Netbook Review UK

The folks at Eee PC.it have managed to snag an Italian version of the new Asus Eee PC 1015PN (check out the unboxing video after the break). You can check out the site’s unboxing and first impressions post.

At first glance, the Eee PC 1015PN looks a lot like other recent netbooks from Asus, with a chiclet-style keyboard, a touchpad with a single button and chromed edges, and a single access panel on the bottom of the computer for upgrading RAM.  But, don’t be fooled by the relatively modest exterior, because the 1015pn features a dual core Atom N550 processor and Nvidia Ion.

Check out the unboxing video after the break.

It’s the graphics processor which makes the netbook stand out. Unfortunately, since the Eee PC 1015PN comes with Windows 7 Starter Edition, it doesn’t support NVIDIA Optimus automatic graphics switching technology. That means you’ll hae to manually flip between the integrated Intel GMA 3150 graphics and the ION graphics when you want to watch HD video, play games, or perform other activities. It’s not that hard to do, but you’d probably   often (and get better battery life) if the process was automatic. For that, it sounds like you’d need to upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium.

The computer also comes with a 1.5GHz Intel Atom N550 dual core processor and 1GB of memory. Eee PC.it does note that the bottom of the netbook gets a bit warmer than other netbooks when running with the ION graphics enabled, but that’s hardly surprising.