There's a few reasons the ASUS Eee PC 1000HE is a significant new contender in the sub-$1,000 netbook space - not least because of the ambitious 9.5 hour battery rating we spotted at CES earlier this year. It will be interested to see how far the battery lasts in real life and whether it can equal ASUS' 1000H (which lasted 6 hours in our light use test).
The other reason is that ASUS says this is the first notebook in Australia to appear with Intel's Atom n280 CPU. (Note: The Eee PC 1000HE is an N270/N280 machine. The ASUS press release says the 1000HE will "soon be available" with the N280 chip).
The Atom is a tad faster than the n270, though perhaps the more importantly power consumption is lower, so in theory this will contribute to better battery life.
The 1000HE also has a "Chiclet" keyboard design with larger spaces between the keys that's vaguely similar to Sony's Vaio keyboards.
At $899, the 1000HE is $100 cheaper than the N10J was at launch (though street pricing will differ), though you're getting less storage than the ASUS N10J (160GB + 10GB online storage vs 320GB), no HDMI, and 1GB RAM vs 2GB for the n10J we reviewed.
The 1000HE looks like a quality machine, though we can't help wondering when buyers will be offered a sweetener to justify the price tag of these netbooks, some of which are now hitting the $900 mark. How about shipping digital TV tuners in these things?
