ASUS Eee PC 1201N-PU17-SL Silver Intel Atom N330(1.60 GHz) 12.1" WXGA 2GB Memory 250GB HDD NetBook

Pros: This net book performs great aside from the defects I experienced. This review is totally based on ASUS RMA dept.

Cons: RMA Dept. is the worst!!! I'm on my 3rd RMA in the 6 weeks I've owned this thing. This would have all been avoided if Asus would have just issued me a new unit. I was with in the grace period for a replacement however it seems to be Asus policy to keep issuing repair tickets till the 30day replacement period has passed. Now I'm stuck with this MUTT of a laptop with who knows how many refurbed/used parts in it. I only wanted what i paid for, A NEW WORKING LAPTOP! Not a patched up used repair job. Not to mention the Techs stripped the screws pretty good and put a ton of surface scratches on it. This is by far the worst experience I've ever had with a online purchase/RMA.

Overall Review: I have been buying ASUS products for years now but never had to RMA until now. After this unforgettable experience I will have to sadly stop buying Asus products in fear of their RMA procedures. Also note that when speaking to RMA persons. If they say they will have a manager call you back, don't believe it! I played that game for over a week with them. I called back every day just to hear the same song and dance about how a manager would call me back in X amount of time and I never received a call from a manager... or anyone for that matter! Very unprofessional!

Pros: Lightweight, responsive, good battery life, beautiful bright (glossy) screen.

Cons: 1. hinge can't open past ~135deg 2. cheap pen tip size plastic dots used to enforce #1 easily accidentally broken using normal opening force 3. usb & power ports fragile, fear weight/force on ports causing damage. 4. "One hand carying" by palm rest when open consistently cause chassis bend enough that unit won't sit flat on table. Fix is flexing it back, not good! 5. extremely rear heavy, easily tips backwards 6. HOT! single exhaust only port (no intakes) under palm rest. Slightest obstruction by hand/sleeve/etc leads to drastically elevated temps, potential unit overheat & shortened component life. 7. Enertronix PSU brick hot, know to be unreliable. Consumer pays shipping on warranty replacement 8. No official Asus DC-DC car adapter nor any officially endorsed brands. Caveat Emptor buying cheap China 19V/2.1A/40W generics 9. Bloatware galore; custom reinstall w/ unbranded media works but renders recovery partition useless without more work

Overall Review: Overall this is a great little unit marred by some glaring issues that likely plague the netbook segment. Some are forgivable, others just simply unacceptable! From researching after failure it's clear the PSU is a known issue which Asus should recall & offer free replacement with Delta brick, it's not and they still ship with flawed PSU. Hinge stop construction + bendable frame are spots where a little more metal goes a long way and Asus clearly drops the ball here. Choices with the cooling baffle me since there are solutions if they spent a few $$$ more on the designg. I DO recommend this with reservation because I still think it's top of the netbook segment yet must say "shame on you Asus" for not putting a little more work into was is very nice and quite expensive unit by comparison to other netbooks & low end laptops!

Pros: This netbook is extremely nice. It's smooth, runs great. and beats ALL the other netbooks. I've used a HP Mini 211, and the somewhat equal to the 1201N HP 311. and the Asus 1201N beats all of them. The Dual Core N330 makes a large difference over the Mini 311, some say the CPU's aren't much different, but they are. It adds that little bit that makes TRUE multi-tasking as normal as most regular PC's or laptops. I'd get this over the 311 for sure. The ION graphics are limited by the slow CPU, so that helps this beat any other ion netbook.

Cons: None, maybe that it was to expensive. I'd like to have got a Sleeve, or some sort of case with it instead of the paper towel like cover it was in.

Overall Review: GET THE SILVER ONE. I wanted black, and struggled with the decision for days.. The black one looks good, but EVERY single time you touch it you leave a fingerprint. I think the Silver looks much better, and doesn't show marks. It's hard to tell, but the SILVER one has a brushed Aluminum look to the top, and inside. It's plastic with a glossy coat, but it looks like it's brushed aluminum. Makes it look very sharp, and worth more than the black! Oh, and Portal, TF2, CS, and many games run great on this thing, even overclocked to 1.85 Ghz with only 2c heat increase

Pros: I wanted something lighter than my HP tablet notebook. The processor is fast for a netbook, and the Nvidia Ion Graphics work great for 1080P video, even better than my HP notebook. I've watched several Netflix streaming videos flawlessly. The 12" screen is a nice compromise to a notebook's larger screen. It's brighter than my HP Tablet's screen. I'm glad I have windows 7 premium instead of the starter edition of Windows 7. You can do so much more with it. The battery lasts for 4.5-5 hrs in power saver mode if I'm not working the processor too hard. The N330 is a nice processor, capable of running windows 7, 64-bit. I converted to Windows 7 64-bit version and upgraded the memory to 4GB, which sped up the netbook noticeably. It was easy to locate the 64-bit drivers online through simple searches. The built-in webcam works well. The speakers are typical netbook speakers, requiring external speakers or headphones to really enjoy music etc.. The keyboard is full sized and the keys a

Cons: I would have preferred a 500GB hard drive since I'm a Pro Photographer and use the netbook for my digital photography. 15MP photos use up hard drive space quickly. But if you're a normal user, 250GB is large by netbook standards. Upgrading the Hard drive is difficult for the common user, and likely voids your warranty, since it's built into the netbook, requiring disassembly to access the drive. My answer to that was the use of a 2.5" 500GB USB sata drive. Due to the design and close proximity of the touch-pad I often find myself inadvertently touching the touch-pad while typing, occasionally moving my cursor and typed text. Setting my mouse settings double-click speed to a faster setting helped the problem. It might be because I'm using the windows 64bit driver.

