This week has seen the Asus’ campaign for advertising the Eee PC 1000HE start up, and Joanna Stern at LAPTOP Magazine has gotten her hands on one of the first review models. She’s posted video as well.
While it’s still based on the same chassis as the 10″ Eee PC 1000H, there are two really large differences.
First – the keyboard – you can get a better sense from the photos and video in the LAPTOP Magazine article, but with the 1000HE, Asustek moved towards a “chiclet-style” keyboard. The design of the keyboard, in addition to the new key-style, has allowed for a sturdier keyboard, with little to no flex. The SHIFT key has also been moved to the left of the UP arrow key.
The other major change (besides a much lower price) is the move to using an Intel Atom 1.66GHz N280 CPU – it’s faster (although not by much) than the N270, but more importantly it has a faster front-side bus (FSB), although preliminary benchmarks showed little difference over the N270.
It will be interesting to see their full review, complete with battery benchmarks (Asustek is claiming 8+ hours).
Read: LAPTOP Magazine