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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

Thats right baby

I brought a W3V H007, got so hot, had to take it back ithin 2 hours, broghta W5 instead

Wow...You guys are actually bothered by the heat? Undervolting, IMO, helps alot..

The thing that I am quite surprised that you didnt mention is the sound...This thing has very very weak speakers...

If I get a W3V, I'm using external speakers or headphones for serious listening.

Awesome review Ericc. One thing that will help to decrease Hard Drive access is to load up on RAM, then disable page filing. But apparently there is no way to completely stop the HD from running, as XP uses it every once in a while.

Oh I forgot, Do you plan on increasing you RAM? If so, how much?

you can use Centrino Hardware Control to "enable spin down" on your hard drive, which is what you're looking for, I believe.

My friend undervolted too and the heat died down a lot, but its weird how the heat is where the HD is, yet undervolting the cpu helped.

>The thing that I am quite surprised that you didnt mention is the sound...
>This thing has very very weak speakers...

Yes that's true, but I usually turn off sound completely on notebooks, so I didn't think about it. Using small earplugs sound was decently strong enough when viewing DVDs, but if you're accustomed to strong sound output, that may be a bit weak (for music, I find a standalone MP3 player more convenient).

> Oh I forgot, Do you plan on increasing you RAM? If so, how much?

Yes, I had budgeted to bring it up to 1 GB, but since it came with 1x512 rather than 2x256, I'm left wondering if I should get a 1GB SODIMM as I had planned, or just a cheaper 512MB one... leaning towards the 1.5 GB though that may allow to create a RAM drive of a few hundred megabytes, which if I can get my usual applications to use for temporary files...

>you can use Centrino Hardware Control to "enable spin down" on your hard drive,
>which is what you're looking for, I believe.

Tried it but it would crash at startup for some unknown reason (only tried the last version, I may give a shot to older versions, maybe the last version has a bug).

I've finally been able to see the HDD to power down, but it took a whole lot of time, much more than the windows setting, so I guess there is still something accessing the HDD that DiskMon doesn't see...

Btw anyone knows of a HDD S.M.A.R.T. utility that would not just allow to see HDD temperatures, but also adjust HDD energy consumption and performance parameters? IBM/Hitachi had one (ran under DOS though), but they dicontinued it saying the same functionality was offered by "many freeware applications" (which I did not find).

btw, what is the most RAM you can put in the W3V?

I'm wondering if the heat issues on the W3V comparable to a Powerbook. Powerbooks get quite hot indeed... any comments?

Does the W3V have air vents below to suck in air....? Coz mine doesn't And I'm PRETTY FREAKED OUT!!!!! I tried calling Asus but they just gave me a "I'm talking alot but I'm still not answering your question" kind of ans. And in my country, its nearly impossible to ask for a 1 to 1 exchange or a refund.

Anyway what's the usual temperature of the W3V......mine's constantly at 58-62degrees celcius and I'm not even running games.....just normal websurfing and stuff.

The vent is in front of the hard drive bay, by the speakers. There are images out there of preproduction W3's with vents underneath, but the production units doesn't have them.

If you're using Power4Gear and it gets too hot on AC, check 'Auto Performance' in the Power4Gear systray context menu and use the 'Game' profile since Asus (for some reason) have disabled dynamic switching of CPU speed on AC OOTB. If it's still to hot for your tastes you might want to kick out Poer4Gear altogether and use alternative software like RMClock or Centrino Hardware Control that will allow you to undervolt the CPU. There are several tutorials and threads about these programs here if you search.

BTW, I found out that the most RAM that it can have is 2GB.

The most RAM you can have in ANY Centrino notebook is 2GB. The cipsets simply doesn't support more.