Slashdot Mirror
In Search of the Cheap Linux Laptop
mr_mischief writes "According to Hot Hardware's recent review, Asus is getting ready to unleash a $199 compact notebook running Linux. This is entirely different from this recent $150 Linux laptop story which many Slashdot readers believed to be a scam. There's a dual-mode menu which offers a simple system for novice computer users, and a slightly more advanced version for others. It's not aimed squarely at the same market as the One Laptop Per Child project's XO, and is expected to be sold to end users worldwide. It's targeted at new users who don't own a computer or at people who want a cheap, small laptop for basic tasks. The reviewed version has a 7" screen and a cramped keyboard to match, but a 10" version is available for $100 more. It offers built-in wired and wireless networking, four USB 2.0 ports, and a three-hour battery life. The storage options are a bit cramped, as you only get 4 GB of on-board storage (8 GB on the $299 model) and no optical drive. As the review says, though, USB 2.0 can make up for that if you like, and the lack of moving drive parts makes the machine run dead quiet."
I was thinking about adding a single board computer to my hen house to control a few things: Cameras, Stepper Motor and a maybe a relay for a fan... But if laptop's keep getting cheaper I will consider the monitor and keyboard there for diagnostics (too bad it can't be powered over Ethernet!
Anony Mouse!
The author shows a photo with the laptop next to a Taiwan $10 coin, adding that it is about the same size as a US half-dollar. Since this won't help most folks in the US (for whom receiving a half-dollar coin in change is a rare occurrence), it may help to know that the NT$10 coin is not quite 2mm larger than a U.S. quarter.
Toshiba do a 32GB USB flash drive, so storage isn't a problem :)
did you forget your password?
When optimizing for cost (purely), the device would be both larger and have a spinning HD.
What confuses me as soon as it says "$100 more" is that you are at $299 and for another $150 you can wander into BestBuy and splash $450 on a decent laptop that comes with Vista. Knocking $80 or what ever for the OEM version means that you are talking $370 or so for a decent laptop with a decent screen and a decent disk et al and this is for something with a dual core Intel processor.
Now given Moore's Law around the hardware, and screen real estate, its a bit odd that $299 gets you a computer that is that crap. Now I can see why at the $100 limit you'll be cutting loads of corners especially if you want it to work on low power, but the concept of a $299 machine with crap specs doesn't sound cheap.
$100 means cutting lots of corners, but at $299 it just sounds, somewhat bizarrely, like a bit of a rip off.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
To all the manufacturers making these small, low-power PCs and notebooks I have one request. Please make the RAM expandable. Put an SO-DIMM slot in there, either in addition to the soldered-on system RAM or as the only system RAM.
512 Mb is nice, but being able to stick a 2 Gb SO-DIMM in there would make this system useful for so many more people than just their target audience.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Will it run windows? ;)
From the photos, it looks like the 7" and 10" models use the same case/chassis. The smaller screen just has a giant black bezel around it, taking up the space where the larger screen would go. Although this brings up interesting upgrade possibilities, I think it's fairly obnoxious; I wouldn't mind a 7"-screen laptop if the entire thing were only 7" diagonal (example, something like the Psion Series 7), but a 7" screen in a case that's built for 10" would just annoy me.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
900MHz Intel Dothan based Pentium M CPU
.89 kilograms, just around 2 pounds
512MB of DDR2 memory
802.11g wireless capability
flash-based hard drive ($199 for 4GB, $299 for 8GB)
weight:
Ports:
four USB 2.0
VGA output
10/100 Ethernet
56K phone modem
Battery:
4-cell, estimated 3 hours life
The lack of an optical drive and the low nonvolatile storage space is a bummer, but flash hard drives are faster and stabler. And as the article states, you can always hook up an external.
Notice on page 2 of the article, that if you mouse over the double underlined "Linux", it pops a Miscrosoft Server add under your mouse.
But will it run Linux??
I don't know. Does you?
One of the key points that makes the XO laptop so interesting is that it can be used as a eBook Reader, this thing just looks like a normal laptop, not very comfortable for eBook reading, I'll pass.
What I'm waiting for a compact laptop/hand-held with a daylight-readable display. That's what would make a OLPC clone interesting to me, and as it appears the Asus doesn't have such a display, I'm not interested. (Of course others may find a low-cost light-weight mini-laptop very useful.)
$199 is crazily cheap - a LOT of people will buy one of these to "surf the internet and do some typing". Plenty of folk will immediately install bootleg XP on this, but I think the majority will leave Linux running, so long as it "just works".
I'll take a Nokia N800 for $375 Alex.
with built in bluetooth, and an ultrasmall form factor, great built-in wireless...ultramobile lovely linux internet tablet.
and if I don't want to use the touch-screen ultrasharp display...I'll get a 1 handed keyboard from Frogpad.com to connect via bluetooth.
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
It doesn't matter. If he thinks he does, he'll buy it. Which will drive up the volume and drive down the price.
Which will make the one I buy a LOT cheaper than if they had not.
First we get the "Wii", now we have the "Eee". What's next, "Oooeeyaaaeee"???
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
It has an 4-in-1 memory card reader.
I've been reading about these for several weeks now, and am really looking forward to it. Anyone who remembers the i-Opener (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Opener) will grin to think that this, while slightly more expensive (less than double, when considering inflation, though -- and it's a laptop!) will come with Linux by default.
