ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1201N PU17 SL 12 1 Inch Silver Netbook 5 Hours of Battery Life

Seemingly crafted by nature itself, the Eee PC Seashell draws its inspiration from seashells and its opalescent and glossy exterior is crafted by the innovative in-Mold Roller technology.tylish latticework pattern gracing its exterior, the Eee PC Seashell will easily charm passers-by wherever it goes.With the multi-touch gesture input feature, you can easily zoom in and out to view photos or read documents by just moving two fingertips apart or together on the touchpad. You can also simultaneously slide two fingertips up or down the touchpad – making scrolling in a window easy without the use of a mouse.The Eee PC Seashell’s keyboard is more comfortable and less fatiguing to type on for prolonged periods.Communicate with anyone face-to-face, anytime and anywhere, with digital microphone and the built-in 0.3-megapixel webcam.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Twice is nice
Duel core netbook, this thing moves and stays pretty cool. Only downer that i have with it is that it doesn’t have a dvd drive. But it’s a netbook so you know that going in. Two thumbs up for everything else.

5 Stars Great purchase
Excelent netbook. I think its better than lot of notebooks in the market.

It marked 3.3 in Windows 7 performance experience with 5.9 (HD), 5.3 (Video), 4.4 (Aero), 4.6 (RAM) and 3.3 (processor).

Great for a netbook.

5 Stars Great netbook.
I purchased this netbook in January 2010 and couldn’t be happier with my choice. This netbook with it’s Nvidia Ion graphics is exactly what I was looking for. Sure some of the other netbooks have better battery life, but they (at the time I bought the 1201n) all had Intel GMA graphics which was sticking point for me. Keep in mind that the Nvidia Ion not only handles the graphics (via an Nvidia 9400 chip), but also other functions of the computer as well. This means the Atom processor doesn’t have to handle all the computer functions itself which in turns means better performance overall. Battery life has been good, ranging from about 2:40 when viewing videos or playing games (yes, there are a good number of games that play quite well on this little guy), to about 4:50 when just browsing online. I could probably get the 5 hours advertised but I generally don’t take the battery below about 10%. Lowering the brightness setting when on battery really helps. I also liked the fact that the 1201n comes with Windows 7 Home and not starter, and that was a big selling point.

I don’t have any complaints thus far as the stock machine is concerned. However, for those of you considering running Ubuntu on your 1201n, be aware the the x64 version has a heck of time getting the wifi to run (I never did get mine to work before I removed it). But aside from that, Ubuntu flies on the 1201n and if Ubuntu 10.4 can correctly run the wifi, I’ll go back to dual booting.

So it comes down to this:

Do I feel I got my money’s worth? Yes, and then some

Would I buy this item again if my current model was lost, damaged, stolen, etc.? Yes, without hesitation

Would I recommend this item to a friend? Yes

5 Stars The Pinnacle of Today’s Netbooks
I purchased this netbook a little over several weeks ago. I was enjoying my Wind U100 since April of last year, but I needed something with more power and a little larger. So the 1201N caught my eye. Dual core Atom, up to 4GB RAM, NVidia ION, HDMI out, and a 12 inch screen, I figured that I might as well give it a shot. I sold my U100 to my sister, bought the 1201N, and had it shipped to me overnight.

Wow, best $500 I ever spent.

This is a godsend for all netbooks.

Dual Core Atom 330 – The one feature I like about the Atom processor family is its inclusion of Hyper-Threading to give it two logical cores. With this dual core processor, Hyper-Threading gives it 4 logical cores. The speed gain when multi-tasking is very noticeable. The big test I sent it through was running a Livestream that took information from the web camera, my desktop, the microphone, and a Garry’s Mod screen. It ran this test fantastically. This is major selling point #1.

2GB RAM – This was the maximum amount I could load up in my old U100. This amount comes standard with the 1201N, and can be expanded to 4GB (chipset allows for 8GB, but the firmware prevents Windows from seeing it all). The chipset also allows for dual channel capabilities. I will be getting another 2GB for this netbook sometime in the future.

250GB HD – It’s kind of slow, actually. If the processor doesn’t bottleneck your applications, it’s the hard drive. If you can, replace it with something a little faster.

12″ display – This screen is gorgeous. It’s crisp and clear, and far outdoes the 10″ display my U100 had.

