Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I was looking to buy a netbook for my upcoming travels as I did not want to bring my 14" laptop as well as planning on doing some writing outdoors. After doing quite some research and reading, I narrowed down to Acer Aspire One AO533 and Asus Eee PC 1015PED (there are so many models within Asus that could get quite confusing.) Finding a Youtube video of over 500K+ views on how to install the 2GB memory on an Acer definitely discouraged me as how easy one might break a wire, in addition to automatically void the warranty as soon as you open up the case. I am aware of those who have issues with Asus customer service as well as buying a lemon. But the usability and the really long battery power really made me decide to take a chance / leap of faith. The matte shell and screen make the machine a perfect companion on the road, especially when using it outdoors. There are a lot fewer fingerprints and a lot less glare which are more suiting for the eyes. The machine boots up very quickly and has a very bright screen. I was initially a bit worried about the chiclet keys, whether there might be too much space among the keys but it turned out the space was minimal and works well for me. The location of the special keys is similar to my SONY VAIO so it did not take much time for me to get adjusted to the smaller keyboard. After successfully installing the final part of pre-installed Windows 7 Starter and confirming the machine was working correctly (took about 10 to 15 minutes), I went ahead and downloaded all the drivers from Asus Download site, including the latest BIOS as I would be reformatting the drive and installing Windows 7 Professional. At the time the direct BIOS upgrade from the internet did not work but downloading and installing the file did. Also note that the drivers are not always sorted by the version and you have to look at each one carefully to download the latest version. The machine runs quite well even with just 1GB memory except with the more frequent hard drive access. I then upgraded the memory to 2GB with Crucial DDR3 1333. Crucial Memory Advisor tool will guide you to the right memory and I like how the company guarantees the compatibility. I had tried a few others (Super Talent and Hynix) and my machine either would not recognize and boot up, would not boot up after restarting the machine, or I had to wait for a few minutes after shutdown before being able to reboot. The Amazon's "Frequently Bought Together" incorrectly picked DDR2 memory as part of the package. It should have been DDR3 instead. There is a separate door just for the memory so the upgrade was a breeze and you just have to make sure you push the memory all the way into the slot (seating.) To confirm I also hit F2 when starting the machine to validate it is loaded with 2GB memory. The additional memory did not dramatically increase the performance though it definitely significantly decreases the usage of the hard drive. While the machine works overall very well to my needs (internet and a few MS apps), I did find the touch pad to be overly sensitive. I downloaded and installed the latest ELAN and Synaptics TouchPad drivers and was then able to change the Palm Tracking Setting to less sensitive. The large smooth touch pad that causes the accidental and easily palm over makes the touchpad almost useless unless you have the netbook way sitting below your palm when typing. Battery wise it's about 7 to around 10 hours of normal usage (surfing, documents, installing and running software, etc.) which is extremely good. Though I did find the machine was getting quite warm after about 5 hours of usage and when charging the battery. The battery charger also gets quite hot after a few hours of charging. The battery meter is somewhat accurate on the overall percentage but does fluctuate every few minutes or and can easily go up and down +/- 10 to 20 minutes. The following were the steps I took to install Windows 7 Professional that should work in general: 1) Use a 4GB USB drive (any drive that has 3GB or more), format it through Windows Explorer with NTFS 2) Download and install MBRWizard. Open up command prompt and type: mbrwiz /list 3) Find the Disk number that belongs to the USB drive (usually 1 or higher as 0 is most likely your system / primary drive. Run the command: mbrwiz /disk=1 /active=1 In this case 1 is the USB drive. Type "Y" to confirm. Run this command again to confirm the drive is active: mbrwiz /list 4) Run the following command to set the USB drive to be bootable: e:\boot\bootsect /nt60 D: E: being the Windows 7 CD drive and D: being the USB drive 5) Copy all Windows 7 Professional files to the USB drive. 6) Copy all contents from the current netbook C: drive to the USB drive as a backup. 7) Download all drivers from Asus Download site to the USB drive. Also download anti-virus / firewall software such as AVG and ZoneAlarm to the USB drive. 8) With the USB drive plugged in, reboot machine and hit F2 to get into BIOS setting. In Boot -> Boot Settings. You will now see Boot Device Priority and Hard Disk Drives. Choosing Removable Device as the first boot priority would not work since the USB drive is actually categorized as a hard drive instead. Choose Hard Drive Disks and you will see the USB drive as well as the C: drive. Move the USB drive to the first priority and have the hard drive (C:) as second. Keep the first boot priority as Hard Disk. 9) Follow the Windows formatting and installing. Make sure you unplug the USB drive when Windows restarts after completing the installation and hit F2 to change the BIOS setting back to using C: as the first hard drive. 10) Install all the drivers especially the screen resolution, ELAN and Synaptics touch pad devices, latest BIOS, firewall and anti-virus programs. 11) Install the LAN driver and you should be good to go.