Presumably having taken a blow to the head and woken with a small epiphany, a la Doc Brown in Back to the Future, Asus ‘invented’ the netbook back in 2007. The Seashell – or to give it its full name, the Asus Eee PC 1008HA – is its latest Eee-branded offering, adding some much-needed sexuality to the netbook world.
Combining the slenderness of the MacBook Air, with the minute dimensions (262x178x18mm) of a netbook, the Asus Eee PC 1008HA Seashell is like every other Eee PC in its main purpose: ease-of-use and speedy mobile internet connection. And it achieves those feats by pretty much stuffing the same-old spec into its lusciously lithe body: a 1.66GHz Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, Windows XP, WI-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1.
Forget the ‘bland’ specs, though. They’re pretty much consistent with every netbook out there. This is all about the tapered edges to the firm, wide keyboard and invisible trackpad. It’s hands-down the best-looking Eee PC yet. And not only that, Asus has given it a bunny marathon-like six hour battery life. Not bad for a laptop with a waist line smaller than the width of our big thumb.
You may have noticed, though, that the Asus Eee PC 1008HA Seashell only gets four stars. That’s because its 10-inch back-lit 1024×600-pixel screen is actually dimmer than your average Big Brother contestant. Plus there are only two USB port for some reason (what happened to the other one?), and while £379 sounds cheap, it’s comparatively expensive in the netbook world.
There may be questions then, whether the Asus Eee PC 1008HA Seashell merits the extra dosh, but there’s no denying that this is the sexiest netbook by far. Roll on the copycats…
