Top Laptop

Full review of Asus Eee PC 1000HE

Asus started the netbook craze with its tiny, 7-inch Eee PC. Shortly thereafter, every notebook manufacturer except Apple produced at least one tiny and inexpensive laptop just like it. Nowadays, netbooks are not that tiny anymore - little by little they have increased in size from 7" via 9" and now the standard screen size of a netbook is 10 inches. Even a couple of 12-inch models have been released.

Hardware

What they all have in common is the hardware - with a few deviations it consists of an Intel Atom CPU at 1.6GHz, 1GB or RAM, a 160GB hard drive and integrated GMA950 graphics. The Eee PC, however, has been upgraded with an ever so slightly faster 1.66GHz Atom processor and a higher 667MHz FSB speed instead of earlier models which had 533MHz.
The speed increase is not big enough to be noticeable, but you might feel better purchasing an upgraded model. Asus' main selling point with the 1000HE is the battery life. According to the manufacturer, you should be able to keep it alive for 9.5 hours without resorting to an outlet. To achieve this formidable battery life, you need to use aggressive power-saving schemes, no Wi-Fi and turn the brightness all the way down. In our general usage test it still delivered more than 7 hours, which is still more than acceptable.