UPDATE: Good news! The Asus Eee PC 1000HE is now shipping, in the US at least, and at $400, it’s possibly the best value netbook ever.
Yes, it’s another Asus Eee PC, but don’t dismiss the Eee PC 1000HE as just another 1000 model – this new one’s got an enormous 9.5 hour battery life to keep it going for longer than an entire working day, and it’s available to pre-order now.
The 10inch model Eee 1000HE model is pretty much the same as previous incarnations of the Eee 1000, but this time Asus is touting a 9.5 hour battery life thanks to its own Super Hybrid Engine battery. That’s with the Wi-Fi turned off and screen dimmed of course, but anyone who flies regularly, or faces an slow train journey home each night, will definitely appreciate the extra juice.
As well as the high-density battery, the Eee PC 1000HE also has a new “chiclet” keyboard, with gaps between the keys similar to the new MacBook range – whether that will make typing easier on a 10inch model is anybody’s guess.
Naturally, there’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a 160GB hard drive and Atom processor, like every other netbook since just about ever. There aren’t any plans for a European release at the moment so you might want to hold out for an Eee PC Touch instead, but if anything changes we’ll let you know.
