Stan Beer
Tuesday, 10 March 2009 17:02
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
A lot of reviewers have also noted that the 1000HE now
has the right hand shift key "correctly" positioned to the left of the
page up arrow instead of to the right as is the case with the 1000HD. I
guess that must be a touch typist thing because it doesn't bother me
one way or the other.
Lining the two models up side by side, to my eye
the screen of the new 1000HE is noticeably brighter and more readable.
To someone with ageing eyes like me, that's definitely a big plus.
Another plus for the 1000HE over my box is the 160GB hard drive
compared to my 80GB. That's definitely worth something but since I do
most of my computing in the cloud when I use my netbook and don't keep
all that much on disk, I can easily live with what I've got.
Then of course, there's the difference in processing power of the two
boxes. My 1000HD is driven by a Celeron 900Mhz chip while the 1000HE
has the spanking new Atom N280 running at 1.66GHz.
While this may sound strange - even unbelievable - to most readers of
this tale, I can't discern any major difference in the performance of
the two boxes running similar desktop applications with the same number
of browser windows open. I suppose if I pushed both boxes hard enough,
the 1000HE would eventually win out but for my uses, the performance
was similar.
Mind you, I'm running an early build of Windows 7 Ultimate Beta on my
1000HD while the 1000HE is running Windows XP Home. I don't know
whether that's an advantage or disadvantage with respect to performance
on either machine.
Now with regard to battery life, Asus leaves you in doubt about its
claims. Sitting bold as brass in the space in front of the keyboard is
a large green tinged sticker in the shape of a flashlight battery that
reads:
"OneDayComputing 9.5 hours battery life"
Then in fine print that requires my reading glasses:
"Battery life depends on configuration and use. Please see http://event.asus.com/eeepc/battery/index.htm for more information."
A quick visit to that page reveals all:
"Estimated maximum battery life under Windows XP is measured with
BatteryMark 4.0.1 (in Eee PC Super Hybrid Engine Power Saving mode, 40%
LCD brightness, Wi-Fi off, BT off, and camera disabled). Actual battery
life may vary based on product settings; usage patterns and
environmental conditions."
CONTINUED Page 3