HDMI out – Major selling point #2. My roommate has a nice 32″ 1080p HDTV in the living room area. Whenever we want to show videos on it, it’s either through a DVI-to-HDMI converter or on the laptop screen itself due to the hassle of getting it to work. This HDMI feature simplifies everything to the plugging in of a simple cable. Once the connection is made, it’s immediately recognized by the netbook and the proper changes are made. Video is initially mirrored on the TV, and your audio travels through to your TV speakers. You can disable your laptop display and rev up the resolution to 1920×1080 on the TV as well, if it’s capable. As a test, we ran Conan O’ Brien’s last Tonight Show on it, which was in 720p. My word, it was beautiful. It was clean, smooth, and took up very few resources.

Windows 7 Home Premium – I like this operating system a lot. It has a nice feature set and helps to fix some of the problems that Vista had, such as being a better memory manager. Aero doesn’t skip a beat and runs great. I upgraded my U100 to Windows 7 Business, which handled it fine as well.

Nvidia ION and overall gaming – Major selling point #3. Half the reason I wanted to buy this netbook was because of Nvidia ION. My U100 had a hard time playing Flash games, and any 3D game beyond 2001 was out of the question. Upon receiving this netbook, I installed Steam right away and installed all of my games. The first game I tried was Left 4 Dead, and I was moderately surprised at how well it ran. It’s playable, definitely, but could use some tweaking. Team Fortress 2 was my next test, which came out a little worse. But, this is due to the Source engine being much more of a CPU-intensive application than GPU, and the Atom bottlenecks due to its low bus speed. But, it’s still playable, given that the team size is not very large. I then decided to give a prehistoric game a try. I ran Unreal Tournament: GOTY to see how quick it would run, since it only needs a Pentium II to run effectively. This, along with running it at 1080p on the HDTV, was a blast to test. UT:GOTY was incredible on that HDTV despite it being such an old game. Other games, such as Garry’s Mod and Audiosurf, run without a hitch. I do not have games like Fallout 3 or Bioshock, but I’ve heard that they run incredibly well since they rely more on the GPU than CPU. Eventually, Adobe will release Flash 10.1, which will make viewing Flash content on this machine a breeze.

Built-in Camera – It’s average. No higher in quality than my U100’s camera.

Keyboard – This was a little weird when I initially got it. It was larger, yes, but the keys themselves were the size of the keys on my U100. They were spaced out more. But, after a day of typing on it, I was fine.

Bluetooth – Excellent so far. No hitch.

USB 2.0 / SD Card reader / 10/100 NIC – They do their job.

802.11BGN card – The product description mentions that this netbook is 802.11N capable. Only the driver that Atheros provides has N features, not the card itself. However, this was an easy fix. If you go into the wireless card’s driver properties, you can easily set the card to 802.11bg only. This fixed my problem with connecting to the 802.11n network at school. So yes, keep this in mind.

Touchpad – This was alright. It’s odd having the touchpad be a part of the chassis in a way, only to be distinguished by having bumps around where it’s located. Multi-touch is a bit sensitive, but I kind of expected it. It’s fun to use with applications that take advantage of it though.

Battery – I could only go up when it came to battery life, as my U100 only had a 3 cell that lasted for 2.5 hours. The 1201N goes on about 4 1/2 hours on a full charge with balanced settings. It’s more than enough to keep me entertained through World Population & Social Issues.

Overall – this product is amazing when you compare it to everything else out there. This is the portable home theater system that anyone can use at a price that’s affordable. It outperforms every netbook I’ve seen. I bought this one instead of the HP Mini 311. All I can say is that I made a pretty good choice.

If you want a machine that can perform all of your essential tasks, play your videos and music, and play your games at low to moderate settings, buy this netbook. It’s worth every penny.

4 Stars Great, speedy netbook.
I purchased this netbook as soon as it was available, and haven’t regretted it. It’s got a very nice, spacious keyboard, and the screen is bright and colorful.

The only upgrade I have done is add 4gb OCZ memory, to bring the total ram usable to 3.25. I won’t upgrade to 64-bit Windows 7 as people have been saying that certain things no longer work as there are drivers missing for this netbook.

My biggest complaint with this netbook is the teeny sound that it outputs, and the audio itself seems to crackle and pop for some unknown reason. It doesn’t always happen, but it does happen. Mainly happens with youtube.

I have tested a few games on it like COD4, Portal, and Devil May Cry 4, and they ran pretty well even at max resolution with all low settings (Portal ran well even with med/high settings). It’s not gaming machine but it does get the job done when necessary.

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