Photo gallery: Asus Eee PC 1000HEUpdate: in light of new MSI Wind Hybrid U115 pricing details, this review and score has been adjusted since its original publication.
Design
Asus' Eee PC 1000HE is the latest iteration in its seemingly unending parade of Eee products. It occupies the 10-inch space, now established as the "in" size for netbooks, and features a 1024x600 screen.
Our review sample arrived in glossy, fingerprint loving black, with an inlaid speckled texture under the surface. The 1000HE is also available in white, and features a 1.3-megapixel camera at the top of the screen.
Quick access buttons are available under the screen, allowing you to turn the monitor off, change resolutions quickly, switch between power management modes, and load Skype. The resolution changing button cycles between 800x600, the native 1024x600, 1024x768 (you have to scroll to see the rest of the screen), and 1024x768 Compress (everything is squeezed into the smaller screen). The 1024x768 modes are useful for when an application isn't designed for the Eee's smaller vertical resolution, and can help you click those off-screen elements such as OK buttons and title bars.
The keyboard is reasonably sized, with isolated keys and all 12 function buttons. The base visibly flexes under your fingers when typing, which doesn't prevent you from typing quite quickly (HP still has the edge in this field), but can be a little distracting.
Features
An Elantech multi-touch trackpad provides some extra usability — with a double finger tap being translated as a middle mouse button push, and a triple finger tap as a right-click, or a customisable function of your choice.
It supports other Apple-esque functions like swiping two fingers to scroll horizontally or vertically, swiping three fingers down to bring up the task switcher or three fingers up to load Windows Explorer, zooming by pinching and expanding, and rotating by moving your fingers in a circular motion. Of course, individual applications will need to support these functions in order for these to work.
In practice we found the triple finger motions difficult due to the small size of the trackpad, and while Elantech's configuration panel was customisable, Windows XP was no match for the slickness of OS X. We also found ourselves scrolling far too often when trying to zoom, and that web pages would zoom by accident when trying to scroll, making it rather difficult to change the magnification back to 100 per cent using just multi-touch.
Even the double finger scrolling caused issues, often resulting in the page scrolling back up one notch after you've swiped down. And since a double finger tap often invokes the middle mouse button scroll icon ... let's just say by and large, although we're fully aware of the benefits thanks to Apple, you'll probably be a whole lot less frustrated turning Elantech's multi-touch solution off.
This is also one of the first netbooks where we've actually heard the fan spin up. It's not necessarily bad, but when you're used to absolute silence, it's a step down.
Asus has oddly bundled in Intervideo's WinDVD, despite the lack of optical drive. Also included is StarOffice 8, Skype and Eee Storage, the latter giving you drag-and-drop functionality within Windows Explorer to back things up online. It offers 10GB of storage — although it's unclear how long this service stays active, seeing as when you register you supposedly get another six months. Windows Live is the search partner of the day, with the usual Internet Explorer infestation installed.
Internally is the Atom N270 CPU at 1.6GHz, soon to be followed by the faster N280 at 1.66GHz, with 1GB RAM and a 160GB mechanical hard drive. It supports 802.11n over 2.4 or 5GHz, Bluetooth, has 100Mb Ethernet, VGA out and three USB ports.
Performance
The 1000HE when thrown in front of 3DMark06 spat back an expected ultra low 73 — as a netbook, this is definitely not intended for gaming. Unfortunately, as seems to be the case on most netbooks, PCMark05 refused to complete its full set of tests — nonetheless, from our observations when using the 1000HE, it's perfectly fine for office productivity tasks or basic internet browsing, the whole point of a netbook in the first place.
Turning all power-saving features off, and screen brightness and volume to maximum, the battery lasted four hours, 10 minutes and three seconds.
The Asus Eee PC 1000HE is a good 10-inch netbook; while we're hanging out for the higher resolution HP Mini 2140, this is definitely one of the better 10-inch netbooks on the market.
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