I've been lurking these forums for quite a while before deciding, and they have been quite helpful, so now I've made the jump, I'll contribute back a mini review 
I picked the W3HV16, which comes with the 1.6GHz Pentium M, 60 GB HDD & 512 MB.
First impression was that it really looks sharp (had only seen photos), the dark brushed aluminim look of the cover is very stylish, without being flashy (be wary of fingerprints marks though). Cover is quite rigid overall and should do a good job of protecting the screen AFAICT, you need to apply quite a bit of pressure before it has a visible effect on the screen (more than other laptops I've seen). The rest of the build is solid as well, with no unreasonnable flexing or loose parts.
I'll focus on what I liked/disliked and what wasn't explicited in other reviews.
Good Points:
* Zero dead pixels: no bright dot, no dark dot, no coloured nothing. Happy!
* 512 MB in a single SO-DIMM, with the easily accessible slot free (your mileage may vary, french Asus docs I saw said 2x256)
* Screen is sharp, clean, resolution is just what it should be, more pixels and it wouldn't have been very readable (IMO)
* Good 3D hardware, and with latest ATI drivers you can enable 64 extra MB of shared memory *optionnally* (ie. if you don't need it no RAM wasted)
* Two batteries: a lightweight 2400 mAh one, and a heavier 4800 mAh, I'm getting 2:15 hours on office/browsing with the 2400 one after tweaking, and 4-5 hours with the 4800, overall that's over 6 hours of autonomy with less than 3kg of luggage, nice!
* Modular bay: comes with a light dummy cover if you wish to remove de DVD reader and gain weight.
* Logitech cordless optical mouse, snappy and connected instantly, it requires to plug an emitter in a USB port though (ie. not bluetooth) and takes two AA batteries
* Very decent carrying case, looks good and feels solid
* Almost forgot: with RMClock and undervolting, no noise with office apps/browsing even with 32°C of ambiant temperature! (there is a permanently on fan, but it's very very quiet)
Bad Points:
* Heat: not so much the CPU or graphics card, but the harddrive, which is situated below the touchpad, which can get very hot. Topside, it can get incomfortable if you rest your hands on the plastic cover (I don't), bottom side, the metal cover of the HDD compartment can get scalding hot (touching it is painful!). At least the HDD is silent.
* Bloatware: takes up 280 MB of RAM initially
* 4800 mAh battery is heavy, and moves the center of gravity to the back of the notebook, not an issue when on a desk (except when you try to open the cover), but can be annoying if you handle it as a laptop (though thanks to the heat, I don't think it'll stay on your lap for long)
* It comes with AsusDVD, which appears to be a PowerDVD variation that doesn't have all the options activated and produced a grainy image with The Matrix, hopefully the WinDVD version that came with my 6600GT worked like a charm on the ATI X600
* Screen is the glossy type, plenty of reflections in bright light, horizontal viewing angle is decent, but vertical viewing angle is very small (for dark scenes in The Matrix, it's probably less than 10°, for Office work, I would give it 30-45°). That said, when you're in the sweet spot, it's gorgeous... just be sure to stay still...
The Bloatware, Heat and Battery life
I've been able to cut down the bloatware to 150 MB, by removing pretty much everything, which helped with boot & come-out-of-sleep times. Also helped quite a bit with HDD heat: intel wireless utilities are unnecessary (Windows utilities can do just fine) and kept accessing the HDD periodically.
Also advantageously replaced Power4Gear with RMClock (undervolted from 1.3v to .97v, gains 15-30 mins of autonomy on the 2400 mAh battery and 6-8 °C in CPU temp), replaced ATI Pannel Tools with ATI Tray Tools (which also allow to underclock the X300 in 2D mode).
With a bit more arcane tweaking and the help of FireFox, I'm now able to websurf without any harddrive accesses for long periods of times (at least according to SysInternal's FileMon and DiskMon), and my HDD cover gets no more than "hot" when websurfing, but the HDD still doesn't seem to power down not matter what... I'm open to suggestions on this front ^_^
I'm guessing that if the HDD could power down, not only heat could not be an issue anymore, but battery life might make another jump.
As other reviews noted, hot air is blown to the right hand side, I'm right-handed and using a mouse 99% of the time (touchpads ain't for me), yet this wasn't an issue at all, first because it isn't very hot air, and second because it isn't blown very strong.
Conclusion
Once I get that bloody HDD to power down, it will be a perfect laptop!
Most appreciated aspect of that notebook for me is the mobility (which is why I bought if for, didn't want a DTR, this thing isn't meant to live on a desktop!). It's rather small, yet with normal-size keys and a decently sized screen (Sony's 13"3 screens were too small for me), and if you go "lightweight", it really is light, if you accept more weight, you get a 3 times more autonomy.
I really appreciated the bundled stuff (hardware), the carrying case, mouse, and dual light/heavy batteries especially, these have proved useful already. Big thumbs up to Asus on that front.
*Ten days later*
Been able to tweak the W3V into "cool" mode, including the harddisk! Typical CPU temperature when doing office/browsing is now in the 40-45 °C with an ambiant temperature around 30°C, when going intensive 3D games however, it goes in the 60-70°C range (hot!).
I now consistently get about 2h30 on the small battery and 5h on the big one (doing office/browsing, with the screen intensity near 30% and WiFi always on), not much above default settings, but the difference is that heat is no longer an issue!
So if you get a W3V, be aware it might be "hot" out of the box, and it might take some time tweaking and taming the beast into "cool"... but it's possible.
