Well, I broke down and bought an ASUS 1000HE for work and I have to say, I love it. I have a normal laptop, Lenovo W500 which I do all my programming and web work on. So why did I need this netbook?
Well, for one, I love the size, it is only 1024×600 native LCD, but it is perfect for watching video tutorials or testing or reading PDFs.
The other main reason was that the 1000HE brags about 9.5 hours of battery. I figured if I could get half this, I’d be happy. I can say that under normal usage, you can easily get 6-8 hours. I haven’t loaded any movies on it yet to find out how it performs under movie watching conditions.
I did do two upgrades to it, I added a 2 gig ram stick I had from another laptop, but found out I should have spent the 22 bucks to get a faster stick to overclock with. I ordered one and should be here later this week.
Second upgrade I did was to throw a 200gig 7200rpm hdd into it. I didn’t spend enough time with the 160gig 5400rpm it came with, so can’t tell you if its faster.
Lastly, I decided this will be my test laptop, so I threw Windows 7 RC1 on it and got most of the drivers worked out. Everything works, I really like the size and weight of it, and you can’t beat the battery life. It could never be my primary computer, but for the “around the house” or second laptop, it is amazing, especially if you travel.