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."
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.
For the market this laptop is intended for, 4 GB of storage is probably perfectly adequate. Keep in mind that 4 GB hard drives were standard for laptops just ten years ago, and lots of people did real work with that much storage. At $199 a pop, Asus will have a laptop that is nearly cheap enough to become an impulse buy for a lot of people.
Sure, you can always get a much better machine for a little more money, but a certain segment of the market is always attracted by the lowest possible price. Clearly this is what Asus is aiming for.
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.)
Just one question: can you show me a $ 450,00 descent laptop that weights around 2 pounds?
The weight, hence portability, is clearly a key factor for this computer.
If you buy it for portability and not specs, hell yes, $300 is a good price for a 10" notebook. For coparison, the cheapest sub-12" notebook at Newegg that's is a Fujitsu Lifebook at around $1500 on sale.
What I primarily use a notebook for is web browsing, e-mail and a terminal window. What benefit would a high spec laptop with Vista have for me? It'd just burn battery and heat up my genitals.
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
The $450 BestBuy laptop will not be a lightweight 10" machine though. The cheapest LifeBook P7230 which costs ~$1,600 w/ rebates, and it has a 1.2 Ghz Core Solo, 1 Gig of RAM and an Intel GFX chip. The only thing it has significantly more of is the HDD, but then it's not a solid state thingie.
:). Assuming the 10" screen will be at least 1024x768, it would be an excellent replacement for the armada, whose battery is beginning to crap out. Faster processor, double the RAM amount and battery life, more USB ports, built in wireless, and a webcam all for just $299.
Looking at the Eee's specs, it's significantly better than the old Compaq Armada M300 I currently have. My M300 was originally equipped with a 6GB hard drive, so the 8GB or 16GB models would actually be an improvement, if I hadn't upgraded it with an 80GB Seagate drive
Despite my excitement, whether the 10" Eee is a rip off or not depends on the needs and expectations of the user. I almost always carry my M300 with me, and I mainly use it for web surfing, some office tasks, light coding work and some gaming. This is exactly what I'd want the Eee to do, and I'm sure it'll handle these tasks just fine (by gaming I meant an occasional game of Starcraft or Doom deathmatch). If, on the other hand, the laptop will always remain on the table at home, and is expected to run Vista, then yeah, an additional $100 will get you a much more suitable machine.
Ok... I now see that there are quite a few replies already, but I'll still post this in case I covered something that hasn't been mentioned yet.
That's extremely generous. Sales and clearance items do not apply. I'd put the price at $50, and that's generous.
Meanwhile, a 20GB 2.5" HDD can be had for $30, and yet has 5X the capacity. And the capacity increases far faster than size. You can get an 80GB HDD for the same price as your 4GB flash.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
instead of a common laptop. This is not intended as a desktop replacement that needs to be placed on a desk to comfortably use, it is a truly portable pc as a complement to your beefy pc that you can slap out anywhere ,any time, in the class,on the bus, sitting , standing, you name it. With a weight of 2lb, I can comfortably hold this baby with one hand for extended length of time. It will be perfect for me as a student to put in my book bag.
And for taking notes, writing papers , surfing the net, checking email,you don't need a bloated modern laptop(most can burn you if you try to use on you lap)weighting more than 6 lb, with screaming dual core intel processor and wide screen lcd. And if I want some heavy lifting I can easily ssh to my desktop.
I have been wanting something like this for a long time, and the only alternatives before is the tablets like the thinkpad X series with a price tag easily over 1k$,as a poor student I can hardly afford. The EEE is just priced right for me, I will happily snatch one at launch.
Moore's law only applies to the number of transistors on a chip at a given price range. I'd imagine that at this price point, the case, screen, keyboard and connectors become a more significant cost than the transistors on the chips.
For it's size and weight, this is an excellent buy. Usually we'd be paying more for such a small size. You don't need speed on a a lightweight portable -- save the speed for a desktop (if you want to use your laptop as a desktop, that's a whole different issue).
The three hour battery life is much more of a concern to me than any of its other lackings. With its low-po mindset, I was hoping for a lot better than that. :3
Hopefully it'll have a standard barrel connector and charging requirements that aren't fancy.
--- Do you believe in the day?
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.
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.
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..."
That's what I was thinking as well. I was also thinking that this would make a nice light take-anywhere "beater". Something inexpensive and replaceable, without any moving parts, that I could throw in a backpack for use at wifi hotspots. It's also not too badly spec'd considering the price. If I can boot from a USB drive and replace the stock distro with slackware, I'd definitely consider picking one up.
I get roped into doing support for family & friends, and the typical grandmother PC once degunked, normally has a few card games, maybe a few photo's & a pile of email (all dumped in the inbox along with 2000 spam messages).
When I back up a family computer, (trying hard to ignore the crap pr0n on my father-in-laws 'puter), I typically don't have to compress anything to fit on a 800mb CD - it's often just Outlook Express email & nothing else.
get you grandmother set up with one of these laptops and a gmail account, and they will be happy. No having to pay McAfee or MS for endless updates, makes their life easy. Sure they will complain when they can't run the .SCR Christmas card that some stranger sent them, but quiet & portable will win them over.
Isn't think the Google vision for the future of computing; and Microsoft's nightmare; people using generic, cheap laptops for accessing Google, a PS3/Wii for games and some USB/LAN attached box for your data storage? 8GB - or maybe a few more via the USB port is enough for many people; and for those with video/mp3 collections, plug in an external 500GB HDD; as/when you need it.
This does look very cool. My kids (ages 3 and 4) are already using Linux to play NickJr games, Gcompris stuff, etc. I have them set up with desktop machines with happy hacking-type keyboards and notebook mice to better fit the size of their hands, but these notebooks might be better still. Toddlers have a way of dragging things around to screw up their KDE environment in interesting ways, or clicking the Firefox launch button so many times that it runs the system out of memory