Rating Summary
“easily portable, 6 hour plus battery and great keyboard feel”
- Every day computer user, tech savvy
- Pros
- light weight, great keyboard, 5-6 hours battery
- Cons
- poor quality sound
Asus Eeepc 1000HE —
I was in the market to replace my previous laptop which my daughter wanted to use for college. My goal was to find on that I could use anywhere in the house and take with me to meetings. I liked the idea of a netbook which weighing in at under 3 pounds and with ample battery life could meet all of my portable computing needs. (I have a desktop running a dual core processor to do any heavy work.) After reading a number of reviews, I decided on the Asus 1000he based upon the N280 Atom processor, which is only marginally faster but uses less power, the WIFI support for 802.11 g/n, the keyboard which consistently received high marks for size and feel, and the battery which the manufacturer rates at 9.5 hours.
The Asus comes with Windows XP and can be easily set up to run Linux to maximize its capabilities. Other changing the operating system to Eeebuntu 3.0 and doing a very simple upgrade to 2 GB of ram (simply remove the easily accessable 1 GB chip and replace it with a 2 GB chip -- be careful read the reviews not every chip works well with this netbook), I have been very satisfied with this netbook. The keyboard lices up to its well earned reputation. With its chicklet style keys and it size (95% of the standard laptop keyboard) it is very comfortable to use. The only criticism that I have for this netbook is the sound system is on the tinny side and maximum volume is not very loud. These tend to be standard complaints for netbooks and if you add a headset or external speakers not an issue. Battery life in real life use (WIFI enabled, full screen brightness) is still a healthy 5-6 hours.
The biggest surprise is that in the 3 months I have had this netbook, I have found myself using it for 90%+ of my computer use and seldom even booting up with desktop!
Asus Eeepc 1000HE
