Actual Reality

Here’s some of my thoughts on the new Asus eeePC 1000HE. I’ve had mine for about a month now and don’t have any major gripes. Here’s what I like (and dislike) about this netbook:

Likes

Weight – Its light enough that I can forget I even have it in my backpack.

Keyboard – Nice action and good spacing. I haven’t had any problems typing on it, and it didn’t really take me any time to get used to it either.

Screen – Bright, crisp, good colors. Its big enough for most tasks, although it can feel confining at times.

Touchpad – Has a nice matte finish and good response. I like the two-finger scrolling capability.

Hard drive – Plenty of capacity to store my music collection as well as a few DVD rips.

Linux compatibility – Standard hardware (nothing exotic) means that Linux runs without a problem and support all of the hardware out of the box (provided you use a distro like eeebuntu or Easy Peasy).

Dislikes

Performance – Can be sluggish at times, especially on Flash-based websites. Bootup could be faster, too. Of course, I wasn’t expecting extreme performance from a single-core Atom processor anyway.

Fan – Its almost always running, usually at a low speed, but if you’re doing anything CPU-intensive it will bump up a notch. It makes a low whining noise that can be irritating after a while. I’ve heard that you can lube the bearings and it will run quieter, but I’m not about to void my warranty for something as silly as that.

OS Choice – Actually, the lack of OS choice. You get (and pay for) Windows XP whether you like it or not. I would have preferred a no-OS option, or at the very least a Linux option. My first step on getting it was to wipe out Windows and install eeebuntu.

Stickers – A very minor complaint and easily remedied. If you don’t mind advertising Microsoft products, then feel free to leave the stickers in place. Also, you get the standard Windows keys. No thanks, Microsoft. If you want me to advertise your product, you’d better give me some money first.

Meh

Gloss – Like every other laptop/netbook/desktop PC out there, you’ve got lots of gloss to collect fingerprints and grease. I wish they would use a matte finish, which would actually be more durable and stylish in the long run. Oh, but that wouldn’t appease the fashion gods, would it?

Speakers – OK, what did you expect? It doesn’t have a subwoofer. It does have lots of volume. So I guess you could walk around school and blast out some distorted, tinny rap/hip hop, you know, since that’s so cool. Oh yeah.

Battery – I don’t think its even possible to get the claimed 9 hours without some major tweaking. I think 6-7 hours would be a more realistic number.

Overall – good or bad?

I think its safe to say that the good side of this netbook outweighs the bad. Out of 10, I’d give it a 7.8.