Early Look At ASUS Eee PC 901 With Intel Atom CPU

Might E. Mouse writes "Reviews are hitting the net for the first Intel Atom-powered netbooks, and TrustedReviews has posted one for the ASUS Eee PC 901 20G Linux Edition. Has ASUS won the Atom(ic) war before it even started? With features like Wireless-N and a 6600mAh battery good for four to seven hours, that might well be the case. TR rated it highly, but I'm going to wait for their MSI Wind review before making a purchase — their first look at the Wind showed a better keyboard and larger storage." An anonymous reader notes that despite the increased capabilities, the 901 debuts at a lower cost than its predecessor.

Comments

Amusing

[the_humeister]

There's an ad for the MSI Wind adjacent to the text for the Asus review.

settling dust - I'll wait a year

[Bananatree3]

with MSI, eeePC, XO v2.0 and a host of other micronotebooks, I'm going to wait another year for it all to solidify. There's a lot of speculation right now, and I'd like to see a market tested, proven platform I can compare to all the others before I buy.

Re:settling dust - I'll wait a year

[melonman]

I can understand that, but, if you followed that logic consistently, you'd never buy a computer at all. I bought a 701, which I liked apart from the screen. Then I bought a Windows 900, on which I've installed Kubuntu, and I'm quite happy with it. It's a bit irritating that the next model is out already, but I'll be using mine on a series of train trips next week. If I had done things your way, I'd be reading magazine reviews instead of doing any work...

Re:settling dust - I'll wait a year

[Bananatree3]

I bought an XO back in December and love it. I've found a way to type on it that allows me to still type fast enough to get work done. Also, I don't "follow the logic consistently". I usually wait until something's matured and dropped in price enough for it to behoove me to buy it. I bought a Core 2 Duo for ~200 bucks about two years ago, and have resisted and resisted getting a Core 2 Quad or Phenom. The prices and product have had long enough to mature, and 6 or 8 core processors are far enough away to warrent buying a 4 core now.

Re:settling dust - I'll wait a year

[TrekkieTechie]

Why on Earth would you buy the Windows Eee if you're just going to install a Linux distro anyway?

Re:settling dust - I'll wait a year

[melonman]

Because it's available. I pre-ordered a 701, waited 4 months for it to appear (supply in Europe has been very poor), and by that point the 900 was almost with us. My previous laptop had a broken key, and I wanted to set up my new machine before I next needed to use the local keyboard, so I bought what was available rather than what the wholesaler thought might be in stock in a month's time.

Re:settling dust - I'll wait a year

[couchslug]

"I'm going to wait another year for it all to solidify."

I'll just wait until something interesting pops up used and cheap!
I'd wait if buying a truck or other high value asset, but there are so many computer choices making a quick, economic decision is easy. So is dumping it if I make a mistake.

Re:settling dust - I'll wait a year

[bgfay]

I thought the same thing last year and then, when my folks, brother, and wife couldn't think of anything else to get me for Christmas, I suggested the Eee 701 8G. I got it on a whim, thinking it would be a good toy. And it is. But I was surprised by how much work I can do on the thing. Most of the time, it's my primary computer.

The keyboard takes a lot of knocks in reviews, but listen to the people who have had one for a while. I have meaty fingers and I can type fast on the thing. The screen is too small, but I hook up to a monitor when I'm home or at work and at other times use Firefox's fullscreen mode. It works.

As for waiting for the market to settle down, I get too excited for such a logical, well-reasoned approach. Besides, for five-hundred, I was willing to give it a shot. I'll probably grab a 901 for my 40th birthday and pass the 701 down to my six-year -old. She's already using it whenever I'm not on the thing.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't wait. If that's what you want to to do, go for it. But if you can get someone to let you borrow one for a few days (a week would be great) I bet you'll find you're ready to go.

Re:settling dust - I'll wait a year

[darjen]

That depends. I did like the 701, but I definitely didn't like how the screen didn't fill up the lid all the way. So I figured I would wait to see if they would come out with a larger screen, and they did. Now it would be worth my money, imho, even though they might release something better in the future. It depends on what you want and how often you are willing to upgrade your stuff.

Re:settling dust - I'll wait a year

[Daniel Phillips]

I bought an XO back in December and love it. I've found a way to type on it that allows me to still type fast enough to get work done. I find I can type pretty close to full speed on the eee keyboard, to my surprise and delight. There are a few compromises, for example, select to end of text which I use often, went from a three key shift-ctrl-end to a nearly unusable four key shift-ctrl-fn-end. I find myself hitting up arrow when I meant to shift, which causes quite a stall as I correct the resulting damage. But I'm getting used to it. It's way way way faster than texting or thumb keyboarding.

This machine is clearly good enough to keep me in the email loop while on the road. It has OpenOffice, incuding impress so I can work on my slide shows on the road, and because of the external VGA I can give the presentation with it too. Openoffice starts considerably faster on the little eee than it does on any of my fire breathing workstations, because of the flash disk of course. Interesting that the disk makes so much more difference than the processor power. The writing is on the wall: rotating disks are going out for personal computers, flash is coming in.

