VR-Zone

The Kensington lock hole, RJ-45, USB, ventilation air vent, microphone and headphone connectors are neatly laid out on the left of the ASUS.

The right consists of a 4-in-1 memory card reader that supports SD (and SDHC), MMC, Memory Stick and Memory Stick PRO, two USB and VGA ports which should be sufficient for use.

Opening the ASUS reveals the 10-inch display, touchpad with buttons, keyboard and spacious palm rest. The built-in microphone are below the screen, while above the keyboard are four quick access buttons - turn on/off display, change display resolution and two programmable application shortcut.

Unlike most notebook PCs with keyboards that have very cramped keys, the 1000HE uses the 'chiclet' keyboard (which looks similar to that of the Apple Macbook). However, some of the keys are created smaller to fit the length of the Eee PC such as the directional, Function, Pause/Break, Print Screen, Insert and Delete buttons.

The touchpad buttons are very close to the edge of the 1000HE which poses some inconvenience as fingers do slide off fairly easy.

A 1.3-megapixel webcam is fitted above the screen to let you do video conferencing with friends and family on Instant Messenger programs. ASUS has preinstall the Skype application in the 1000HE for your convenience.

We placed the 1000HE (on the right) side by side with the first generation Eee PC and you can see that the manufacturer did away with their brand name at the back of the display and replace it with an Eee logo at the corner. Besides the dimension differences, both Eee PCs shared similar ports layout; the connectors on the left are also very much alike, except that the 1000HE did not have the modem port.

Flipping the 1000HE upside down, we opened up the base cover and found a Seagate Momentus 5400rpm 160GB SATA hard disk, and an ASint 1GB DDR2-667 memory module. Only one memory slot is available though.