... tap out some notes. (I esp. like "View Your Mind" -- I hope that will run nicely on the Eee; on the 7" screen it might be annoying, but Hey, not too bad, I bet.)
:))
... eh, it sucks. Hopefully, the 10" screen version will be out soon after the 7".
I want one for school: taking notes is such ludicrous misemployment for my main laptop; I cringe each time I carry it back and forth to my law school classes to
I want one for the car / other travels: portable audio player, and (I hope!) a cool basis for a GPS system using GPS Drive (http://www.gpsdrive.de/) or similar. Can anyone recommend any works-from-the-box GPS modules for a typical Linux system?
Something this size and price, I'd feel justified to take on nearly any kind of travel -- not so much bigger than the Visor Deluxe stolen from my car a while back plus the portable keyboard for that. (Anyone want to send me a no-longer-used Visor Deluxe, so I could rescue the data from my backup cart?
The screen
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Most of the latter screenshots look like KDE (example), but look at THIS screenshot! It looks like a windows-based antivirus running in windows XP in the foreground with KDE in the background.
HUH??
Yep, but not by default
Twenty years ago I used a Tandy Model 100. Decent keyboard, way too small a display, no moving parts, fairly small and light, and would run a couple of long days on 4xAA batteries. It also had functional applications and a modem built in. Reporters, etc. used them by the thousands. This might actually be a nearly ideal replacement.
It has a LOT more functionality in a reasonable package.
Battery life is iffy, but probably adequate.
Display seems OK. Sunlight is probably an issue.
But how is the keyboard, really?
sdb
...but will it run FreeBSD?
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
RTFA !
No, I did not.
I know this thread is a joke, but the fact is, once Windows "isn't there by default" it's no longer an easy OS. Users will have to find all the correct drivers, etc. Even if this machine could handle Windows, I think most users would find sticking with the default much easier.
Thank God for evolution.
Not to quibble, but wouldn't that be $898, rather than $899?
instead of a common laptop. This is not intended as a desktop replacement that needs to be placed on a desk to comfortably use, it is a truly portable pc as a complement to your beefy pc that you can slap out anywhere ,any time, in the class,on the bus, sitting , standing, you name it. With a weight of 2lb, I can comfortably hold this baby with one hand for extended length of time. It will be perfect for me as a student to put in my book bag.
And for taking notes, writing papers , surfing the net, checking email,you don't need a bloated modern laptop(most can burn you if you try to use on you lap)weighting more than 6 lb, with screaming dual core intel processor and wide screen lcd. And if I want some heavy lifting I can easily ssh to my desktop.
I have been wanting something like this for a long time, and the only alternatives before is the tablets like the thinkpad X series with a price tag easily over 1k$,as a poor student I can hardly afford. The EEE is just priced right for me, I will happily snatch one at launch.
Tiny Linux laptop + Dead Quiet = Linux ninja
Excuse me while I gather the virgin sacrifice and assemble the pentagram required to solve your problem
For people on the road fixing stuff for a living this would be a great improvement over most of the overly large and overkill laptops you have to shove in your bag now. ( at least for ones that have to pay for their own hardware ).
You really dont need much hardware to RDP/X11 a server, check a network, or hook to a diag port on a router.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I am quite ecstatic to be able to buy laptop(s) from Asus from $199, but will they really deliver on time? We haven't heard anything from them since early June.
The point we are at right now is that there has been little advance in merging components. Computers got cheap, in part, to VLSI. Now, instead of creating a single chip laptop, we have dual cores. To get to the holy grail of the computer so cheap that we buy it for no reason, the device count has to go way down. A couple chips, a couple ports, and a screen. It may even have to have a fake keyboard, just like the cheap computers of the 80's, which, btw, were also just a few chips and few ports.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
7" is way too small. Even 10" is too small. There should be a 12 or 14" option for $299.
The other limitations - no optical and only 4GB storage - are not a problem in my opinion.
Since it was mentioned in the summary, there's a new blog following the whole fiasco at http://medisonscam.blogspot.com/
Some interesting highlights from the last few days:
The old product pictures has been replaced on Medisons site. According to Comon.dk Medison have foretold that they were replaced by "real" pictures to get more trustworthy. They say that they have hired a professional photographer to take the pictures. The question however, is why a professional photographer would use a Canon Digital IXUS 60 digital camera at 10 in the evening (See the Exif-tags in the pictures). That is for those who don't know a small compact consumer camera... Yes we know that this doesn't "prove" anything, it's just another "fun fact" in this story.
A poster on SweClockers posted the following answer that is supposed to be from the manufacturer: "they got one pcs sample from our customer and not paid". Hmm, interesting, isn't it?
According to the Danish site Comon.dk, Medison will have a press conference on Wednesday to clear things out. They have also spoken with several people in the computer industry that claims, just like all other experts, that the price is "impossible".
The Asus Eee offer however is great I'm looking forward to their machine. You shouldn't look at this laptop from the perspective of using it as full blown desktop Machine. Consider all the stuff you get at mere $200, for a nice mobile computer with full-sized keyboard and rich internet abilities. It makes for far better browsing/mail checking than what you can do on your $600 iPhone.
