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Yes I loved my original 4G 7″ eee netbook but boy it is hard on the hands when working on nano or work stuff for more than short burts.  The 1000H however, in spite of coming with WinXP out of the box, looks like the perfect travelling companion for the coder/sysadmin on the go/on call.

First thoughts:

• 1.6 Ghz Atom processor is snappy enough and means the lappy doesnt get too hot even while charging via AC.  Underside gets a little warm but the kb and trackpad are a nice temp.
• Big surprise and I hadn’t realized how much I liked it until it was gone: no hardware scrolling (vertical or horizontal) build into the trackpad.  UPDATE: Ahh, they have a multi-touch thing going on.  I guess I can get used to two finger scrolling.
•  Definitely more comfy keyboard, many reviews talked about excessive flex but I’m not seeing that much.  Much more concerning is that it sounds like the hard drive on this unit is defective as there is a strange ‘clunk’ every 30-60s.
• The usb ports (particuly the two on the right side) are VERY tight.  I had a few issues getting Ubuntu to boot off my flash drive, it seemed like there needed to be some kind of reseating every boot in order to work.
• Wireless is a “Ralink rt2860″ according to the windows driver.  Works happily over ndiswrapper.
• On-board ethernet does NOT seem to work out of the box.  lspci says:

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Attansic Technology Corp. Unknown device 1026 (rev b0)
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Unknown device 8324

or using -n:

 03:00.0 0200: 1969:1026 (rev b0)

Anyway overall very happy with it (assuming I’m wrong about the hard drive failing), and as the 6 cell MSI Wind is still a ways off, nice to have something now even if it was $550; still better than $650 (thanks NewEgg!)

Since I was unable to find any information out there which seemed to be really independent about what people thought about game rental services, I thought I would post my findings after trying out two services this past summer/fall. I have nothing to disclaim anything here by the way, I do not nor did I ever work for any video game company, magazine, rental service nor in any field related to video games. No one is compensating me for writing this review.

First, let me describe my demographic. I am a casual gamer, or I am now. Sure I played NES for five hours a day in 1990 when I was fourteen. Now I’m 31, have three hours of commuting per day, three young children, and not surprisingly less time for playing games then when I was in high school. For people like me, online game rentals can be a godsend. You can try out new games risk free for as long as you want, no late fees or more time in the car to the rental store, how do you go wrong?

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Well, anyone out there looking for a new handheld smartphone with SSH, you can give up on the Helio Ocean. You would think a phone with 3G, a full qwerty KB and a minimum $60/mo service fee would probably be a potential dream tool for your average sysadmin geek. I emailed helio about the possibilty of getting an SSH client on the device last week. After the usual initial ‘we don’t know what you’re talking about’ email, I politely asked again about whether they would either consider creating one or allowing a 3rd party developer to do so:

“…As a potential customer, one of many potential customers looking for a qwerty-enabled, SSH-capable 3g device, I do need to know quite specifically if any SSH applications are planned or already under development for the Ocean. Could you find out for me?

Regarding 3rd-party development, I’m quite happily employed actually, does your reponse mean only employees and no third party developers can write applicattions for the device, if no 1st party SSH client is planned?”

The last sentence was because the original reply said I could consider applying to the company in order to write an app. No, thanks for the thought. The response back to this email was even more disappointing than the first one:

“Hello from Helio, this is Randy, Thank you for your inquiry.

Chris, Secure Shell is only security programming, since Helio doesn’t allow you to access certain personal information such as bank sites and online shopping. There really is no need for the SSH client. Although, we may still be coming out with updates for this service, please continue to check www.helio.com and clicking the sign up for updates tab. Also, in regards to third party development some third party applications will not work with our services. Thank you and have a wonderful day.”

Now is it me or did he just say that the device is basically useless? You have a great network like 3G but you cant even check your bank balance? Is your device REALLY that underpowered that SSL encryption is beyond your capability? Wow, thanks for saving me the time and money from even considering your device!