Some credit Asus' Eee PC laptop line with starting the netbook craze, but Asus didn't rest on its laurels, content with the success of its early 700 and 900-series trend-setting computers, not with the enormous popularity of its Eee PC 1000. It just introduced a new laptop in the 1000 series, the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, that raises the bar in a few ways you might find attractive.

There are a lot of little new things — nothing revolutionary — but we think the top three features are the improved battery life, the chiclet-style keyboard, and the new Intel Atom N280 processor. The processor is faster than those found in previous Eee PC netbooks, so if you pick up the 1000HE you should get faster load times, better photo editing performance, and so on. The battery life is rated by Asus at 9.5 hours. If the reality matches the claim, that's a full day of work or two evenings at the coffee house without a recharge.

And the keyboard follows the trend of shallow, separated keys popular in lots of laptops now (including the current generation of MacBooks). Since the keys are separated from one another by small gaps, it's harder to accidentally hit the wrong one; that's important with such a tiny keyboard.

The exact day of release for this computer isn't clear, but it'll be sometime this month. Pre-orders have already started. In fact, if you join Asus' Facebook group you can get $25 off the introductory $400 price. Clever!

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