The memory/drive/screen size may be too limiting for windows.
But I've never had a driver problem installing windows. The last time I did a windows install was w2k, but I had no problems installing it on my custom built computer or a compaq. The same computer, with the same hardware, Red Hat 4 wouldn't install, and after installing red hat 5, I had to recompile with mouse support. Metro X had some display problems and I needed to get an updated driver for xfree86 to support my card (Matrox Millenium II). BeOS didn't need any extra drivers (I intentionally purchased equipment they supported).
Find the correct drivers = insert the windows CD.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Guys, do you actually have to buy one with Linux pre-installed or how about just buying A laptop and installing Linux yourself?
Overall, this sounds like an amazing computer for school. About 2 pounds? That small? Awesome. However, I've got a few questions.
How easy is it to install additional programs? I'd assume they'd attempt to limit that in the basic interface, with only a few choices from preselected packages. With the advanced interface though, can you install anything you want? Do you get access to the terminal? Is there apt, yum? Something similar to Synaptic so you don't have to use the terminal? Only packages approved by Asus, or can you access any repository you want?
It says that the laptop is Windows compatible. I assume this means that the user can install another OS by themselves. With lack of an optical drive though, will it boot from the USB to install? What about drivers, such as for the webcam?
All in all, it sounds like a great deal. The small screen bugs me a bit, but what do you expect for the size?
Consciousness - That annoying time between naps.
There's a decent entry already (with plentiful links to other articles etc) already up. Since Wikipedia allows a different kind of information aggregation than does Slashdot, I hope lots of people (accurately ;)) extend what's there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
So our computer habit does not impact our pot smoking habit, because we're all smelly dirty hippies!
but seriously, I'd like a little "beater" laptop to drag around instead of worrying about damaging my $1200 laptop. plus smaller is better when it comes to portability. (although smaller isn't usually easier to use for extended periods of time)
"The ASUS Eee PC is expected to be available, worldwide, in full production quantities by this fall. It is rumored to have a street date of mid-August, and will likely be one of the hottest selling computers in recent history, come the holiday shopping season."
I think I would add "for ASUS" in terms of hottest selling computers. I don't think it will take off like other systems. But honestly I might get one for my fiance so she can use it for writing her novels, instead of having to drag a big laptop around (which she refuses to do) or only work on her novel on her desktop (which she is starting to dislike).
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Have you guys notice?
It comes with linux by default, yet its keyboard has the regular "windows flag" key...Wouldn't it make more sense to print a penguin on it instead?
Just my 50-cents (thickness of the device)
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
I had a refurb Compaq laptop... it came with WinME. I had an option to pre-buy XP for it. I wanted Win2K and, in fact, had an unused license already. So I took my bargain laptop home and tried to install Win2K. It was a nightmare hunting down drivers for the damn thing. Since Compaq did not support Win2K on that particular model, I had to hunt down which obfuscated drivers fit those particular chips on other Compaq models... install those... and hope they worked. Or find OEM versions. Eventually I got everything running (more or less).Find the correct drivers = insert the windows CD.
I also got a copy of Mandrake (back when it was Mandrake). Installed it as a dual-boot. Everything worked first shot, out of the box.
I was rather amused. Usually laptop hardware has given me fits with Linux (one time I went through 3 distros before finding one that was happy out-of-box). This was the first time I had trouble with Windows and no trouble with Linux. It really drove home the importance of OEM support for any OS.
There:
6 2330&N=265454&An=browse
http://www.officedepot.com/ddSKU.do?level=SK&id=6
Search over.
If that's not "cheap enough", I'd say getting a new laptop should be on the bottom of your "things to buy" list.
I was just complaining that I couldn't find a laptop that actually meets my travel needs. All I need is something to check email, do a little web browsing, and maybe view photos and do a little remote SSH to take care of problems at work. I have a laptop but hate to carry it because it's too big.
This is actually exactly what I've been looking for. I'm so in line for this.
Linked from the Eee page at Wikipedia, I just found this (mostly) similarly equipped laptop upcoming from VIA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NanoBook
... assuming that stays $200, not $279+shipping or something.
It uses a conventional hard drive, but also claims greater battery life. Also a 7" screen, but uses the space differently -- from the description and the way the photo looks (prototype?), I guess that's a trackpad next to the screen. Price will be "agressive," says that page, but it would have to be damn near ferocious to beat the $200 one from Asus
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Forget using it as a laptop, I'm going to use it as the house server. Get it set up, make the system card read-only and stick it in a closet with 1+ USB drives, it's quiet and low heat. If you need to see the 'console' pop the lid and there it is.
Tom.
With the increasing number of quality web apps (gmail, google docs, meebo, facebook) A small computer
that can run firefox would be really useful. Obviously requires a good net connection. So many peoples
use of a computer now falls into wordprocessor + email + web browsing for which a small portable computer
is fine. And with the rise of web apps it is increasily becoming just web access thats required.
Here we have a brand new low cost platform that comes preinstalled with Linux. All the ney-sayers are simply yelling sour grapes because Microsoft will not be able to field anything like this in North America or Europe in the foreseeable future.
I am going to buy two for my grandkids - they will love it. They'll be able to play music and TV off the home wireless network. They can VoIP with video using Skype. They can read books from Project Gutenberg. They can message and chat to their hearts content. Hey, they may even do some homework and learn something, Who Knows!