Fingerprint marks aren't as bad as I feared, and everyone so far found the W3V looked gorgeous... well, it's true it's not a Dull
I picked the W3HV16, which comes with the 1.6GHz Pentium M, 60 GB HDD & 512 MB.
First impression was that it really looks sharp (had only seen photos), the dark brushed aluminim look of the cover is very stylish, without being flashy (be wary of fingerprints marks though). Cover is quite rigid overall and should do a good job of protecting the screen AFAICT, you need to apply quite a bit of pressure before it has a visible effect on the screen (more than other laptops I've seen). The rest of the build is solid as well, with no unreasonnable flexing or loose parts.
I'll focus on what I liked/disliked and what wasn't explicited in other reviews.
Good Points:
* Zero dead pixels: no bright dot, no dark dot, no coloured nothing. Happy!
* 512 MB in a single SO-DIMM, with the easily accessible slot free (your mileage may vary, french Asus docs I saw said 2x256)
* Screen is sharp, clean, resolution is just what it should be, more pixels and it wouldn't have been very readable (IMO)
* Good 3D hardware, and with latest ATI drivers you can enable 64 extra MB of shared memory *optionnally* (ie. if you don't need it no RAM wasted)
* Two batteries: a lightweight 2400 mAh one, and a heavier 4800 mAh, I'm getting 2:15 hours on office/browsing with the 2400 one after tweaking, and 4-5 hours with the 4800, overall that's over 6 hours of autonomy with less than 3kg of luggage, nice!
* Modular bay: comes with a light dummy cover if you wish to remove de DVD reader and gain weight.
* Logitech cordless optical mouse, snappy and connected instantly, it requires to plug an emitter in a USB port though (ie. not bluetooth) and takes two AA batteries
* Very decent carrying case, looks good and feels solid
* Almost forgot: with RMClock and undervolting, no noise with office apps/browsing even with 32°C of ambiant temperature! (there is a permanently on fan, but it's very very quiet)
Bad Points:
* Heat: not so much the CPU or graphics card, but the harddrive, which is situated below the touchpad, which can get very hot. Topside, it can get incomfortable if you rest your hands on the plastic cover (I don't), bottom side, the metal cover of the HDD compartment can get scalding hot (touching it is painful!). At least the HDD is silent.
* Bloatware: takes up 280 MB of RAM initially
* 4800 mAh battery is heavy, and moves the center of gravity to the back of the notebook, not an issue when on a desk (except when you try to open the cover), but can be annoying if you handle it as a laptop (though thanks to the heat, I don't think it'll stay on your lap for long)
* It comes with AsusDVD, which appears to be a PowerDVD variation that doesn't have all the options activated and produced a grainy image with The Matrix, hopefully the WinDVD version that came with my 6600GT worked like a charm on the ATI X600
* Screen is the glossy type, plenty of reflections in bright light, horizontal viewing angle is decent, but vertical viewing angle is very small (for dark scenes in The Matrix, it's probably less than 10°, for Office work, I would give it 30-45°). That said, when you're in the sweet spot, it's gorgeous... just be sure to stay still...
The Bloatware, Heat and Battery life
I've been able to cut down the bloatware to 150 MB, by removing pretty much everything, which helped with boot & come-out-of-sleep times. Also helped quite a bit with HDD heat: intel wireless utilities are unnecessary (Windows utilities can do just fine) and kept accessing the HDD periodically.
Also advantageously replaced Power4Gear with RMClock (undervolted from 1.3v to .97v, gains 15-30 mins of autonomy on the 2400 mAh battery and 6-8 °C in CPU temp), replaced ATI Pannel Tools with ATI Tray Tools (which also allow to underclock the X300 in 2D mode).
With a bit more arcane tweaking and the help of FireFox, I'm now able to websurf without any harddrive accesses for long periods of times (at least according to SysInternal's FileMon and DiskMon), and my HDD cover gets no more than "hot" when websurfing, but the HDD still doesn't seem to power down not matter what... I'm open to suggestions on this front ^_^
I'm guessing that if the HDD could power down, not only heat could not be an issue anymore, but battery life might make another jump.
As other reviews noted, hot air is blown to the right hand side, I'm right-handed and using a mouse 99% of the time (touchpads ain't for me), yet this wasn't an issue at all, first because it isn't very hot air, and second because it isn't blown very strong.
Conclusion
Once I get that bloody HDD to power down, it will be a perfect laptop!
Most appreciated aspect of that notebook for me is the mobility (which is why I bought if for, didn't want a DTR, this thing isn't meant to live on a desktop!). It's rather small, yet with normal-size keys and a decently sized screen (Sony's 13"3 screens were too small for me), and if you go "lightweight", it really is light, if you accept more weight, you get a 3 times more autonomy.
I really appreciated the bundled stuff (hardware), the carrying case, mouse, and dual light/heavy batteries especially, these have proved useful already. Big thumbs up to Asus on that front.
*Ten days later*
Been able to tweak the W3V into "cool" mode, including the harddisk! Typical CPU temperature when doing office/browsing is now in the 40-45 °C with an ambiant temperature around 30°C, when going intensive 3D games however, it goes in the 60-70°C range (hot!).
I now consistently get about 2h30 on the small battery and 5h on the big one (doing office/browsing, with the screen intensity near 30% and WiFi always on), not much above default settings, but the difference is that heat is no longer an issue!
So if you get a W3V, be aware it might be "hot" out of the box, and it might take some time tweaking and taming the beast into "cool"... but it's possible.
Fingerprint marks aren't as bad as I feared, and everyone so far found the W3V looked gorgeous... well, it's true it's not a Dull
If I get a W3V, I'm using external speakers or headphones for serious listening.
