ASUS 1000HE Netbook
When netbooks first started coming out last year, I was very interested. I’m a sucker for tiny laptops. Plus the first waves of netbooks were all running Linux, which is a major plus. I’ve been using Linux for a LONG time, but always on desktop. Wifi and Power management were always the two pain points when running Linux on laptops.
I never bought any of them because they were under powered, screen was too hard to read, and quite frankly the keyboards were for the birds.
ASUS 1000HE changed all that. It has a 10 inch LCD screen with resolution of 1024×600. The keyboard size is 92% of a full size keyboard. The keys are square and straight up just like the MacBook keyboards. And the Intel N280 Atom CPU at 1.66ghz is fast enough. So far pystone is the only benchmark I’ve run. I got 24000 on the 1000HE. For comparison, I got 43000 on my 1.86ghz MacBook Air. Yes, I know pystone isn’t the greatest benchmark in the world. 
This is also the first time where Linux on laptop “just worked”. Fedora 10 installation was very fast. Upon booting the first time, it configured the screen to the right resolution. Found the 802.11 N card, configured it, and brought it up. All ACPI functions are working, which means power management is working perfectly.
It has 160GB 5400 RPM Seagate drive, 3 USB port, 4-in-1 SD card slot, VGA out, and Ethernet port. It also has a 1.3megapixel camera for video conference.
The mousepad also supports 2 fingers scrolling gestures, and 3 fingers swipe gestures. Big bonus since I’m so used to my Mac laptops. I find myself doing 2 finger scrolling on any laptops I touch, and tend to think something is broken when I can’t scroll doing that.
The battery life is crazy good. I got 7.5 hours on the first attempt to drain the battery.
So far, the only negatives are:
1: the GPU sucks. It’s the Intel 945GSE. Yes, the Intel extreme graphics chip, where the only thing extreme about it is extremely slow. It would’ve been nice to have the GN40, but honestly, this barrier will be up to Nvidia and ATI to shatter. In particular, Nvidia’s upcoming Ion chipset for netbooks, which is really a GeForce 9400M.
2: The mousepad doesn’t feel as responsive as my MacBook Air.
3: I wish I can put 4GB on it.
In short, I love it.
A. This is not about DC.
B. I want one of these. It would be super nice to have a little laptop that I could carry in my purse.