For me, I can add a 22" LCD monitor and create a wireless multimedia node for the bedroom. I can also use it as a smart thin client with USB keyboard & mouse and some speakers.
Add some external storage like a 2.5" 120 gig HD and some earbuds and I can listen to music or avi's until the batteries wear down. I can store all my contact information and write some emails, Skype some friends (VoIP with video), message, play games and chat for hours away from my desktop computer.
This machine is great and I for one am going to promote it to all my friends including the ones that are afraid of computers.
What a great standby machine!
Just so you know, I have 3 laptop computers 'Dell Inspiron 5100 - big, hot and heavy', 'Toshiba Tecra 8200 - smaller, lighter but tied to the power supply now' and 'Dell Latitude CPx - nice but slow, also tied to the power adapter'. These machines, for one reason or another, are unsuitable for newbs and kids whereas the Asus 3ePC looks perfect.
I have no problem with the screen layout the way it is - there are speakers on either side of the screen and a microphone and camera there as well.
All that power, connectivity (WiFi b/g, Ethernet 10/100, modem and USB), excellent memory - 512 meg, sufficient storage with USB addons as required, stereo speakers, microphone, web camera, 3 hours on battery AND it comes with an OS with a FULL office suite, Firefox, Skype, email and lots of applications!
All for $199!
LOOK OUT MICROSOFT!!!
This is the killer product Linux needs to get it's foot in the door - this machines will sell in all the usual outlets plus drug stores, gift shops and grocery markets if promoted properly and Asus may be the guys to do it.
Yep - put XP on that thing and it will be a pig with no room left for anything else. With a light-weight Linux, perhaps Ubunto or Kubunto or even Slax, and the user may really haved something.
This is just my two-bits but I am excited.
Undead Ed
Don't be deceived. The program at foreground is ClamTK, a GUI frontend for ClamAV, a Linux-based scanner for Windoze viruses!
One thing interesting is (from Wikipedia) the boot time:
On top of the base Linux system, which is said to require only fifteen seconds to boot
Anyone has additional info on how this can be done?
A couple things that sprung to my mind:
/home on a USB drive? Good idea, awful idea? IMHO, the only problem would be if someone comes and yanks it out... But some, like the one by PQI on Newegg, are extremely small.
- How could you get another OS on it? Could you just boot from USB?... Will they set up the BIOS to allow it?...
- Can you set hard drives as read-only, or possibly stop log files of all sorts from being produced?...
- What about putting
I'd definately buy one. Looks freaking awesome.
The memory/drive/screen size may be too limiting for windows.
But I've never had a driver problem installing windows. The last time I did a windows install was w2k, but I had no problems installing it on my custom built computer or a compaq. The same computer, with the same hardware, Red Hat 4 wouldn't install, and after installing red hat 5, I had to recompile with mouse support. Metro X had some display problems and I needed to get an updated driver for xfree86 to support my card (Matrox Millenium II). BeOS didn't need any extra drivers (I intentionally purchased equipment they supported).
Mini poll: Is that true?Find the correct drivers = insert the windows CD.
Not for me. WinXP in a recent laptop is not like that.
With older desktops, it wasn't either.
Win98 was never like that for me.
Ubuntu was, in both my pavillion laptop, and 3 self built machines.
Anyone else with experiences?
Anyway, the computar bears the unholy Windows stain, between Fn and Alt...
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
That's funny, I was just thinking how much this thing's specs reminded me of my two year old Fujitsu Lifebook. Same screen size, processor, chipset, wireless, etc. Except when I bought it, it was over $1700!
That 900 MHz Pentium M is a goer compared to most VIA's and Geodes. I think this could be a terrific tool for a student.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
They will need to fix that pretty quick, as it is a trademark infringement, a certain portly little penguin would be a suitable replacement.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Though installing RedHat 5 (I didn't use Linux when 4 came out) could be quite a pain. I always found Win98 (similar vintage) a bigger pain. Of course Win2k is probably great on a computer that old since it will have all the drivers.
I find the great irony of Windows that to get an easy install you need hardware that is old, but then it won't run well.
BeOS was real easy to install, and graphics drivers were easy to install to.
Unzip file, drag driver into symbolic link, reboot. Too bad there wern't too many cards supported.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
A Compaq Armada M300. I got it used for $100 more than a year ago. No optical drive built-in, but it came with a docking station that does have one. 20Gb of storage, fair keyboard, PIII 500Mhz. Quiet, light, runs Win2k and Linux just fine (haven't tried XP on it), and adequately fast for many ordinary tasks. The only awkward part has been the 802.11g PCMCIA card sticking out, and finding a replacement battery (the ones that came with it were dead), but for the price it was a great deal even with those two extras.
This new machine looks like it will give my old one a run for its money.
Having a Penguin key (Penguin key sounds cooled than Tux key) would be sooooo cool. Imagine, ur mate is having a go, and needs to open the launch menu, and you say: "Just press the Penguin key man!" or he's sat there n he goes, where the windows key, and you say: "Windows key? Dude, this has a PENGUIN key." he would be like "WWWWWOOOOOOAH!!" like some crazy drug trip.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
I'm with you on the N800 over this. Or many other things. Wow, that's some amazingly bad industrial design. I'm mean really, why bother if you get something that ugly. Look at the bottom and side shots.
