What's larger than a cell phone, smaller than a laptop and outlasts both? Give up? My new Asus Eee PC 1000 HE netbook. I don't quite know what to say about this thing other than "it's awesome".

Since opening this thing up, I have carried almost constantly. Sitting on the couch, on the patio, at work, in the car at lunch - you name it, I am carrying it. Nothing new there, right? I mean, people have been carrying laptops wherever they want for many, many years now... What people haven't been doing is carrying their PC UNTETHERED for hours and hours on end.

Since this is going to be a short post, I will just say that this is a nice netbook. After a weekend of hard testing, I have concluded that I am ready to put the ol' DV6000t up on eBay. Yup, you heard right - the 1000HE is my new laptop. Sure, I have the quad core desktop for the heavy lifting - But I figure in the end, concerning my "laptop" portability and functionality trumps power for portable computing (not that this netbook isn't powerful in it's own right - just not dual core powerful).

Although the 1000HE comes with XP, I am now running Jaunty Jackalope (9.04) Ubuntu on here. Nice thing about this book combined with 9.04 is that everything works... Not knowing what to expect with the PC, I went ahead and downloaded both the standard 9.04 ISO and the Eeebuntu ISO. Since I read of many issues with the standard (pre 9.04) distro on the Eees, I first booted the Eeebuntu from SD... It ran nice enough, but I was not too keen on the "netbook remix" interface. It was then I decided to take a chance and go with the standard 9.04... Man, am I glad I did! Everything - I mean everything (so far as I have been able to dream to test) worked out of the box. Webcam, Bluetooth, Wifi, Compiz, Fullscreen video, etc... all works!

So, in recap... do I recommend the Asus 1000 HE netbook? Oh yea, I do - emphatically. It's nice, light weight, long lasting, SURPRISINGLY FAST AN AGILE IN BOTH XP AND UBUNTU and just flat out an esthetically pleasing PC... So far, I really likey.

Check back for more specifics on getting Ubuntu up and running on the 1000HE if you dare!