Asus EeePC 1000H
Feature
The above variation of the official marketing slogan could very well be the way to describe the latest incarnation in the ultraportable computers, or netbooks, known as EeePCs.
As was told above, there's are button to change the performance of the machine on the go. When running on mains power, the Intel Atom processor runs at 1600MHz under load and 800MHz when idling. When on battery power the speed drops to 1200MHz/600MHz. If, however, you set the performance more on High, the processor locks at 1600Mhz/800Mhz on both mains and battery power, whereas Power Saving limits it to 1200MHz/700MHz. The Super mode overclocks the processor to 1800MHz/900Mhz.
Cinebench R10 gives the processor a rendering benchmark of 769 CB-CPU, and an OpenGL benchmark of 274 CB-GFX. These results are in no way impressive, but quite enough for the purposes that the EeePC is meant for.
The reported maximum battery performance for the saver mode is as much as 8 hours with the stock 6 cell battery, which is very much more impressive than any of the competing products have to offer. In practice, if you watch divx movies and use the wi-fi to browse the net, you will still get about 4-5 hours of use from this computer. With the wi-fi and bluetooth turned off, and restricting the use to text editing, you will naturally get a lot more hours from the battery (so many, in fact, that I could not spare the time to actually try it out – and that's pretty good in my books!).
Game tests
Even though the ultra-portable is clearly not intended as a gaming machine, a gamer is naturally interested what sort of games one might be able to enjoy with it. I therefore attempted to install and run some random games to see how well the EeePC 1000H handled them and what sort of titles you may expect to be able to run with it. What I found is that, at the Super performance mode, the 1000H is perfectly capable of running such older titles as Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Oblivion would not even launch, however). In open areas you may see some stutter, but otherwise the graphics flow effortlessly. Similarly, you can run Oolite well enough to play it as long as you don't install any heavy eye-candy extensions made by the fans. Both of these games installed without a glitch, although I found that Oolite didn't launch in fullscreen mode at all. I also installed Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and I must say that I noticed no stutter or any other kind of problem while running it. In short, the EeePC 1000H allows you to flex your retro-gamer muscles pretty well!
Addendum: you can find a good list of working games at the EeeUser forums.
Our verdict
Overall, Asus EeePC 1000H is a great machine for anyone looking for a secondary, on-the-go computer. It is also able to handle some games, so even gamers should be relatively happy with it. It seems to me that the 1000 series could also serve as the main computer to some people whose only requirements are web browsing, ability to use an office application, and watching divx movies. The definite pros of this small machine are: battery life, decent keyboard, small size and the 10” screen. The cons include the weight that makes this netbook one of the heaviest on the market and the slight pixelisation of the 10” display which doesn't seem quite as sharp as the display on the 900 model did. However, the weight becomes a non-issue when you remember that it is almost entirely due to the 6 cell battery – which is much bigger than what the competing netbooks have – and the sturdy construction, which tells me that this unit will not break easily (the most fragile part being the HD, but you can avoid that problem by buying the 1000 model instead).
All in all, I'm confident in saying that Asus EeePC is the ultimate netbook – at least for me. It may not be as transportable as the 900 model is, but it wins me over with the battery life, the screen that I don't have to squint and the keyboard that is actually easy to touch type with.
Our score: 9/10