Asus Eee PC 1000 HE In Depth Review

The netbook has a glossy finish behind and around the screen and around the keyboard. The Eee logo on the back of the screen is grey, giving it an another elegant look. The quality is very nice, but due to the glossy finish, it is a real magnet for fingerprints and dust particles. Don't worry though: Asus included an antistatic cloth to clean the netbook. They get a bonus point for such a little but lovely thought. As an Asus tradition, the cloth bag to place your netbook inside also comes inside the box, saving you a couple of dollars to buy yourself one. It is not a bag to carry your Eee though; it is just a good fit to place your netbook inside and place it into another bag to avoid scratches and other unpleasant damage to your Eee.

Eee 1000 HE sports a 10” matte display. It is readable under direct sunlight and you will have no problems with even a small shade. It is crisp and does not tire the user. I personally believe that matte displays are better suited for the users who use office software (text processing, spreadsheets, databases) and browse the Internet, whereas the glossy screens are better suited for graphics, photo and CAD/CAM editing, where vibrant colors are needed more. After working on this netbook all day long, you are unlikely to complain about the screen.

For the graphics, Asus used Intel's 945 GME graphics adapter and it is plenty sufficient - unless you want 1080p Full HD movie playback in your netbook. But you can safely play your DVD-quality movies without any problems and it can handle your 720p movies as well. This is the best thing you can do with the Intel's graphics cards (which they push to the manufacturers) and Asus did go for the best. Given Intel's view on netbooks and netbook graphics, this is really among the top you can get.

There are few netbooks in the market that come with Intel's Atom N280 processor and 1000 HE is one of them. Atom N280 is clocked at 1.66 Gigahertz, compared to 1.6 Gigahertz for N270 processors, but the difference is not the 0.06 Gigahertz (well this difference is in fact equals to 60 Megahertz, and people who used Pentium 60 processors will have a small smile) but rather the bus speed which is 667 Megahertz, compared to the 533 Megahertz in Atom N270. This increase in the bus speed makes Eee 1000HE work faster.

The main memory (RAM) included in the 1000HE is 1GB, but maximum supported is 2 GB in a single slot. I strongly recommend to purchase a 2GB RAM stick and upgrade your netbook before you leave the electronics shop.

The hard drive gives you 160GB of storage (the model I have looked at has a Momentous hard disk) plus 10GB of free Eee Storage, summing up to 170 GB. This should be enough to take your documents, photos and music to wherever you go.