Life with the 1000HE
Based on our netbook survey, a plurality of TR readers considers battery life the most important aspect of any netbook, aside from price. With that in mind, let's take a look at the Eee PC 1000HE's battery.

The 1000HE comes with a new, higher density 8700mAh battery—an almost 32% increase in rated capacity over the 6600mAh part found in its predecessors. But what sort of longevity does that translate to? Asus claims this netbook will run for up to 9.5 hours with the Super Hybrid Engine profile set to Power-Saving, the LCD brightness at 40%, and both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth disabled—if you use the Eee PC as a portable word processor, in other words. But let's be serious: no one does that unless they're stuck writing on planes (like TR editors). No, the primary role for a netbook is Internet usage, and I opted to benchmark the 1000HE's battery life accordingly.

To get an accurate estimation of battery life while surfing the web, I opened up a pair of Firefox windows for The Tech Report and Shacknews. I wasn't going to let the system sit idle at static pages (despite animated GIF or Flash advertisements), so I set the browsers to refresh automatically every 30 seconds, forcing the system to re-render pages and making sure Wi-Fi was being used. Content with that workload as a decent approximation of web browsing, I set the LCD's brightness to 40% (which isn't as dim as you would expect), put the Super Hybrid Engine's profile to Auto, and pulled the plug.

Almost exactly seven hours later, the 1000HE finally went dark. That's fantastic performance for web browsing, and battery life should easily push past the seven-hour mark if you lower the brightness even further. Flash content seems to hit the Atom processor especially hard, so if you're just surfing and not watching YouTube, you can probably save some precious CPU cycles by disabling Flash altogether.

Video playback is another role the 1000HE is sure to fill frequently, particularly for users that travel with the netbook often. I fired up VLC Media Player and started looping a DVD rip I made in Handbrake—XviD encoded at an average bit rate of 1000Kbps. Wi-Fi was disabled for the video playback test, brightness was once again at 40%, and the Super Hybrid Engine setting was left to "Auto." The 1000HE managed to sustain slightly over six hours of continuous playback before giving up. CPU usage was typically around 20%. A higher bitrate or more advanced codec like H.264 would no doubt have a greater hit on battery life, but most users can expect to get through three movies (as long as they're not the Lord of the Rings trilogy) on a single charge.

Going beyond light use
Of course, all of that battery life and storage capacity provides more interesting possibilities for the 1000HE than word processing and trolling around Internet forums. Curious, I set out to discover what the 1000HE was truly capable of—to find the limit of the netbook's capabilities. It might help to read this section of the review with Paul Engemann's Push It to the Limit playing in the background. (I know the song helped me write it.)

Most of my time with the 1000HE was spent testing multimedia capabilities, taking into consideration the scenarios you might find a netbook in—commuting, traveling, or just lounging on the couch. I enjoy a number of podcasts, both audio and video, which I'd be sure to take with me on my Eee PC. As expected, the 1000HE handled them with ease. iTunes was surprisingly snappy with 1GB of RAM (admittedly without a large library), and I had no trouble watching my favorite video podcasts. High-definition content was generally off-limits, but standard-resolution QuickTime video played without issue.

Flash content has taken over the Internet, and unfortunately, it's one of the key areas where the Eee PC's horsepower can fall short, particularly if sites are streaming their video content in H.264 format. Standard-res video on YouTube is no problem, but watching TV episodes on Hulu is a more difficult prospect, especially if you're using the 1000HE's "Power Saving" profile. Running with the Syper Hybrid Engine in "High-Performance" mode cleared up any stuttering issues with Hulu, but I still couldn't watch episodes in full screen. And don't even think about touching that 480p button on Hulu or watching HD content on YouTube. The Atom just can't keep up.

I didn't bother trying 3D games with the 1000HE, since we already know how Intel's GMA 950 behaves in games, and it's usually not pretty. Besides, few 3D games lend themselves to being played on a small, low-resolution laptop with only a touchpad for input. However, older 2D titles tend to work just fine, as long as the 1000HE's vertical resolution of 600 pixels is enough to show the entire user interface. In a pinch, you can always switch to 1024x768 with vertical scrolling if the game absolutely requires it. The Eee PC 1000HE offers a great opportunity to dust off the games you haven't touched in a decade and remember a simpler time, before high-dynamic-range lighting and breast physics.

The ample 160GB storage capacity also affords a great opportunity to bring your music library on the go—or if you're a serious bookworm, a large collection of e-books. I personally prefer my novels to be of the graphic variety, and although its display resolution isn't optimal for that purpose, the Eee PC 1000HE makes a surprisingly good device for reading digital comics. A benefit of the netbook's diminutive size is that you can comfortably prop it on its side, viewing the display in portrait mode and reading it like a book. It's a move that can garner a few confused stares at the bus stop, but that's never stopped me.