Sometimes I regret buying the eeePC 1000HE. As much as I love its portability, speed is something that I wish it had. Recently, I loaded up Pandora and it was struggling any time I tried to do anything with it. Hulu is just the same, as the netbook just can’t handle the stress of high quality streaming video or flash such as Pandora.

Then I hear about the latest from Lenovo, the IdeaPad U350. Ultraportable computers have always been desired, but cost was what kept me away from it. Now I’m reading that this 13.3 inch LCD, dual core, up to 8GB of memory UltraPC is coming out for at least $650, and with the option of a larger battery for 10 hours of performance (battery life being the #1 reason I chose 1000HE), I would’ve bought this in a heart beat. It would be worth the extra $250. Not only is it quite slick looking, but being thinner than the eeePC, it’d have to be my laptop of choice.

Of course, this would have to had come out in February for me to buy it. Instead, it’s looking to come out in July along with other computers from Lenovo. The netbook that they’re releasing is also pretty intriguing, being the first to have the Nvidia ION for graphics processing. I want to see if it’ll handle gaming and video as well as it says and be able to keep the battery life at a respectable number.

For now though, the 1000HE does what it sets out to do, so I won’t be plunging money on these new ones. As long as it can do non-streaming video and internet well enough, that’s all I care about.