After weeks of waiting for my local brick and mortar Best Buy to start carrying the Asus 1000HE, they finally started carrying what I thought was the 1000HE. I called my local Best Buy to check if they had one instock before driving to pick it up.

The only reason I have waited to purchase one from Best Buy is because I have a Best Buy credit card that offers 0% for 6 months on all purchases. I generally don't purchase from them unless their price is very close to online prices or if I need something in a hurry.

I arrived at Best Buy to find my reserved 1000HE waiting for me. I checked the box to ensure that it was a 1000HE, paid $349.99 + tax and headed home. I was surprised to see the 1000HE selling at Best Buy for $40 less than Amazon.com or Newegg.com. I assumed that it was just a introduction price or a price set to undercut online retailers.

Because there is a huge yellow warning sticker on the box flap that mentions a 15% restocking fee for opened laptops,I doubled checked that the box was marked as an 1000HE before opening it. After spending a couple hours backing it up to my Windows Home Server, installing all the updates, getting Firefox, Thunderbird and a handful of other apps working, I started looking into getting a bluetooth connection setup to my cellphone.

Bluetooth was missing from Control Panel. 802.11n was would also not operate at 5ghz. I also noticed that the battery was listed as only 6.5 hours, no where near the 9 hours it should have. The Atom CPU is also not the nearest N280. After looking online for where to find Bluetooth on the laptop, I found other discussions about not being able to find it.

I picked up the box again, to confirm that I had bought a 1000HE. On the product sticker, 1000HE is listed twice, but in small print, it was marked 1000HEB. 1000HEB? B? Black? No, that is after the dash in the model.

After some quick searching, I found that I had been sold a Best Buy special. No bluetooth, 6 hour battery, and limited 802.11n. No wonder it was $40 cheaper than any other store.

I went to bed feeling robbed. In the morning, I boxed it all up, went back to Best Buy and returned it. The customer service rep tried to get me to pay the 15% restocking. After talking with a manager and showing him that the box is labeled as a 1000HE but is in fact missing three key components, he returned it without a restocking fee.

I think Best Buy has made a major mistake by picking up the 1000HEB not the 1000HE and has allowed Asus to keep it labeled as a 1000HE. I finally broke down and just paid cash for the Asus 1000HE from Newegg.com.

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Yep, I did the same thing. Wish I would have done my due diligence reviewing online before buying... but I too thought I was getting the 1000HE. Just tried setting up bluetooth to my blackberry after about 2 weeks of having the laptop and realized it wasn't bluetooth enabled. Oh well, last time I shop at Best Buy! I wonder if I can buy the internal bluetooth card and install it myself...