This is a nice little machine. It's not super high quality, but for $400, it's a tremendous value. It's small size makes it perfect for coffee shops, using on the couch, and on planes. It has a built in camera. It's reasonably fast - our machine runs windows with no problems.

I wouldn't suggest the asus eee as a work horse computer, but it's a nice little gadget to have sitting around the house.

I just bought this ASUS Eee PC and have played with it for the last 3 days. I am very impressed, so much so that I have decided to sell my HP 15" DV6165cl laptop and go with this instead. The reasons: All I do is surf, email, do word processing and, having recently been set up with Slingbox, watch my Home Satellite PVR on it when I am away. This machine does all of that beautifully with 2 critical bonuses:

1)Its battery life seems to be around 5 hours, give or take, which is amazing compared to 2 hours for the HP laptop.

2)Its weight and size are so perfect for portability, whereas the 15" laptop is just too big for that.

I recently tested out an Acer Aspire One 1.60 GB Atom processor, 160 HDD with 1 gb of memory. Here is where I feel this ASUS beats the Acer hands down:

1) The battery life of the Acer is max. 2 hours. Enough said.
2) The sound, the sound, the sound. While not digital home theater quality, it's just about as good as any HP laptop, for example, which is quite fine for watching online stuff, videos or home TV via Slingbox as I do. The Acer sound, on the other hand, (how may I put this delicately so as not to offend the general public...) SUCKS!!!!! It's low, muted and awful. In order to watch a video or Slingbox TV, I had to plug in an external set of speakers.
3) The ASUS boots up much faster.
4) At 10", the screen is 1.1 inches bigger than the 8.9 Acer. The screen resolution and brightness are very nice indeed.
5) Everything feels so much more solid on the ASUS and smudges so much less.
6) In order to upgrade the memory on the ACER, you literally have to dismantle it, i.e., remove the keyboard and dive inside, at your own risk, of course. To upgrade the memory on the ASUS to a 2 Gb stick, it's just the standard "unscrew-panel-and-insert" routine. Remove this one underside panel and you have instant access to the memory and the hard drive.
7) One great thing that I just figured out on my own is that you don't have to click or double click the left mouse button, just one-tap or two-tap on the track pad instead with your finger. Take that those of you who say that the mouse buttons are the stiffest and most difficult to use that they have ever come across, which by the way is untrue for me. They are simply sturdy, to go along with the sturdy construction I mentioned in point 5) which I, for one, appreciate.
8) The Acer comes with this tight plastic carrying sleeve that doesn't even zip. While not a laptop carrying case, the ASUS carrying pouch is roomy enough for you to put in and pull out the unit with room to spare, it has a zipper and is not "plasticky". It has a velour-like finish.
9) The ASUS has 4 little sharp and sturdy silver hot buttons on the top of the keyboard to turn the display on and off, bring up messenger or skype, change the resolution of the monitor, etc... Very, very handy.
10) The Acer keyboard is smaller, flimsier, and more difficult to accurately type on than the ASUS. As for the supposed poor placement of the right shift key on this ASUS, not being a touch typist, I have not yet been even remotely bothered by it.

It is for all of these reasons that this ASUS is a keeper and that the ACER would simply not have been a long term pleaser for me.

Recieved my 1000HA a few days ago and have been using it nonstop since then. In the past days the unit has exceeded my expectations and re-inforced my choice :)

I researched the purchase of a NetBook for about a month prior to making a decision. Among those I considered were the EEE1000HA, EEE901, Aspire One and MSI Wind. The MSI Wind somehow did not appeal to me so I excluded that right away. I played with the Aspire One at the store for a while and could not get used to the side mouse button configuration which I found extremely frustrating to use. I also did not like the fact that the 6 cell battery on the Acer was only 2700mAH and the weight with the 6 cell was 2.8 lbs which was almost as heavy as the 10" 1000HA.

The 901 I excluded because the keyboard was a bit too miniscule. Even though portability was extremely important to me I felt the 901 is just too small and would tire me out with anything more than 15 mins of usage. That left the 1000HA. I chose it because I felt it was a perfect fit.

- Great battery life, I get a solid 5 hrs with wi-fi/video/audio activity. The suggested 7 hrs is not happening but 5hrs is very realistic to expect with typical use.

- Plays DVDs great with absolutely no jerking, I use DVDShrink to create an ISO image of a DVD and transfer it using an SDHC card. The unit ships with Intervideo DVD preinstalled which can play a DVD directly from a location on the hard disk.