It's a good price point though. And there's not that much out there in that range. So I think it will find an audience none the less. Hopefully there will be others in the sub $300 portable/laptop/tablet/webpad/etc. market that will make that field more interesting.
Judging by the previous commentary on this thread, you may be wrong in the first sentence and it may be because of the idea in your second. A lot of people are looking at this machine thinking "You know, for this price, it might be useful for $(TASK)..." And so you end up with your fiancee--who from context isn't a hardcore geek, sorry if I'm wrong--some grandkids, some parents, all using this thing.
Everyone out there has at least one 'little thing' that their computer is for. Writing their novel. Checking their email. Carrying around videos. If everyone--including 'normal people'--sees this machine as a cheap opportunity to have a tiny little portable computer to do their one thing easily, it will take off.
It depends on the hardware, and really there tends to be little windows of time where some hardware is so new compared to how old the Windows CDs are that you might have to look for drivers elsewhere. It's not something I've ever had to do commonly supporting a lot of R&D labs, but there were times through the years where, for example, the Dell servers we were getting came with RAID controllers that the Windows of the time didn't understand, requiring the old "Hit F-whatever to insert an alternate driver disk" during install thing. It's been much less common in recent years though because in situations like that you typically get a set of install discs from Dell that handles that for you.
The only other exception I've ever had was Compaq desktops. We only bought a few of those but all of them were very specific about what version of Windows they supported and getting something like NT 4.0 working on the Compaq box that came with Windows 95 was far more of a pain than it should ever be.
For the most part though in the last few years, buying machines from relatively well-known and reputable vendors I have not had to deal hunting up 3rd party drivers during Windows installs.
But at the same time, in those same recent years, my only real problem with various linux installs has been the wireless drivers, largely just because of stupid legal issues with distributing some drivers for which there were no open source versions at the time.
Citation needed that a one-handed keyboard causes extreme frustration.
How about no one ever uses one? If they did you would have sales figures.
Now how about personal experience. I do the same thing with a normal keyboard from time to time. It's not easy and I think I'd shit if I had to hold a key down while reversing my hand's muscle memory like that.
There have been several small laptops with small keyboards. Only a few have been usable. Having a bezel around a screen makes sense and is an easy way to mate a large keyboard with a small screen.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
1. Go to Starbucks.
2. Wait for yuppie on laptop to go to the bathroom.
3. Take laptop.
4. Wipe out Windows with nix install of your choice.
5. Profit!
Dude, where's my packet?
It doesn't have much storage, but it would be useful in a home or office surrounding where you could connect to a wireless NFS server containing your homedir and apps.
My rights don't need management.
I want to get one of these for my kids. Small keyboard might be a bonus for them. They're still young, so most of the computer games they play are flash based things (e.g. cyberchase site on pbs). It's cheap, so I don't have to hover to make sure they don't trash my $4K laptop. It's light, so they can run around the house with it.
Still, is it sturdy enough for kids? I hope some reviewer somewhere drops one of these a few times and reports the results.
I also want one for work so I can catch up with my email during all the insufferable meetings. My "real" notebook is not quite so portable that I just pick it up and take it anywhere I'm going.
We all take a sound system for granted, but I don't see it anywhere, which makes me wonder: will it have sound? According to Wikipedia, it has a built-in camera, but there are no speakers visible anywhere. I wouldn't mind if it has a headphone jack only, but... No sound at all is a showstopper for me, no matter how awesome the rest of the device may be.
Screw the optical drive. The Armada M300 I've already mentioned somewhere above doesn't have one.
Agreed, my X30 does not have an optical drive and I've never missed the extra pound and power drain. Everywhere I go, I'm surrounded by big, honking desktops that invariably have an optical drive. At least one is an X forward away but I've needed them once or twice in a year's time. At home, I have a firewire DVD burner, which does the trick. The only other time I've wanted an optical drive was to install my OS, but GNU linux is flexible enough that that's not a problem.
This thing's 2.2 lbs and processor specs makes my X30 look old, hot and heavy. In a year or two, cheap laptops like this are going to be everywhere and I might just buy one.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
1. Please provide a link to a $370 dual-core Intel laptop with Vista. I'll be waiting.
2. The small size and weight (2 pounds) make it portable. The hypothetical 5.5 pound machine is a pain to lug around.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
I can see to this thing is that it will sell like hotcakes and spur copycats, which all really will be disposable items. If they bust in service, most will be landfilled as not worth fixing and most of the guts are toxic.
A blistering PII 266 with 32Mb of SDRAM! Reduce, Re-use, Recycle!
Years ago, I bought a very expensive Sony sub-notebook (PCG-SR7K, I think). It was great for portability.. very light and small.
But, it had two big problems: The 10" screen was way too small for everyday use, and the keyboard was too small for decent typing.
I like the concept of this Asus.. small, light, flash storage, Linux OS. Great for many users primarily interested in web access. But, the 10" screen is too limiting.
For the $100 increase in price from 7" to 10", they could surely afford a better LCD panel. A 17" LCD is on sale at Best Buy this week for $129 retail (i.e. including the retailer markup, packaging, standalone monitor components and power supply, etc..). They could have easily done a display large enough to fill the top of the laptop that $100 markup. If they had done that, it would have been very powerful/usable.
