done.

If you ever want to not use the SD card for ReadyBoost, then go to the "ReadyBoost" tab and click on the "Do not use this device" option.

8. How to change your wallpaper. Windows 7 Starter doesn't let you. But it doesn't mean you can't. Go to your ASUS Docking Menu again. The one on top. Choose "Eee Tools" and then select "System Setting". It will bring you to a wallpaper options page. You can select one image or a slide show.

You don't have a "System Setting" option? Don't panic. Apparently some computers do not come with this function installed. Do not install third party wallpaper managers. I don't think I can post links, but here [...]. Run this and it will put the System Setting option in your dock. If the link didn't post, you can find it on the ASUS website. It's called SystemSetting_Setup-1_1_0_8.zip under Utilities. Enjoy!

9. What programs should you replace the Microsoft Office and Trend Micro Anti Virus with? I chose Open Office. It's free and it does everything MS Office does. Google it. For antivirus, Microsoft offers a free one that is actually very good. It's called Microsoft Security Essentials. You can search for it too.

Another free program I like to use is Picassa. It's a photo viewing and editing tool made by Google.

If you like to watch movies and such the following is really important. Search for and install K-Lite Codec Pack. It basically puts in all the various video codecs so you can play most video and audio files.

Finally, I installed Fire Fox as my default browser. I feel IE is very slow.

10. You can now run windows update and update everything you need to. If you still see MS Office updates, that means you didn't delete all the Office programs.

11. Finally, ASUS comes with the hard drive in two partitions. This means instead of having one 250GB hard drive you have one C: boot drive (100GB) and one partitioned D: drive (120~GB). If you're fine with this then ok. Leave it alone. If you want to make it into one drive read on.

The following may be dangerous. Don't do it if you don't want to risk reinstalling everything from disk.
DON'T USE any third party programs like Partition Wizard. Windows 7 has its own tool.

Go to "Control Panel" > "System and Security" > "Administrative Tools" > "Create and format hard disk partitions"

Click on your "(D:)" drive and select the "X" (delete) on top. You now have one C: 100GB drive. Don't panic. *Make sure you don't have any data on D: first*

Click on your "(C:)" drive. Right click and choose "Extend Volume". It will bring you to another menu telling you the amount you can expand. Just press OK. You should now have one drive C: with 222.87GB.

12. OK that's it for now. I hope this helps any of you. If you find any mistakes or suggestions, I will edit. Thanks.

One last thing. Probably most of you know this, but just in case. The F keys have different functions such brightening or dimming your screen, controlling volume, etc. To use these you must press a Fn key in addition to the above. The Fn keys are located on either side of the keyboard.

After doing quite a bit of research, I decided to purchase this Netbook. This is even after highly considering the PU17 which as mentioned earlier comes with a recovery disk but not the nice matte soft touch exterior. The reason this specific model does not come with a recovery disk is because there is one-touch recovery built in which will restore the PC to its original state from files which are located on the hard drive. From my understanding, people better start getting used to this since it seems to be where every manufacturer is going. I also chose to install Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit instead of sticking with the Starter Edition (see ya later bloatware!!!) which runs very very well on only 1GB of RAM. I have the 2GB upgrade coming this week (just make sure you get a RAM with CL=5). The reason I didn't install 64-bit is because you can't use more than 2GB of memory and also because I didn't want to have any driver issues. In the end, it makes very little difference. So far it seems that Win7 Ultimate even runs better and smoother than the Starter version, mostly due to the removal of all the crapware that comes pre-installed.

Couple of things to note: I installed the new OS using a bootable flash drive due to the lack of a CD/DVD Rom Drive (You can make any basic flash drive bootable). Also, when I was installing the new OS, there were 4 partitions on the HDD. Two of the partitions were your basic space allocated to storing installed programs/data storage etc, however, there was also 10GB and 17MB partitions which from my understanding contain recovery files. To be safe, just leave these partitions alone.

All in all, I am very happy with this Netbook and am glad I purchased it.

P.S. - BOO to all the people giving negative reviews because of their own ignorance! Ex: The description clearly states that there is no Recovery DVD included in the box! Do your homework people!

P.P.S. - Google is your friend!

I just paid $340 for this netbook, and it was well worth the money. I bought it for my wife to use around the house, and to take with her to class. Once she got used to using the smaller 'laptop' she loves it. I did all the research I could and came down to the fact that this was the best buy. The build quality, features (including Bluetooth!), low heat output, and excellent battery life I've seen on it so far make me feel like I could've paid $400 for it.

The first thing I did was try a recovery using the hidden partition. You basically don't need any CD like the one review complained about. The recovery partition acts as your restore cd. The 3 step directions are in the short user manual on how to use it. I restored it to factory settings in about 15 minutes, just to try it out.

Next thing I did was clean up all the extra add-on softare. There's plenty to remove so try out everything first, then decide what you can remove to free up some resources.

Another intersting feature is the 'instant on' feature. It's like another power button, but boots right into a menu that will open a basic web browser and let you get on the internet, all without ever having to wait to boot into Windows. I could see her using it to quickly jump on and look up something.

Adding another 1GB of RAM would probably be nice, but she's not crunching anything intensive on this thing to make it worthwhile. If you're doing a lot of multi-tasking you probably want a beefier laptop anyway. Maybe down the road when the RAM is $20 we'll throw it in, but she's only doing one or two things at a time anyway.

I'm an IT professional and would recommend this over anything else right now to those looking for a netbook. You won't find anything else that compares at this price range.

Purchased this computer for my wife before we travelled to europe so she could stay in touch with her 92 year old father thru Skype. It works fine except for the inevitable MS upgrades that you have to buy seperately. But that's the MS curse we are all familiar with.

