• 10 inch LED backlit WSVGA screen (1024×600)
• Intel ATOM N280 processor 1.66GHz
• 1GB DDR2 memory (expandable to 2GB, which I did)
• 160GB HDD built in plus 10GB Eee Online Storage
• Windows XP Home w/SP3
• Wireless-N
• 1.3 MP webcam
• Supposed 9.5 hour battery (Depends on Configuration)
• 3 USB, 1 SD card slot
• Weighs 3.2 lbs (with battery)

1st test: Battery lifetime

 
I turned off sleep mode and disabled hibernation. I turned the screen brightness to one level above its lowest setting, which is ideal for me because I hate glossy reflecting screens. I set the power options to alert me when the battery hits 5% and charge the battery to 100% while it’s off before I start this test. I removed the 1GB DIMM and installed a 2GB one and start testing at 1 P.M.
 
First I played with some of the basic Windows features like icon spacing and active title bar colors. I set my screensaver to play photos of my kids and then set

Advanced System Care to clean up the system. While it works I surf on over to TBCS and eBay among other places. I do my normal internet usage like updating my website and uploading photos of my Cuda mod to multiple modding forums.

The keyboard isn’t perfect if you’re used to desktops, but I adapt in about an hour. The touchpad is different. You have to use two fingers to scroll up, down and sideways. There’s a tricky movement that lets you use the touchpad to zoom in and out. There are other movements that mean nothing to me.

There are points during the test where I walk away or just watch TV and let the screensaver play for a few minutes. There are other more intense times where I defrag the hard drive or play Peggle Extreme on Steam.

As I type this review I’m at 6% of my battery and the time is 8:26 PM.
 
Things I hate thus far.
 
(1) I hate not knowing when CAPS lock is on or off. There’s no light for it or any type of on screen display. (2) It has bluetooth, which is not something I hate, but I don’t like having a messy desktop especially ones with icons that I cannot get rid of. I don’t use any bluetooth devices so I don’t need a shortcut. The problem came when I tried to delete the icon, because it wouldn’t let me. I had to uninstall the bluetooth software to make the icon go away. (3) After the first week the Eee PC began freezing at boot up. I later discovered that it was unable to load the audio driver for the start up sound and froze trying. I reinstalled teh driver from the Asus website and that fixed it. And lastly, (4) It has Windows XP. Everyone seems to be hanging on to XP even after the boat has begun to sink, but the more I use Vista and have to later use XP I realize how much I hate it. My wireless internet is already configured, but setting it up in XP is not as easy as Vista. Vista’s visual effects are far smoother too. Having to use a 3rd party software firewall is one more thing that has to load, because XP is naked and exposed on the net. Windows defender isn’t great, but it’s an improvement over XP. Having played with Windows 7 makes me salivate at its eventual release. I will probably upgrade this Netbook when it hits shelves.
 
My battery is down to 5% now and the time is 8:32 PM. The Netbook has been on for 7.5 hours and I’m sick of looking at the screen.
 
As the battery gets closer to dead it drains even faster. 3% hits at 8:40 PM. And the Asus claims to have 12 minutes left. I stop typing, save my review and let the screensaver play as the battery nears its end.
 
At 1% of battery it says there’s 2 minutes left so I plug it back in. The time is 8:51 PM. The Netbook has been on for 7 hours and 51 minutes, give or take a couple minutes. This test replicated what I would consider a normal day of computer use. I spend time surfing the web, listening to music, defragging my hard drive, downloading updates, and installing new programs.
 
I’m willing to bet that if I charge it back to 100% and let my screensaver go the entire time I can easily expect 9.5 hours as Asus claims. This battery is amazing!

2nd Test: Benchmarking – Disclaimer: I ran the following tests with 2GB installed and on the battery alone.
 
I kicked off testing with 3DMark2001 SE which took at least 2 minutes to install! After all 17 tests the final score was 2108. Aquamark 3, PCMark04, and 3DMark05 would not run at all. Those programs have a minimum reequired screen resolution that the Eee PC does not support. Obviously this computer is not meant for gaming and I don’t expect it too, but it would’ve been nice if the tests ran. I have played Peggle and I am comfortable with saying that it does outperform the GeForce 6150 which is common on a lot of retail Computers/laptops.
 
Final thoughts:
 
This is what I consider a good buy. As I stated, there’s a couple things I wish it could do, but it has no problem doing what it needs to do. It was designed for internet and light office work and it excels at it. I love that it can be upgraded to 2 gigs of RAM and if a 4GB DIMM wasn’t so outrageously expensive, I’d drop it in just to see what happens. Obviously, the real reason I got this Netbook is because of the battery. Asus claims a 9.5 hour battery life under very insane/strict conditions, but we know that’s not realistic. Under what I would consider normal use it did last 7 hours and 50 minutes. That’s easily 4 hours better than a modern laptop.
 
I’d give it an easy 4 1/2 outta 5 stars.

