Picked up the 1101HA this morning, and after some tinkering HW and SW wise it’s now up and running!

My first impressions were “wtf”. Besides skipping the splash screen so you have to randomly press F2 to get into the BIOS, the XP install on the machine was in Danish and refused to switch to Norwegian even though I selected that as the language. That made me change my plan about dual boot XP/Windows 7 and I decided to wipe the entire Danish XP shit and go for 100% Windows 7. It also refused to boot from my install USB even after I selected USB as primary boot method in the BIOS (though the Ubuntu Live USB booted fine) so I had to install 7 from within XP.

Some hours later everything is up and running including FN-keys (theres a Windows 7 issue where that requires an older BIOS which my machine already had) and all programs I use. The 2GB RAM stick is in and everything seems to be behaving.

So far the experience is as expected. The Z520 CPU is slower than the N270 on my AAO, making some tasks more sluggish, but not enough that I care. 720p playback is very choppy, and I don’t know why. Probably some issue with the GMA500 (graphics card) hardware decoding and Windows 7. Have asked about it on the eeeuser forum, so expecting a reply soon.

7 runs great on this, using 42% of the 2GB RAM with gtalk, Pidgin and Firefox running. Background tasks like OpenOffice launcher, Antivirus, desktop widgets and Asus utilities use some RAM as well, so it’s not so bad.

The battery indicator has been funny to watch as it has adjusted it’s estimates. After close to 3 hours on battery, most of the time doing CPU intensive tasks like installing tasks, configuring and rebooting, battery is down to 60%. Even with Windows 7 reportedly using more battery than XP, that seems to fit the 8 hours of normal use pretty well.

The fan is the most surprising part. I read it was noisy but could be silenced, but the people who wrote than definintely never used my AAO. I couldn’t hear the projector fan in class due to the AAO fan, buit with the 1101HA it’s the other way around. With EEEctl (fan control++) running on auto, I can barely hear it even with the projector not being on. Really a nice upgrade compared to the AAO helicopter fan.

The screen resolution is one of the most noticeable differences and it definitely makes a difference. 1366×768 is a LOT more than 1024×600, and a really nice “feature” for simple tasks like webbrowsing. Just writing this in WordPress – something that is rather annoying on the AAO due to the low resolution (the WordPress text editor is only part of the webpage, menus etc take a lot of space too) is a heck of a lot better with this resolution. Surprisingly the physical size of the 1101HA isn’t all that bigger than the AAO, as the screen bezel is smaller and the battery doesn’t stick out.

Lastly, the keyboard. I mentioned before that when it’s time for my Bachelor’s thesis I want a better keyboard on my portable computer, and this is definitely that. The keys are big and the chiclet feel to it is very nice to type on.

All in all I’m very happy with the new netbook and it’s a big upgrade to the AAO. Only downside is slower CPU, but I rarely do anything CPU intensive anyways. I can definitely recommend this netbook to anyone looking for one.