The Asus 1000H

Well, I'm sure there are many out there who don't recognize the name Asus. They are an OEM that specializes in computer motherboards, video cards, notebooks and recently desktop computers. I personally use an Asus notebook (F8 SA-X2) and after using it for almost a year, am really happy with it. Are there better notebooks out there? Sure, but it has all the components I needed at the time and was a very good price. In the past year, there has been a push for the so-called Netbook. Yes, Netbook not Notebook. These are smaller notebooks that are very portable and can last much longer on the battery. Asus was pretty much the pioneer in the low-cost sector (Sony and Fijitsu have been making small notebooks, but at a steep price for years). Asus' first forey was the 7" screened Surf. It was around $300 and sported a small SSD (Solid State Harddrive, think a Harddrive made of SD or Compact Flash Cards. No moving parts) of 2, 4, 6, and 8 Gigs. 512M of ram and a flavor of Linux for the OS. They were a pretty big hit among computer enthusiast who upon receiving them, began to hack them to pieces, adding touchscreens, GPS, blutooth and so on. But having seen these in person, I thought they were cool, but to small and useless for a practical purchase. Fast forward a year.
Asus along with every major OEM (Dell, Gateway, Acer, etc) comes out with a Netbook of their own. Asus now offers a 9" and 10" Netbook with a variety of options (bigger harddrives, more Ram, Windows XP instead of Linux, better battery life and a more powerful CPU) and suddenly these things are viable options for computing.
I really wanted to get Cynthia new notebook as her current one (a 6 year old Dell Inspiron) was just dogging. I hated using it (ie. working on it to make it run better) and it was big and the battery just sucked (less than 10 minutes). I showed Cynthia the 7" Surf model and she immediatly thought it was a toy and to tell you the truth so did I (but i still wanted one). Then Target (yes, Target) started to carry the 9" Asus Netbook and I showed her that and said "They also make a 10" one". She seemed a little more excited about it (though she really wants this 12" HP we've been watching) and I thought the price would be viable for an Christmas present. Well I kept tabs on NewEgg.com for the model and price and then it came to my attention (thanks Travis and Andrew) that I could probably secure a brand new Asus 10" Netbook on eBay for 25% less. So I played my cards right and sure enough, I purchased it last Monday and it arrived the following Thursday. As soon as it arrived at work I busted it open and began to install Cynthia's favorite programs and get it updated. It was smooth as butter, the screen is really bright. The battery says it will last around 5hours but I've been hearing around 4 or 3 with heavy useage (read: watching movies). Well, I resolved to pack it up and save it for Christmas... and that lasted just over 26 hours. I gave in on Friday and she was pretty happy. She asked me to install Windows Vista, which I did, and this little machine runs it very well. The only con I can think of is that most Netbooks do not come with a CD Drive. Which means you need an USB CD Drive or another computer to dump the CD's contents to an SD card and then install it from there.
The Asus 1000H comes with an Intel Atom 1.6Ghz Processor, 1G DDR2 Ram, 160G HardDrive, Wireless G, 3 USB2.0 Ports, a VGA Port, Mic and Headphone jacks, a Built-in Mic and Web Cam, SD Card Slot, and an 100M Ethernet Jack.
This thing is soooooo sweet. I am seriously envious. I'm not going to say it's for everyone, but I think for anyone looking for a notebook for Emailing, Surfing the Web, and writing papers this may be the one for you. The size may turn a lot of people away, but for the price and options, I think it's definately a winner.

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