Why I pre-ordered the Asus EEE PC 1000HE

I've been watching the netbook industry grow since it's infancy back during the 2GB hard drives with a Linux OS on a 7'' screen and after going over the specs on the Asus EEE PC 1000HE I've decided this is the one for me. Surprisingly this is my first netbook purchase and although I've wanted to buy several others before like the Acer Aspire One, MSI Wind U100 or the Lenovo S10 I've just been strapped for cash.

The main features that drew me towards the 1000HE include the 9.5 hour battery life - yes I know this is only advertised rate and it will most likely be around 6 - 7 hours, but that's still great. It comes with a slightly faster Atom chip (N280 1.66 GHz) which won't be a huge performance boost but at least it's not another netbook using the Atom N270 1.6 GHz chip! This also comes with the 802.11n which I use at my house (More of the recent netbook releases have been shipping with 802.11n but not all). Lastly, I really love the chiclet-style keyboard that's notorious with the recent iteration of Macs and absent from all other competing netbooks. Oh and did I mention it's only $375 after the $25 pre-order rebate?

I've put in my pre-order through Amazon and decided to go with the black one over the blue one. For those of you on the fence, be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed so you can see an unboxing video, hands on impressions and an extensive review that I'll post as soon as it arrives.

If you want to pre-order through Amazon you can do so here; however, there are several more online locations offering the $25 pre-order discount that you can see on this promo sheet.

What do you think? Have you already pre-ordered this netbook or are you still undecided?