Asus Eee PC 1000HE Announced

Every so often we see a new version of the Asus Eee PC appear (all being members of the 700, 900 or 1000 series, in this case the latter) and more often than not they do not make much of an impact on the netbook world. So when Asus announced the 1000HE a couple of days ago many questions were asked as to whether it would be any improvement on what has already been done – is it more than just an extra vowel?

From what we found out at the CES in Las Vegas we know that it will have a brand new keyboard and an improved battery all of which hope to improve in areas where the Eee PC has not previously performed as well as it could have.

Let us first have a quick look at the Eee PC 1000H before we see what Asus have done to improve it. It is one of the bigger netbooks on the market with a 10inch screen housing a brightly lit 1,024 x 600 resolution, and a 1.3 megapixel camera. Hardware wise it is fairly standard: it has a 1.6GHz N270 Intel Atom processor with 1GB of 667MHz RAM; unfortunately it only manages a 80GB HDD but does have draft-n wireless.

The first improvement that has been made is with regards to the chassis and although the majority of the body is the same work has been done to smooth out the battery and remove the lump that was previously on the bottom. Not only does this make it look nicer, but also makes it that little bit easier to slide into things – and also results in a smaller battery.

They keyboard has also been given a bit of an overhaul with quite a few changes being made. The first is that they keyboard now has an island layout which allows for quicker typing, and the keyboard feels very sturdy and well built which is good to know! The biggest joy though is that Asus have finally sorted out the horrendous positioning of the right shift key which is now finally placed to the left of the arrow keys allowing typist to reach it properly.

One of the more interesting changes is that of the processor which is now N280 instead of the N270 which is used by (nearly) every other netbook under the sun, which makes a welcome change. It runs at 1.66GHz as opposed to the usual 1.6GHz which theoretically will make it that little bit quicker but that is not really that noticeable.

So is it really worth it? Well I definitely like the idea of having a little variety with the processor even if it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference and it is good to see that Asus have finally sorted out their keyboard. It will probably be reasonably priced at around £290 (the same price as it’s predecessor) so it will definitely be competitive.

Unfortunately for it though there is some pretty steep competition at this screen size: notably the MSI Wind U100 and the Samsung N10. Although the former is a little expensive it is still a very good netbook (with a wonderful keyboard) and the N10 continues to be a very solid example of how netbooks should be. So don’t expect to see the world to suddenly rush out and buy the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, but it is a step in the right direction.

Source – Laptopmag

Related Pages:

1. ASUS Eee PC 1008P Netbook is Officially Announced (CES 2010)
2. Acer 10″ Netbook Announced
3. ASUS ROG G73jh Laptop (CES 2010)
4. ASUS N-Series Laptop Announced (Bang & Olufsen)
5. PC Wii Remote – Asus Eee Stick Announced

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