Purchasing decisions & first impressions:

After spending a great deal of time looking at all available options in the sub $1000 ultraportable notebook (netbook) market I ended up buying the Eee 1000H about 3 weeks ago from JB HiFi. They had recently reduced the price to below $600 and with a bit of haggling I was even happier with the final price. It's heavier than I had really wanted, but after
spending time in front of almost every currently available "netbook" I couldn't survive on the keyboards and screens of the 9" models. There's portable and then there's barely usable (for my purposes). Second, third and fourth to usability were battery life, OS and connectivity and the 1000H nailed each and every requirement.

As a first impression it appears well built and has so far coped well with being carted around in my backpack to and from work and in my old laptop bag for interstate plane travel. I knew how much it weighed from reading all the specs, but the 1.4kgs is still a bit of a shock when you hold it side by side with an Eee 900, Acer Aspire One or similar. I suspect the 1000H's 6 cell battery accounts for a few hundred grams of the additional weight versus the MSI Wind, Lenovo S10 and other 10" netbooks with their standard 3 cells.

A very pleasant surprise was the size and weight of the power supply, which is barely noticable in my bag along with everything else I cart around. The detachable, country specific plug is also a nice touch giving one power supply the flexibility to top you up in several countries (with appropriate plugs on hand) and making it easier to pack away.

Size of the 1000H chassis is fine and very necessary for the larger keyboard and 10" screen which I find essential. If you can touch-type and occasionally need to stare at your screen for hours on end with eyes that are not as sharp as they once were you'll understand why I
emphasise these points. I Love the multi-touch track pad (hello iphone users :-)) and after some performance testing using the enterprise class data processing software developed by the company I work for, I am very happy given the specs and price.

I was waiting eagerly for the Lenovo S10 as it has an Expresscard slot and I figured I would just leave a 3G modem in the slot 24/7 in place of integrated 3G. However, after seeing
Telstra's latest Expresscard 3G modem with the huge antena bulb on the end I decided I would be happier using a USB modem that I could easily unplug when not in use. That extinguished the advantage of the Lenovo so the Eee 1000H was back on the top of my list.

I found Sun's Staroffice and MS Works already installed, but have added MS Office for work purposes. If nothing crops up that dulls the user experience the Eee may end up taking over full-time duties from my 14" Dell Inspiron 640M and it will definitely be the more popular machine when travelling.

A quick summary of my 3 weeks in Eee PC heaven:

- I have the gloss black, aka Fine Ebony and it looks much more professional than the white, but it's a fingerprint magnet. Still, when the white keyboards start getting dirty in 6 months or so I'll be glad I bought the black.
- The weight is OK, but in reality it contributes less than half the weight of what I lug around with me routinely so I can't blame the Eee for my bag being heavier than I'd like. At half the weight of my main Dell laptop it's a big improvement in that department as well.
- Size is much better than any 13 or 14" I've used for fitting easily in a back pack or opening it up and bashing at the keyboard on the train or on a plane.
- Battery life seems pretty good, but I'm not stressing it too much for extended periods. Has multiple modes for performance or power saving and an auto mode for in between.
- Keyboard is fine to work on and I can touch type without too much hassle. Sure it's not as good as a full sized KB, but what can you expect in a 10" chassis?
- Screen is nice and plenty bright enough for use outside the office. It is not a glossy screen so it doesn't suffer from reflections which is a smart move by ASUS given it is designed as a mobile machine and will be used outdoors.
- XP Home is a bit of a pain for work from a domain and user management perspective, but you can still use it on the network if your admin is not paranoid about centrally managing your connection. If I had a spare license for XP Pro I'd probably give it a try to make life easier in the long-run.
- I have experienced some networking issues on my home workgroup and my work domain and while it is now working, no-one can explain what the problem was. I'm blaming XP Home. This is compounded by the fact that after days of trouble shooting with experienced users and networking specialists, all we have done is go back to default settings (having started from default setting that weren't working) and it's decided to play nice on my home workgroup at least.
- It now has MS Office Pro and I sync my Outlook e-mail with the Exchange server at work so I have a copy of it to take with me when I'm out of the office.
- I have removed ESET NOD32 anti virus (came standard) and installed my preferred software being AVG free edition and Zonealarm basic firewall. Slows down bootup a bit, but seems fine once up and running.
- It has SQL Server 2005 running for some of the data processing (data matching) demos I need to run for work.
- It has Apache Tomcat running to enable local use of some JSP "web" demos I need to use as part of presentations for work.
- Runs fine and is still pretty nippy in Performance mode although the Hyperthreaded 1.6Ghz Atom is no match for a proper Core2 duo processor, but stacks up OK to a Hyperthreaded P4 on a clock for clock basis.

Two simple & effective upgrades:
- install the latest Elantech touch pad drivers to fully enable the multi-touch features. Perhaps not as well refined as the iPhone mutli-touch capabilities, but potentially very useful depending on your intended usage. You can assign different behaviour to the various
gestures that it recognises to customise it if you like. If you don't like the touchpad buttons, using the multi-touch features mean you don't have to go near them at all.
- remove the standard 1GB 667Mhz SODIMM RAM module and replace with an equivalent 2GB module. If you want to keep multiple apps open or are using memory intensive apps it will help. Took me 10 minutes to do and 9 minutes of that was running across the road from work to buy the RAM.

Things to Note:

Be aware that ASUS have recently released the 1000H with a 160GB hard drive and the RRP has gone right back up to around $750. With the otherwise identical (as far as I can determine) 80GB model (what I have) easily had for less than $600 you could buy a spare drive and do the 2GB RAM upgrade and still have change in your pocket if you shopped hard.

I miss the optical drive occasionally when using the Eee in 'personal' mode. In 'work' mode I don't miss it at all as everything I do or need is on a network somewhere. The way I see it, it comes down to purely how much grunt you require. If you can make do with the performance of the 1.6Ghz Atom then the use of an external optical and maybe a second portable hard drive as required is no big deal IMHO. They do add to the cost and a little to the bulk, but provide the ultimate flexibility. If you connect to another network (wired or wireless) regularly there's nothing stopping you from using shared optical drives and storage space
while you're connected.

I stared at a lot of laptops and netbooks in a lot of shops before deciding on the Eee. The core specs for all Netbooks are fairly stable for now, but there are always rumours of "nice to have" features such as dual core Atoms, built-in 3G and touch sensitive screens. At the price these "netbooks" are selling for I'm happy to consider a 6 monthly upgrade cycle to take advantage of any significant improvments over time. Using it for work makes this financially acceptable and also necessary.

I know this review is long, but I've put a lot of thought into it and I really hope it helps someone who might be considering what to buy from the ever increasing range of ultra cheap ultraportables on the market.

You got rid of NOD32!!!!!!?????
Shame.