Asus EeePC 1000h

I recently purchased an EeePC 1000h, and I'm going to give a quick review here.

First things first, I purchased the 1000h rather than the 1000 because of the 80GB HDD instead of the 40GB SSD. In part because of the price, the 1000h was about $100 cheaper than the 1000, even though it only comes with Windows XP (as opposed to Linux). Also in part because I guess I'm old school or something. I still don't trust SSD. Even though I'm sure I'd never actually have a problem, the phrase limited writes scares me.

Even though the machine came with XP, I never actually booted into it. I have no idea how this machine works with Windows. I used the guide located here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick to create a boot ISO of Ubuntu 8.04, and the guide here: http://www.array.org/ubuntu to get all of the EeePC specific hardware working. The only problem I encountered here is that, even after I installed the custom eee kernel from array.org, I couldn't get the wireless card to work. I jumped in #eeepc on freenode IRC, and quickly found out that the wireless card in the 1000h is disabled in the BIOS by default (what the hell?). Enabling it quickly fixed the problem. Everything else just worked.

Pros:

• The battery lasts about 5 hours. Longer than any other laptop I've ever had
• The video card can handle compiz very well
• Wireless card appears to have a good range (as opposed to my compaq presario v1000 which would drop packets even if the AP was just in the next room)
• I like the size, it's very portable, and comes with a cool travel case
• Everything I'd come to expect from a laptop works, including Sleep, Hibernate, and different power modes when on battery or AC

Cons:

• The right shift key is in a very awkward position. If you're a touch typist, you're going to hit the pageup key more times on accident than the intended shift key. This is true for me, even after a two weeks of trying to get used to it
• It took me at least 20 minutes to remove the stupid "Made for Windows XP" and various other stickers from the unit. Haha.

Overall, I really like the machine. Small, portable, functional, and at $549 from Amazon, it's hard to beat.