There are several things I like about this machine. Top of the list is the battery life. I have never had a machine before where I am happy going out for the day without the charger. The 1000HE also fits comfortably inside my favourite briefcase (see picture) whilst leaving room for a few papers.
Despite the small size (about 10.5in x 7.5in x 2in, although it tapers, so it looks thinner), I really liked the keyboard and had no difficulty touch-typing on it.
It comes loaded with XP, which I much prefer to Vista. It is also preloaded with several useful apps, including Skype, which works well with the built-in microphone and speakers, and a version of OpenOffice which handles all but the most complicated Microsoft Office documents without difficulty.
My top hate is the flawed Elantech touchpad (supporting two finger scrolling, zoom etc). It seems to be a driver problem, so it should be fixed reasonably soon. I am also told that there are other drivers which work much better, although I have not tried them.
But almost as bad, and not fixable, is the screen height of 600px. For many apps that is fine, even lavish. There is no difficulty with Skype, reading ebooks, text writing/editing, watching youtube, and many other apps. However, I find it inconvenient for browsing, although the difficulties are certainly mitigated if you take care to pare down browser clutter by getting rid of unnecessary icons, search bars, status bars and so on. But mitigation is not enough if you want to have multiple windows open. I do a lot of writing and typically have half-a-dozen other browser and pdf-reader windows open for reference whilst I am doing it. That simply doesn’t work on a screen this size.
Some people claim that the lack of a separate video processor makes video jerky. I did not find that. I found youtube worked fine. But it may be different if you want higher definition video, or gaming or something else that is more processor intensive.
Finally, remember that it does not have any kind of CD/DVD drive. If you want to transfer files to or from it then you have to use a memory stick, USB cable, WiFi or bluetooth.
You have to look at price. There seems to have been an informal conspiracy between Intel, Microsoft and the PC companies to drive up the price of netbooks. The EeePC came out after the hype about the MIT $100 Third World laptop. But the EeePC was never anywhere near $100. The 1000HE has a list price of about £330 and seems to discount to about £300. That is not cheap. There are plenty of laptops around for that price that come with better screens and DVD drives built-in.
So you should only consider the EeePC1000HE if size/weight is critical. But in that case you need to be sure that (A) you are happy with the screen size, and (B) that you would not be better off with an iPhone. Due to extremely slick software and a wealth of “widget” apps, the iPhone is surprisingly capable, whilst being far smaller.
Finally apologies to everalm. I did read his suggestion that I get Ubuntu from eeebuntu.org, but too late for it to help me. Unlike comments, there can be quite a timelag on these articles. For example, as I write this, my 10th article has still not gone up 48 hours after I emailed it in. I have not persevered with tweaking Ubuntu, because the EeePC1000HE simply doesn’t suit me.
