ASUS Eee PC 1000HA 10-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel ATOM N270 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, 10 GB E-Storage, XP Home, 6 Cell Battery) Fine Ebony

This is a superbly designed product. Everything is just as I would want it as if I'd specified every little detail.

The keyboard works out very nicely except for the arguably ill positioned RH shift key, which is a minor beef. It has 12 Function keys plus 4 extra user programmable hot keys.

I have a full sized Compaq laptop and wondered if I could get used to this smaller unit, and now it's by far my favorite.

The video system works well and can support resolutions up to 1920x1080 in case you connect a large external monitor. It has several power/performance profiles - "Super Hybrid Engine" - that you can readily select from the keyboard if desired to optimize performance. Very cool.

I ran Passmark "Performance Test" on the unit and got a bottom line figure of 228. My full size 2006 single core Compaq laptop does 248, so this is in the same ballpark. This wouldn't work for gaming so well, but for QuickBooks Pro, Photoshop, and a couple of other large programs, it's fine.

The built-in webcam and microphones work great with Skype.

It comes with a carrying bag.

The hard drive has two equal size Windows NTFS partitions: one is for the XP system and the other is empty. This works out so perfectly as I deleted the empty NTFS partition and installed SuSE 11.1 Linux so as to have a dual booting machine. SuSE 11.1 supports all the hardware including the webcam, wireless, and the SD memory slot. It was a straightforward install, and I'm tickled with how well this worked out.

At this time, the ASUS 1000HA appears to be the best value by far in its league.Get more detail about ASUS Eee PC 1000HA 10-Inch Netbook (1.6 GHz Intel ATOM N270 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, 10 GB E-Storage, XP Home, 6 Cell Battery) Fine Ebony.