Overall Review: If you use the laptop on battery power, keeping your screen brightness to a dimmer setting improves the battery life. Upgrading memory to 4gb is useful if you are upgrading to 64-bit. The Hard drive has 2 partitions, so installing linux on the extra partition should be a breeze. I'll be Installing 64 bit Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic-Koala tomorrow. It's a much more secure operating system, and it's free. I've used the netbook's HDMI interface several times, to watch netflix videos on my 52" LCD TV. I spent 2 weeks researching netbooks before choosing this one. I couldn't be happier.

Pros: It's light weight, 12 inches screen and thin. It has Ion and Atom 330 in it. It plays 1080P youtube smooth like silk but you have to remove garbage software that come alone with it. If you are a software engineer like me, you can really do something great on this machine. CUDA is awsome on ION! You can do massive parallel programming on it.

Cons: Heat, heat, heat.... This netbook is hot, unfortunately I mean it literately. I have measured the CPU temp and it is around 59 - 65'C for a normal usage and 65 - 75'C for a heavy duty usage in a room temperature. I checked with INTEL, the up limit temp of ATOM 330 is 85'C. The temp here is in celcius instead of farenheight. So I don't know how is this gonna to affect the life expense on the processor. ASUS Engineers did a terrible job on the heat sink design, they used a copper conduct instead of heat pipes in this space limited machine with an aim of bringing down the total cost.

Overall Review: If you are a programmer and have to program in parallel on a CUDA platform, this machine is the most portable way to go. Otherwise you have to consider something like GeForce 330m. If ASUS could have used ATOM 550 instead of ATOM 330, I would say this netbook could have gone to a whole new stage.

Pros: Clear and Crisp Screen, Audio and Video great...works very well with Skype (Included software), Bluetooth connections easy and strong connect, small & light enough to carry in briefcase, I am using this for photography backup coming from shooting weddings, hard drive is pre-partitioned into C & D drive give me good organization for storing photos, SDHC card slot can be used with 32GB SDHC card for futher photo backup (or as a virtual memory device), all software works great, downloaded Thunderbird for email...no problems, downloaded Lightroom for photos...needed the RAM upgrade for better performance but there is no problem in the software, touch pad has a good feel to it,

Cons: Power module heats up quite a bit Power connector on the bottom of the laptop gets quite warm, I've added higher rubber feet to raise the laptop up another 1/2 inch to insure there is air flow...this is strictly preventive maintenance I've added another 2GB RAM, specifically for photo processing but has increased overall performance of the machine...IMO the RAM upgrade is necessary for top performance.

Overall Review: attery life is unknown...I run wifi, bluetooth and have the settings for performance so the 5 hour battery life I'm sure is not 5 hours for me.

Pros: With this being my first NetBook purchase I have been more than pleased. I did quite a bit of research before I made my decision, but what really made me confirm with this machine was the N330. Something about having a dual core chip in a NetBook was geekishly exciting. So far what this thing has been able to handle has been very impressive. The HDMI out has been very nice to have, at 720p the resolution from the book to my t.v. has been very crisp. I also have not seen a problem with running Windows Home Edition, which was also a selling point over the Starter Edition.

Cons: There are only a couple of cons I can really point out .. I absolutely disagree with these black gloss finish designs that seem to be so trendy. For this machine, around the screen area. The track pad absolutely sucks, do yourself a favor and purchase a wireless mouse .. or even wired for that matter as a replacement. On a personal level I wanted to see with some of my utilities and tools if it would be up to the task .. with seeing some usage spikes on the RAM side from this I will probably be increasing to four gigs. Again if your just using the machine for its intended purposes .. you should never have a problem with performance.

Overall Review: Asus makes great products hands down.

Pros: Performance (after installation of Windows 7 64 bit.) Light weight along with perfect size. I really like the glossy screen. The silver finish is classy and does not show fingerprints.

Cons: The keyboard is big and has a nice design but the keys feel a bit cheap when pressed. The trim panel around the keys does not fit flush. As stated by others the power cord looks thin and chinsy. The exhaust vent is located on the left side right where I hold it when laying down. Sluggish until I installed Windows 7 64 bit and got rid of the ASUS bloatware.

Overall Review: This is my third netbook and I really like it. I like the size, light weight, screen and performance. But I am concerned about how the trim piece around the keys fits. Had it not been for this issue I would have given it 5 eggs. I was intially disappointed with the performance. It seemed sluggish and slow. But I was prepared to install Windows 7 64 bit so I did that almost right away. Installing Windows 7 64 bit and getting rid of the bloatware solved my reservations. I had read about others recommending the 64 bit OS and I agree. It now feels a bit more like a higher end laptop and not like a standard netbook. I know I am the minority but I love glossy screens. Overall I am very happy with it.