- Awesome keyboard: for such a small unit I am thankful that the keyboard is so easy to use, it is 95% the size of a regular keyboard

- 10" screen is perfect size: I felt this size is the best compromise between portability and functionality, it does not cause any undue eyestrain. The LCD is bright and colors look great.

- Very portable: At 3.2lbs it's a good bit lighter than my Thinkpad T60 and the lack of weight is definitely noticable, I feel this netbook is at the limit of how small a portable computer should be. Anything smaller is going to be really difficult to use. The power adapter is also quite dimunitive.

- Comes with a nice soft case and LCD cleaning cloth

- Webcam: The webcam at 1.3 Megapixel is extraordinary for a unit of this size and price point. It is very clear and the embedded microphone does a great job. I am able to videoconference with friends in Europe and Asia via Skype (which is pre-installed) with excellent results.

The 160GB hard drive is partitioned into 80GB and 60GB usable partitions. The other 20GB is supposed to be some kind of hidden recovery partition in case the system crashes, not sure about it. For a netbook 140GB is plenty anyway so I'm not concerned.

My only gripe about the unit is that the trackpad buttons are hard to press. The left button doesn't bother me so much because I started to use tap to click and it works very well, but right clicking is still hard. The gestures are great but I haven't had a chance to use that very much.


Asus has carefully thought out the design of this unit and it shows in how easy and intuitive it is to use. I think this unit delivers a lot for it's price and if you're looking for an extremely portable machine with all the basic capabilities most of us will use on the road you cannot go wrong with the 1000HA.

Highly recommended!

I bought this for a friend who only had a desktop Mac. She loves this mini laptop. It's small, and comes with all the features she wants, built in web cam, mic, SD reader, and wireless. battery life is great. Now she can try using MSN messenger, QQ, and get online besides sitting in front of her desk.
I gave 4 stars cause 1000Ha is a bit pricier and bigger than 900 series. With over$ 430, it's in a price range of regular dual core laptop with all standard peripheral such as CD-rw drive, exprss expansion...
Its size is larger than 900HA, which is the intend of netbook.

suggestion: with its size it should have a 11" screen. It should have better power saving scheme like Samsung NC10.

This product has a lot of value. You really get a lot for your money. If you compare it on the basis of processor, memory, screen size, etc, you are really missing the point. What this thing does best is give you a relatively ample PC in a package that makes it much more usable than your typical laptop. It seems like laptops just keep getting bigger and bigger. Isn't the whole idea to have a PC "in your lap". With this one you can do just that. The 9" screen version is just too small though. The keyboard mainly, but the extra inch on the screen is huge. As much as I hate MS, I opted to not go with Linux version mainly because I wanted the white case.

PROS:
* Mainly it is the size. Very easy to tote around. Get a wireless mouse. I like the Logitech V220 ($27 @ WM)
* The battery life is the big factor. With most laptops, you just get started on something and then its time to find an outlet. This one goes the distance.
* It also has a great screen. Nice and bright.
* Plenty of disk space. I suggest the HD over FLASH so you can load Office and also have plenty of room for pictures and music.
* A keyboard that is easy to get used to being 95% of normal size.
* Ergonomic layout is logical with all the blue function keys easy to figure out, not complicated, just what you need and nothing more.

CONS:
So far, not many. I use HOME and END a lot and on this machine you need to use the blue function key with them so it is a two step key process, but that's about it.

ADVICE:
* Get the 2 Gig RAM module, it makes it run faster for few $. It should appear on this page as an item people also bought.
* Don't worry about not having a CD/DVD drive. Many SW companies let you get a trial version of their software. If you already own that SW, you can download it then just enter your product key and off you go. Otherwise, go to another PC and copy it to a flash drive. Most programs are not all that big considering how much FLASH space you get for your $ these days. MS Office S & T 2003 full install was only 228Mb. Don't forget to open notepad and note your product key and just include it as a file on the FLASH. With 160Gb of disk space, I created a directory on the Eee C: drive called "Install Disks", then a folder under that, for example, "MS Office 2003" and put that whole disk copy there including the "_product key.txt" file. HINT: Use the underscore in front of the name and it shows up at the top of the list and does not get lost in the shuffle. Oh, before you copy the files from the CD be sure to go the Tool-> Folder Options and set it to "Show hidden files and folders", select one file and do a CTRL-A to select every file, then drag and drop in the file you created on your FLASH drive.

Sorry this got long-winded. Just trying to help and do my part.
Great machine! You will love it.

I brought 2 pcs for my sons. They are 10 and 8 year old. Both of them are very satisfied with this product especially my younger son. The battery life is amazing, almost 5 hours. On this kind of product, it's longer than what I expected.