Did decide and would strongly recommend the upgrade to 2GB RAM. Since I'm a clueless, wannabe techie I did figure out how to install the RAM. It's quite simple. However, getting MS Windows 7 to recognize it is another trick no one told me about. But I finally "fingered" it out.

I bought the Kingston 2GB upgrade from Amazon and the install went without a hitch. When I turned the netbook on and went into the properties of the computer it didn't recognize the new RAM and only showed the original 1GB. Finally found some online help that talked about accessing BIOS on startup, which I did. But then what do you do? Finally discovered that once BIOS accessed (through F2 key at start up) just had to F10 and save changes. Now the RAM is recognized by MS Windows 7.

My wife and I each already have an ASUS EEE 1000HA and we both love it. My daughter had been "borrowing" mine for a while and we just bought the 1005PE-PU27-BK for her. After initial set up, I let her use it for about a week and then she started trying to convince me to trade with her.

CONS as she sees it:

1. The display is rather dim. Even adjusting the display with the [Fn][brightness] keys to the maximum, the display isn't nearly as bright as the 1000HA.

2. See #1.


We traded. I'm happy -- and I feel like I just stole her chocolate dessert when she wasn't looking.

PROS as I see it:

1. There are two power buttons: one is for "normal" boot and the other is for "instant boot" that comes up in very short order and provides access to the web, Skype, and so forth. Since one of the main reasons I wanted a netbook was to quickly look things up on the web while watching a movie (Hey, where have we seen that actor before?), the instant boot is really nice.

1.a. There is minimal storage when you do the instant boot; enough to store bookmarks.

2. Twice the hard drive of the 1000HA (250GB versus 120GB).

3. The hard drive comes pre-partitioned into two main partitions: C:\ for the operating system, and D:\ for your data (as a system administrator at work, this is a good thing).

3. Thinner than the 1000HA, but feels just as solid.


CONS as I see it:

1. Windows 7 Starter. This certainly isn't ASUS' fault -- given the price difference I don't blame them for putting Starter on. However, Windows 7 Starter is entirely too restrictive. Before purchasing, research Windows 7 Starter and see if it is right for you.

1.a. A non-technical friend also bought an ASUS with Windows Starter 7. When Starter-7 wouldn't allow her to change the background image, she had her daughter put Mint Linux on the system.

1.b. I ended up using the D:\ partition and making the system dual boot Windows and Fedora 13 Linux. I spend nearly all my time in Linux (or instant on -- which is probably a stripped down Linux).

2. The brightness (or lack there of) on the screen is going to get to me at some point. The 1000HA is usable outside, I doubt the 1005PE will be.

I bought this netbook with one purpose in mind, I wanted something I could carry to various meetups, conferences, and code camps so I wouldn't have to lug around my 15" notebook. I didn't buy this replace my notebook or my desktop, but simply to have something small to carry around in certain situations.

This device performs that task flawlessly. At a couple of recent events I was able to take notes, give presentations, and do quick website checks without having to worry about 1) weight and 2) battery life.

I did upgrade this machine's RAM to 2GB (I recommend anyone else buying do the same), and I also formatted the Windows install off and installed Ubuntu's Netbook Remix. Overall I couldn't be happier with this netbook. There are better netbooks out there, but for the battery life, this is one the best ones you can buy.

I've had this netbook for about a month and I'm very pleased. I had a laptop before with a Celeron chip. I'm using the Atom N450 which performs quicker than the Celeron. In addition, I've found the 10" screen to be very bright and easy to see with optimum resolution. It comes with Windows 7 Starter. To increase performance, I eliminated any bloatware. Although the 1GB ram that comes with it is sufficient, I increased it to 2GB and noticed a substantial gain in performance. All in all, the quality of the Asus surpasses a lot of the other netbooks in its class.

I got this netbook for my round-the-world trip. I'm a month into my trip and it's been great so far. I love the matte finish on my netbook, but it doesn't look like this model is available on Amazon anymore.

Initially, I went nuts by installing Photoshop Elements and a bunch of other programs that I knew it probably wouldn't handle well and it slowed the computer down quite a bit. However, I have since then removed all of those programs have have only left the programs that I know I'll need. To beef up my netbook, I followed the advice from reviewer "Turtle James", including the recommended upgrade to 2GB of RAM. (Thanks James.)

If you're looking for a reliable, super portable netbook (and not a more powerful notebook), then this one is fantastic. If portability and power are what you need, then you might need to spend upwards of $2000 to buy an ultra-portable notebook by Toshiba or Samsung.

A little slow out of the box but that was expected with the specs. Immediately upgraded to 2GB of ram. Great computer with great battery life. No cons yet except for the mediocrity of windows starter.

I purchased this netbook in connection with my current trip to the Philippines. Very convenient, light. I can just imagine how much difficulties I would have endured if instead I'm lugging my laptop. No problem connecting with Wifi's. The problem is when only a broadband exists as it happened in some places; I wish I know how to connect with it (the broadband).

I charge the battery full each time but the indicator fluctuates between 8-10 hours. No 14-hour battery life as advertized. Also, I doubt if the indicated hours is reality-based because I noticed sometimes that the charge goes out faster than its indicated content. It's okay with routine works but sometimes more juice is needed and there's nowhere to recharge. Is Asus willing to accept a return for exhange or is the same kind of battery available and affordable to purchase? By the way, I have not added memory or anything to the item.

Another gripe: In using Works/Wordpad/Notepad for wordprocessing, the cursor has a way of jumping all over the place (indiscriminately) without intent on my part such that inputting a text in a sentence in one place would suddenly have its continuation written in another place on the same page.