Asus Eee PC 1000H review

When the Eee PC appeared last year, it was a diet laptop at a diet price.

Everything about it was slimmed down, including its ability to actually do very much. Since then, it's piled on the fat like a battery chicken. With this latest model its size has reached double figures, offering a 10 inch screen in a chassis that's wider and bulkier than ever before.

We did ask ourselves at first if Asus might have finally lost the plot here. After all, the point of a netbook is to be significantly smaller and cheaper than a normal laptop. But after spending some time with the 1000H, we began to see the benefits of the fuller figure.

The internals are basically similar to the previous model, the 901 (find our review at www.computerbuyer.co.uk): a 1.6GHz Atom processor - still, alas, single core - and 1GB of RAM, with the choice of Windows XP or Linux as your operating system. The built-in WiFi adaptor supports the latest Draft-n standard, and Bluetooth is also included to connect wireless peripherals and grab photos from your mobile phone, as well as an SD memory card reader to compensate for the lack of a CD or DVD drive. There's also a 1.3 megapixel webcam built in above the screen, and a very basic little set of integrated speakers that will just about crank out the audio on YouTube videos.

It's in storage capacity that the Eee has really leapt forward. Gone are the 12GB and 20GB solid state drives of previous models, and the 1000H gets an 80GB hard disk to accommodate proper quantities of programs and files. Alternatively, you can pay an extra tenner and opt for a 40GB SSD. It may not hold as much, but it brings the overall weight down by 120g from the hard disk model's 1.45kg, and may also boost battery life, though we couldn't get hold of one to test it out. It looks like remarkably good value, especially looking at the fortune Apple charges for the SSD option on its rather less budget friendly MacBook Air.

Even with the good old mechanical drive whirring away, the Eee's battery puts other netbooks to shame. The lack of a DVD drive thwarted our usual movie playback test, but under light use (paging through a text document) the Asus lasted more than six hours. Because the machine reduces its power consumption to a mere trickle when you're not working it hard, you shouldn't have any trouble squeezing this much time out of it on a regular basis.

Easy on the eye

This is despite the larger 10 inch screen, which makes a huge difference to the way the Eee feels in use. We found the display bright, clear and even, although it seems a shame the resolution has stuck at the same 1024x600 resolution as the physically smaller 901.

The extra inch necessitates a slightly bigger case, which in turn makes more room for the keyboard, and it's here that the 1000H comes into its own. Where previous versions of the Eee, along with other netbooks, made our fingers feel fat, this is getting close to a fully usable laptop keyboard, not just something you can bash out web addresses on. It's wider than that of the MSI Wind (also reviewed on the website), and the layout is excellent, with the single exception of a poorly placed right shift key. The trackpad, too, is wide and responsive, with just the right level of roughness to feel right; only the stiff and clicky mouse buttons disappointed us.

At £331, the 1000H does look a bit dear for what was supposed to be a cheap and cheerful Internet browsing tool. But it's now much more than that: with a battery that lasts all day, a compromise-free keyboard, and space to install all your favourite applications as well as carrying around your media files and documents, this is a machine you might actually choose in preference to a conventional laptop rather than as a cut-price second-best alternative.