Pimp My Netbook! Games on the Asus Eee PC 1000H

Yo! We’s lookin’ at the Asus Eee PC 1000H up in hee-ya and I’m… Pardon me for that. Yeah, you get it… like Xhibit on Pimp My Ride, but for computers. Get it? Yeah. *cough*

So, Asus’ Eee PC 1000H is a great little (and I emphasize little) piece of machinery. The handsome netbook is all about staying online, chatting on Skype and using light apps. The Eee PC 1000H will handle some medium-res video too. Anything beyond that—I’m thinking about gaming here—is generally considered beyond the realm of possibility on a tiny lil’ netbook.

And even mentioning gaming and netbook in the same sentence begs the question “why?” Obviously you won’t get the same performance you would from a fancy-pants gaming laptop. Well, I’ll tell you why. It’s the prestige factor of gaming on a slick looking netbook. It’s just plain cool, you see?

And tricking out a netbook to handle some basic gaming isn’t nearly as hard as you’d expect. Obviously, we’re not talking Crysis here, but with a few easy steps the (Windows XP-equipped) Asus Eee PC 1000H can handle some basic gaming.

The first thing you need to do is shell out 25 bucks in order to upgrade your RAM to 2GB. In addition to powering some basic video games, this’ll streamline word processing, web browsing and everyday app use. It comes with installation instructions and is more-or-less a plug and play affair—absolutely worth the $25.

You’ll then need to download the latest drivers for the Eee PC’s wussy graphics card. Go with anything older and you’re missing out on a potential 2-5 FPS on World of Warcraft.

Installing a game on the Asus Eee PC 1000H is a simple matter of uplinking with a computer with an optical drive on a WiFi network. The Eee PC 1000H will remotely use a CD or DVD drive as if it were its own.

Beyond that, all you’ve got to do is adjust graphics and resolution sliders to low and be sure you’ve got your processor set to high performance mode.

World of Warcraft will run smoothly as long as you don’t do any raiding, but 5 player instances aren’t a problem. In cities frame rates drop to 10ish FPS, but in the open countryside you can expect a highly playable 20-25 FPS.

With the 2GB upgrade, the Eee PC 1000H will power just about any classic game you care to revisit (Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2, Return to Caslte Wolfenstein, Medieval: Total War, Knights of the Old Republic... etc.) You can go ahead and throw in some newer games that are less resource ravenous too—e. g. all the Lego Star Wars games will run well.

And like we waz sayin’, wif yo’ own pimped out netbook, youz gonna be da coolest kat in skewl—playin’ yo WoW ‘n’ Legoz games… ahem, my apologies.

If you’re looking for more info on sleek netbooks and decked out laptops, check out the other Pimp My Netbook posts:

Pimp My Netbook! #2: Video Card Upgrade in a Netbook?

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