As it is now, with a 10" display, it seems like a toy imitation of a real laptop.
I want a computer like this with maybe a bit more internal flash memory (maybe 32 gigs would be enough, but I've lived with 15 gigs) so I can put movies on the thing before a trip.
And...
I want that internal memory to be accessable as Flash memory, to Linux, instead of pretending it's a spinning drive. I want to run JFFS2 on it.
It'd also be nice if it had more battery life. Here, what would be really nice is a quick, supported suspend-to-RAM (or suspend-to-disk), enough internal battery to run it suspended for maybe five minutes, and a cheap removable battery -- especially if said battery could be plugged in directly to charge, rather than having to be in a laptop. That would make this awesome for long trips, plane flights, etc -- it could light some "low battery" light and auto-suspend itself, and refuse to come back on until you swap batteries.
And being able to charge the battery separately is just convenience -- you could stay on the couch, just get up every 3 hours or so to swap out batteries, instead of being tethered to a power cable.
Interestingly, this sounds very close to my old Sharp laptop -- which cost me $1700 or so. It had some 256 megs of RAM (or was it 128?), a 1 ghz Crusoe that felt like 500 mhz, a 15 gig internal hard drive, and a 10" screen. Weighed about 2 pounds.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Palm are you listening?
The bulk of my work that isn't fixing stuff is done with vim over SSH and a web browser. Firefox is getting a bit heavy, but it only has the one or two tabs I need for the app I'm developing -- Konqueror can handle the rest.
There are other nice things you could do, if you bother to set it up. For instance, instead of carrying a half-dozen boot CDs or DVDs, you could bring this and a crossover cable, and use that to "jump start" someone's computer. Might even prove a good analogy, when someone asks what you're doing.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Yeah, maybe little things like installing on SATA drives. They've been around how long? You know like a little 5 year window. Just pop in the Windows CD and spend the next 4 hours trying to get it to recognize your hard drive.
Who is John Galt?
REally so windows now comes with the latest Nividia and Creative drivers out of the box? also Scsi cards and SATA is supported by default?
Wow! that damned out of date XP SP2 install CD's I have.. I knew that using such an aincent OS would bite me.
Why do so many people still not get it after 8 years? As of Windows 2000, YOU CAN USE DRIVERS FOR OLDER VERSIONS OF WINDOWS. That's right, for most everything, the Windows 98 drivers will work for 2K and XP just fine... Just ignore the warnings/prompts and try it out.
I don't understand why nobody has gotten the hint yet. Has nobody noticed it automatically selecting to use the (signed) Win98 drivers before the (unsigned) 2K drivers? Did you really think Windows is so stupid it selects drivers it can't use over the ones it can?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
...I'm quite happy with my Dell Inspiron E1505 "n series."
For $650, I got Ubuntu (although I quickly converted it to my preferred KDE-based Kubuntu), 1 gig-o-ram, a 1.73 Core Duo (low-power Centrino version), an 80 gig hard drive, WiFi, firewire, 4 USB ports, a 15.4" glossy widescreen, 802.11 g/n WiFi, darn good battery life, and a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive.
Granted, this is not US$199, but I think it's a pretty good deal for what you get. I'm generally a Mac buyer, but I feel like I got something similar to a $1,199 MacBook. Even though I think the MacBook is still a nicer machine--with better industrial design and OS X/iLife--but for $550 less, I've got a not-bad-looking laptop, a great/stable/secure OS, and tons of free apps that rival iLife (i.e., Picasa in place of iPhoto, Amarok instead of iTunes).
My only complaint is that I had to install the 915resolution package to get beyond 1024x768 (which looks horrible on a widescreen, as you might imagine). Why couldn't Dell pre-install this on the machines that need it (integrated graphics)?
Browsing with Firefox, emailing with Thunderbird, and the media keys working with Amarok are some of the niceties that make me think this was the best bang-for-your-buck computer purchase I ever made.
:q!
Uhh. Why not say it's almost the exact same size as the United States Dollar coin, which is listed as having Diameter 26.5 mm (1.043 in). The NT$10 coin is MUCH closer to the US$1 coin than it is to either the US$0.25 or the US$0.50 coin.
It's tough to tell if you post is just profane ignorance or flamebait, but are you fucking stupid? NT based operating systems have this little thing goin on called Microkernel Architecture. No way a win98 or older driver will work as well, if at all on one of these newer OSes.
to recap:
NT 4.0 driver on 2k or xp - maybe
98se driver on NT 4 2k, or xp - NO FUCKING WAY
Frankly, yes. Over the years, I've seen Windows do so many bloody stupid things, I'm more surprised when it gets something right.
Which Dollar coin?
The Susan B = which was the size of a quarter (morons)
The Suck-on-my-nut-sack dollar (which we try to ignore, and don't know it's size)
or
The new Presidents quarter (which is yet another example that the US Treasury is turning into the Franklin Mint)
I find myself moderately interested in getting one of these, as it seems to be everything I really need in a laptop (ie, runs Unix of some description, is small enough to be conveniently portable). I am wondering a few things though; like is it possible to leave a flash card plugged in there without having a bit of it sticking out? How much would an extra battery cost? What resolution is the screen?