Ken Kirby – PCModHouse.com

So I just got the Corsair Flash Survivor in 32GB capacity (Shows as 30.2GB in Windows) which debuted at CES 2008 in Las Vegas, NV. It retails for about $180 from mwave.com It comes packaged with Corsair dog-tags and a 3 inch USB extension cord. The Survivor is aptly named because of its sheer ruggedness and supposed invincibility

The drive is a hell of a lot smaller than a portable hard drive of the same capacity, but bigger than a normal flash drive. I was telling some friends of mine about the Corsair Survivor and how the first computer my wife and I bought as a couple only had a 20GB Hard drive. It’s amazing how this drive sizes up to that of a standard IDE drive. Of course, Corsair does make a 32GB Voyager that’s “normal” sized

The Survivor is cased in aluminum and is supposedly waterproof. The rim has a rubber seal which keeps everything dry inside, or so we’ll see. Corsair even claims that their rugged product can even “survive” depths of 200 meters (600 feet)!

The drive inside has to be unscrewed from the casing to access the USB stick inside. I thought it took too many turns to unscrew it.

I’d like to do a basic review, but here’s my chance to shine, I’m going to torture it! The first of many tests start at loading data. I often see product reviewers who give specs out by the millisecond, but that never means anything to me.

I loaded my music library of 1669 MP3’s (5.83GB) from my C: drive to the Survivor. It took 19 minutes and 33 seconds, but only 36 seconds to delete them. Then I transferred all 3,072 pictures (478MB) I have for every mod I’ve ever done or thought of doing to the drive as individual files, not zipped. It took 83 seconds, which is 37.58 seconds per MB. Obviously if the drive is doing more than a few MB at a time it’s going to take longer. Case in point: transferring all of my 4074 fonts totaling 109MB only took 14 seconds; which is 7.78 seconds per MB.

The torture session was next. I had 13.7GB worth of data on the drive and HAD to test its ability to retain my data under extraordinary circumstances. First, I ran the Survivor over with my car a few times without a scratch

The problem with this test is that not all the weight of the car is on the drive. Figure one tire holds approximately ¼ of the car’s total weight. That weight is distributed over the entire width of the tire. The flash drive is only an inch or so wide and round, where it gets its most distinct advantage. The shape, just like Roman arch, spreads the weight around the entire exposed surface minimizing the load and maximizing the chance that this test means nothing.

I then boiled the Survivor for a good 15 minutes and met the same fate. My final test was to freeze the drive in a block of water, then thaw it out and test the drive again. What do you think was the fate this time?

IT PASSED.

So what’s my opinion? The Corsair Flash Survivor is a pretty nice drive. It’s the smallest 32GB drive I’ve ever seen and it’s definitely the toughest. Is it Unbreakable? I’d love to drop it from a plane or pound it with a sledgehammer, but I don’t have these options available to me. Maybe when the 64GB drive comes out, I will.

Pros:
• 32GB in my pocket in about the size of a flash drive
• Faster than a portable hard drive
• Water, cold, heat proof
• Tough as nails

Cons:
• A bit bigger than a standard thumb drive
• Unscrewing it takes a few too many turns?

Rating: 9 out of 10

Best feature we used was the screensaver version, how often is your PC idle? well why not make use of that time with a defrag – we also notices huge performance benefits when playing games.

Once you have chosen your start up items they become disabled, but sometimes these programs can be quite stubborn and re-enable them selves – especially Ad-Ware or Malware

This is where MSConfig Clean up helps it removes the items from msconfig so that they wont start again, it also gives you a bit more info about the start up program

MSConfig

MSConfig would be a perfect startup manager, if it allowed you not only to disable items, but to delete them forever. Unfortunately it does not do that. This is where MSConfig Cleanup comes in! It scans the startup configurations and allows you to remove any item that has been previously disabled via MSConfig.

This is another great application and can be downloaded here

DriverMax

I used DriverMax and found loads of drivers that could be updated on my system, this great app can be downloaded here

What it is, is a small program that provides you with a graphical representation of your hard disk, still not with me? well lets say you have a multiple files on your hard disk spread accoss multiple directories but you dont reqally know where the space is being used?

Well you can run SpaceMonger and it will produce a pictorial view of your hard disk

SpaceMonger 1.4

Version 1.4 is the free version and we think its pritty neat

Process Explorer Main Screen

Ever wondered which program has a particular file or directory open? Now you can find out. Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.

The Process Explorer display consists of two sub-windows. The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you’ll see the handles that the process selected in the top window has opened; if Process Explorer is in DLL mode you’ll see the DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded. Process Explorer also has a powerful search capability that will quickly show you which processes have particular handles opened or DLLs loaded.

The unique capabilities of Process Explorer make it useful for tracking down DLL-version problems or handle leaks, and provide insight into the way Windows and applications work.

Process Explorer's Stats Screen

When somthing is playing up on my system i reach for this tool, it is handy in killing unwanted processes and even shows you who the process was developped by so you can see if some malware is running when it shouldent and kill it!

CCleaner

CCleaner is a freeware system optimisation, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system – allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner. But the best part is that it’s fast (normally taking less than a second to run).

CCleaner main program

Download here

Annoying message given by Windows

Its called Unlocker and basically it can run in the background or it can be run manually so that when you delete a file it will let you know if any processes have a lock on that file or not.

Unlocker Right-Click Menu

It then allows you to kill that process and delete the offending file.

You can download Unlocker from here

Its a really slick user interface and gives a great insight in to what Google is doing with your website, putting more control back in the webmasters hands.

I also found that they like you to create an XML sitemap which can help improve page rankings(the sitemap for this site is here), I found this website which will automatically generate one for you, which you manually upload to your site. This blog uses a WordPress auto-sitemap plugin which generates one every time content changes!