asus 1000he review
Over the summer I picked up a ASUS EEE 1000HE netbook. The first thing I did when I got it was install win 7 and upgrade the RAM to 2gigs.
It advertises 9.5 hours of battery life and with win7 installed, I was not expecting to get even close, but I usually get over 8. Now, that’s with the monitor dimmed and the turbo button set to auto-mode. Yes, it has a turbo button. I was a little disapointed at first but it’s a nice throw back to the earlier days of computers. The auto-mode doesn’t get in the way much. Most of the time I am typing or reading the minilappy doesn’t need to do much.
As a dev machine, it’s decent. I have it running Visual Studio 2008 with Coderush. The screen real estate is a little tight. When Coderush runs a template, it tends to lag a little, but that’s mainly do to the hard drive. Also VS lags a lot when programming XAML.
For surfing the web, it’s awesome. Chrome is as zippy as ever on this little machine. And small size and ridiculously long battery life makes it an awesome machine for living on the couch.
At conferences, it’s great. Usually power outlets are a rare commodity. With 8+ hrs of batter life and a little prior planning, I free from searching for a place to recharge all day.
Overall, I wouldn’t use this as my main machine, but as a secondary, it is awesome.