Or take my approach, tell them the computer is hosed but you'll be glad to take it off their hands because they are going to buy that shiny Mac. Format and install Ubuntu, good to go. How much did that cost? Nuthin.
Just give it some more screen real estate and it will be perfect for me. The only thing I use a laptop for is as a remote front end for more powerful machines somewhere else.
Given the price and size/weight, I think I'll have to at least see the 10" model, but I don't think that I can handle it; I'm too spoiled by nice big screens.
anyone else notice how in the picture the guy has three fingers: his left ring, middle and index on the keyboard and his thumb on the touchpad...
sure it doesn't looked cramped if you only type with 8 fingers! i tend to also use my pinkie fingers to type...
HUGE keyboard
15.4 inches? That makes the bloody thing HUGE. Hard drive? Prone to crashing. 399, is not even close to 199. Not even close to 299.
So basically you found a laptop that is bigger, more expensive, makes more noise and isn't as robuust for twice the price and you consider that an alternative?
You sir are made of fail and loose, you do NOT get an internet.
Aside from the storage space, that thing is almost on par with my somewhat aged desktop computer. Hell, the FSB speed of the Pentium M is about double that of my AMD Duron. That's a pretty capable laptop for $200; if it actually ends up selling for that price I will certainly consider buying one.
The machine of the future, for less than the machine of the past.
sometimes, nothing.
I just did that a few months ago. Sata drives in a mirrored raid configuration, and Windows XP instal CD recognized everything just fine.
That's right. If you want a cheap laptop just buy a second-hand IBM ThinkPad. Linux runs on them as if they are designed for the task. I wore out a R40 and now have a T41.
So you clearly haven't ever tried it, and based on your buzzword knowledge of NT you're sure it can't? And I'm the one that's ignorant?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Windows 98 introduced WDM - Windows Driver Model. It's a stable driver model used by Win98 and up. I'm not sure on Vista though - I seem to recall that they dropped support, but I'm not sure. They may still have support, but don't allow things like secure audio paths if you use any WDM drivers.
. mspx
Anyway, here's some details on it straight from MS: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/wdmoverview
I have 13 and 15 year old kids, both of whom want laptops. They aren't getting a $1200 Macbook. They aren't even getting a $600 laptop. It'll get left at a friend's house, on the bus, or dropped. It may not, but it may. At $200 or so, it wouldn't kill me if they lost it, though I'd be irritated. At $600 or even $400, it would piss me off and they wouldn't get another one. Price points do matter.
I just recently started a page linking to linux laptop vendors. Check it out, and if you have anything to contribute, feel free to reply to this post.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
... why does it come with a Windows-key on the keyboard?
Take a look for yourself.
Couldn't they have put a little penguin on it instead?
It's certainly not any worse than long-time Apple users called the "open-apple" key. Well, at least some did.
Just buy one of these cooool keyboards, it's called CyMotion Master Linux G86-21070 and appears to be available only with german layout, e.g. here, but you'll probably appreciate the additional key.
the problem is how to light the cock.
The small form factor, light weight, lack of moving parts, integrated OpenOffice, and VGA output make it the ideal conference laptop! Very nice for researchers on the move!
Hook this up with a USB MIDI (or high quality USB MIDI/Audio) interface and you've got a truly excellent portable music tool. No moving parts, the ability to play MIDI files or mp3/WAV/flac backing tracks and most importantly something that you can add any Linux compatible music program that appears now or in the future (storage space/disk access requirements permitting).
:)
No more struggling with tiny LCD screens and an "incomprehensible to all but the people who designed it" menu systems !
With a decent external mic and some extra plug in storage you've also got the making of a fantastic field recorder/editor.
Puts my home brew effort to shame which is an old M-ATX mobo in custom 19" rack case (really crap, home made!) running damn small linux, booting from 4Gb compact flash, using old 15" monitor
N.B. UK retailers. If you think you're doing your usual trick by translating $ 199 to £ 199 you can forget it. I'll get someone to bring me one back in their luggage.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
...Ubuntu? If so, I would like one. Also, what's the screen resolution, does anyone know?
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
I reckon if Quanta or OLPC produce a commercial version with similar specs running Linux (e.g. with OpenOffice, Firefox etc.) that they'll make a killing. I know I'll be first in line for one.
The ASUS Eee PC looks cool too but I still prefer the OLPC and would be delighted if some of the money I spent on a commercial model went back into funding the project.
I didn't RTFA, but is there an option to make the onboard flash read only? Would love one for my mom, put M$ 2000 on it so she can run her school software, and use the SD memory for swap, temp profile settings, etc. Would be great, and every time she reboots no viruses, malware, or other crap, she never installs anything anyway. As far as an M$ killer goes, I didn't see any comments mentioning it being carried by a major retailer with actual storefront. ASUS has always been pretty high on my list, but until it's in walmart, bestbuy, CC, officedepot, etc, it won't get that wide of coverage. Just agreeing with other comments, a larger screen would be nicer, maybe go up to to 14" and as stated in earlier posts, use the extra space for a larger keyboard, and enclosed bays to store thumb drives, larger usb devices like tv tuners, audio decoders, etc. Yes, I will either paint or buy a tux key. Every TV I buy these days as analog monitor inputs, I'm getting one the bedroom, I'd been thinking of a water cooling system for the machine in there, but this would be soo much better. Just my two coppers, now hand me my vorpal sword, i've work to do in the server room.
