ASUS throws XP Professional on Eee PC 1005HA, dubs it 'business edition'
By Donald Melanson 
posted Oct 20th 2009 1:46AM
posted Oct 20th 2009 1:46AM
Alright, so ASUS' Eee PC 1005HA is certainly decent enough as it is, but we can't help but think that the company is stretching things a bit with its new "business edition" of the netbook. Apparently, all that's needed to earn that designation is Windows XP Professional for an OS, and a standard 2GB of RAM, which no respectable businessperson would ever be without. Otherwise, you'll get the usual 10.1-inch display, Atom N280 processor, 160GB hard drive, and a promised 10.5 hours of battery life -- all in the very same Seashell enclosure, of course. Still no official word on a release over here, but it looks like folks in Japan will be able to pick this one up on October 20th for just over the Yen-equivalent of $700.
[Thanks, TheLostSwede]
[Thanks, TheLostSwede]
Not exactly perfect timing.
Yeah, just waiting to throw my money at a 1005 + Win 7
Um... why is XP still alive.. at all?
Its a 10 year old OS. Of course its gonna run fast... when it came out, what was the average memory on a computer, 256mb? yeah... if you want a lightweight OS, switch to a linux distro or stop living in the past and update to something more current.
XP still kicks serious ass dude. It's reliable. Don't fix what ain't broken. But Windows 7 would be nice on this..
Why? All my programs still run perfectly fine in XP.
*They wouldn't run in Linux. At least not natively.
What an obtuse statement. So XP should be dumped even if it's faster and runs all the current Windows software. Why? Because you like an OS that runs slower? I guess it really pleases you to buy machines that are 10x faster and run at the same speed as the old ones, because of your "current" OS.
Try running vista or windows 7 on one of the asus netbooks, its a real pain for drivers. They dont even have windows 7 drivers or vista drivers on the site wtf
I have a 1005HA running Windows 7. Installed without a hitch. I used the Intel driver that came with Windows for the video and reused all the other drivers that came on the original Asus CD. Works perfectly!
i have Windows 7 on my ASUS EeePC 1008HA and i installed all the XP drivers onto it without a hitch. i'm quite happy with it.
installed 7 on my eee 900a and didn't even have to install drivers, everything just worked.
Using Windows 7 on my 1000H, all drivers up and running.
Windows 7 works flawlessly on my Eeepc 901, with no problems
Don't be daft. There are plenty of sites which show you exactly what you need to do to install all the native Asus drivers on Win7 on the 1005HA (mostly just install in XP mode). I have Win7 RC and XP Home on mine (just installed 7 on the already-there 2nd partition) with all features available on both OSes.
Eeepc 900HA, Win7 RC1 installed effortlessly. Nothing else needed but the OS, everything works fine.
WOWSERS! They said seashell!
At this point,
no ION + no Win 7 == massive fail.
especially at $700
Easy. The only people who will buy this probably are business people too busy and with enough money not to realize what it is. It -is- a decent looking thing, even if it's horribly out of date.
$700? Really ASUS? For a netbook? Netbooks shouldn't be priced anymore than $400, at the most. Especially at these specs.
Oh well, at least it doesn't have Windows 7 Cripple, I mean Starter.
I cant wait until they spit Win XP Pro Corporate on an eee and call it their Head Honcho edition
Great... now put Ubuntu on one (Ubuntu + Android) and call it the "intelligent edition".
NIPPLE! NIPPLE! NIPPLE!
I'm running Windows 7 on a 1005HA-P, and it's quite snappy (upgraded to 2GB memory). Since it arrived with the drive partitioned into two 80GB sections, I left the XP install in place and put Win7 on the second partition; if I run into something that just won't work at all under Win7, I can always boot back into XP. I haven't come across anything yet, but if it comes I'm prepared.
I've been running Win7 as my primary OS for a while now, and other than spotty driver support have no complaints. I got everything running, but it would be nice if Asus updated their drivers to go with an OS less than a decade old.
The reason they're using WinXP Pro is because of licensing issues. It's the only way they can legally sell the laptops with >1 GB of RAM. This also explains the huge price markup (but not THAT high of a markup!) The licensing the makers have with Microsoft restricts the amount of memory to 1 GB of RAM max. on netbooks. This is Microsoft's restriction.
Thanks, I was wondering about the 1GB restriction.
the concept of a business laptop is so nebulous...that said the seashell line is pretty nice
Corporations have zero interest in netbooks.
XP is archaic. Get over it.