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
Even though I hate Windows, I hope that's not true.
Windows 2000 was supposed to have introduced a hardware abstraction layer (like the one in Solaris, which was so good even Linux ended up copying it). I can just about see the idea of Windows 2000 drivers working on XP, but '98 drivers? Not sure about that at all. Once you start allowing things to bypass the HAL, you sacrifice any advantages it afforded you in the first place.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
With most GNU/Linux distributions, you are getting the last drivers, because you are getting a fairly new Linux, and there is where most drivers are.
There is the issue of proprietary hardware with no specs, but for example, Ubuntu brings some current proprietary drivers, and for example my HP pavillion installations have been seamless.
... I still do. It took me a lot of time to notice they no longer have "Apple" keys.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
As of Windows 2000, YOU CAN USE DRIVERS FOR OLDER VERSIONS OF WINDOWS.
While that's interesting PR for MS, it's totally at odds with my experiences with win2k. I had all kinds of problems trying to get drivers for win2k, and in many cases older ones wouldn't work. Printers seemed to be especially problematic.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
What graphics card does this thing have?
An Intel 945-965? Then it could do 3D too. That would be great.
You don't have to give away your Tandy. Sell it on EBay or via any other method of your choosing. Fans like me who have previously on this site waxed ecstatic on the virtues of that hardware will pay good money for working examples.
About 4 years ago I tried installing windows and it didn't recognize my onboard SATA controller. I got some files off the web, put 'em on a floppy then attached a floppy drive from an old computer to my new one, copy the files over and then windows would install. It was a little stressful as I was unexperienced with performing such a procedure, but it worked first try!
try { Signature mysig = new CleverAttempt(); } catch(NonCleverSignatureException e) { postanyway(); }
Yes i have tried it, but clearly i haven't tried every device in existance. There may be exceptions, but I'd put a large sum of money that any device with a shred of complexity to it would not work. Can you imagine installing windows 98 catalyst drivers onto xp?
What? The four wiggly squares on the Meta key are supposed to be windows? But it doesn't open any windows when I press it, and I don't run Beryl, so my windows don't wiggle anyway.
Want to hear the voice of GOD? cat
my quibbles are 1) What software can i run on it? bash? gcc? java? I'm sure if it becomes popular these will be added by community but what about from start? 2) Battery life is a bit low and doesn't seem to be easily accessible. Two battery ports with on the fly battery swapping would have been nice ;)
While I wouldn't bother with this if I needed a "real" laptop, I just could see using this with an external USB hard drive as a tech support tool. I don't have a laptop at the moment, and it would be nice - especially with the wireless - to be able to both lookup stuff on the Net when the client's Net access is down or just look up documentation in general stored on the laptop, and also have an external USB drive to hold utilities and back off client files.
I use an external USB drive anyway, but having this laptop as a working computer would help.
Of course, I could just buy an old cheap used laptop anywhere which probably would have as much power as this thing and use it the same way.
I think the 4-8GB flash drive idea was a bad one. I really can't see that they can't reach the price point with some larger hard drives. How much more can OEM versions of 20-40GB laptop drives cost than the expensive flash drives? At least, leaving aside the probability that nobody makes those any more since everything is 60-80GB and up now. Couldn't they make a deal with a hard disk manufacturer to put in regular 20-40GB drives? 20GB anyway would probably be more than enough for anybody using these laptops. Although I suppose even 8GB would be enough for a lot of people using these. I do have clients using old HP machines with only 6-8GB drives - a lot of home users who aren't computer savvy or using media never fill those things.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Excellent idea. You might want to turn off the screen though, because the backlight has a limited lifetime. I don't know if there is an easy way to keep the backlight off while the unit is running.
You might be interested in the Pepper Pad Linux tablet. I got my PP3 a couple months ago, for exactly the same reason: something smaller/lighter to lug around on vacation, and less at stake if it got lost/stolen/damaged. It worked out great for that trip, and I'm likely to end up carrying the laptop around less and less as I move more of my stuff over to it.
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
>Same for vi vs. emacs vs. kate (my fave).
Come, now, our you trolling? *Everyone* knows that you can't have your kate and emacs too . . .
hawk, running for cover
I don't understand why if is a stock linux machine it does have a Windows Logo Key... Anyway, I want one :)
ghostbar page.
I think it is a pretty good use of kde.
Maybe a bit too simplistic but it does make good use of kde3's icons and color palette and theme.
I think they are trying to make it look TOO much like windows actually.
hum, i hope it succeeds, (or at least fails for a good reason)
ben
Judging from your link, WDM is a source-level model, not a binary interface model. Its existence doesn't prove or disprove anything about the GP's post.
Windows always maintains binary compatibility. They don't always guarantee source compatibility, as sometimes the headers change to better accommodate new features.
Anyway, from the article I linked:
"Binary compatibility is possible on processors that are compatible with the Intel Architecture. Achieving a single binary still requires rigorous testing on all versions of all operating systems."
Yes, I didn't bother to read the linked article all the way down to there... Thanks for the correction.
Unusual that only because of this thread I have discovered the "wdmwrapper" kernel module for Linux. Are purely WDM drivers so uncommon?