I don't think I'd be too happy actually developing code on this little guy like I manage to to pretty well with a notebook. But let's give it a while and see what happens.

My biggest compliant about the 900 is the fan noise, it's nearly always on even when I'm not doing much. Hopefully the 901 will improve the situation.

Posting this as much to see how this little guy works out as a connectivity tool as anything else. Whoops, there the cursor got onto the wrong line again. Ah well. Better than a UMPC, not something I want to work 8 hours straight on.

Re:settling dust - I'll wait a year

[Daniel Phillips]

I'll just wait until something interesting pops up used and cheap! I'll probably sell this 900 for about $400 when the 901 becomes available, does that qualify as cheap? ...starting to get pretty good at shift-ctrl-fn-end, at least the three shift keys are all in the same place :-)

Re:settling dust - I'll wait a year

[rhade]

Homer: You're right, Marge. Just like the time I could have met Mr. T at the mall.

The entire day, I kept saying, 'I'll go a little later, I'll go a little later...' And when I got there, they told me he just left. And when I asked the mall guy if he'll ever come back again, he said he didn't know. Well, I'm never going to let something like that happen again!

sorry couldnt help myself

Re:settling dust - I'll wait a year

[vajorie]

it never solidifies. if it did, we wouldn't have ameri-consumerism. They always introduce a new something, which disturbs the universe :) I was going to think the same way you do, but 701 is so great (within the limits of my expectations) that I'm glad I didn't. I'm also not hopeful that prices will go down. bc they keep introducing new features, price stays at the same level or above it.

Re:settling dust - I'll wait a year

[MamiyaOtaru]

Yeah I don't understand the branding. People have heard of Asus. On seeing me carry a tiny tiny laptop around, a common response has been "who makes that? Oh, Asus! I know them". People find it reassuring it comes from a known company.

Re:settling dust - I'll wait a year

[blind biker]

I went for a week-long seminar to another city a few weeks back, and I got a ton of people asking me what that tiny laptop was, and they were generally pleased with the product (as I am). Now imagine someone of them going to purchase a new motherboard: "should I get this Epox, or the Asus? The Epox is a bit cheaper and gets me the same stuff as the Asus, but I feel good about Asus, they make _neat_ stuff - their motherboard is surely the better built."

The Eee was (probably still is) selling so well that it was (still is) impossible to buy it at MSRP - they were all selling it for more! Now think about that for a moment...

FOSS is working as intended

[speedtux]

If it had been up to Microsoft and Sony, we'd still be stuck with overpriced $2000 executive toys running Microsoft Vista like molasses.

FOSS has made it possible to create these machines and circumvent Microsoft's near monopoly, because if any of these companies had asked Microsoft to keep XP going for ultralights, Microsoft would have told them to go f*ck themselves. FOSS has also made it possible for these companies to design and sell $400 machines.

And the motivation for it all has not been that people begrudge Bill Gates his collection of 19th century gold plated toilet plungers, but the fact that people want choices and free markets in software and hardware. All Microsoft has to offer is a gigantic marketing budget and Stalinist central planning.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not thanks to FOSS, but thanks to Negroponte who thought that cheap PCs could be produced.
We know how much Microsoft and Intel tried to stop the OLPC project...

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[HangingChad]

FOSS has made it possible to create these machines and circumvent Microsoft's near monopoly...

I'm not sure FOSS made their existence possible, but it certainly made this price differential possible:

The Wind appears to be solidly constructed out of hard plastic--unlike some early mini-laptops, which feel about as sturdy as a Styrofoam mini-cooler. At 10 by 7 by 0.8 inches, the Wind resembles some pricier portables--enough so that the list price of $399 (or $499 for the Windows XP version) seems like a bargain. Wait a week and we'll be able to tell you whether it's worth the money.

Computerworld

The mini-notebook phenom has most definitely highlighted the Windows tax on computer hardware. And it's nice to see examples of having that price differential clearly illustrated. And that's the way it should be. If you feel having Windows adds $100 of value to your notebook, by all means go right ahead and fork over the $$$.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[Alwin Henseler]

Not to its full potential, though...

Why wouldn't you put a different CPU in an UMPC? Sure, an Atom CPU is low-power, but it's also held back by the x86 architecture. Drop that, and you lose binary compatibility (a small loss for this application) in exchange for even better battery life. An UMPC based on ARM, Mips or low-power PPC core could be even more awesome than one based on Atom.

I can understand that people want x86 compatibility, even for a small UMPC running Linux. But with this market exploding, I'm sure there is (or will be) room for a niche market of non-x86 UMPC's. Let's hope some manufacturer steps in there.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[erikina]

It gets tiring seeing the same arguments over and over, so I'm not going to rehash the arguments in Intel's favor.

On a side note, no matter how you look at it - your hero Negroponte sold out. It's amusing how on their website one of the "5 core principles" is open source software. And to much acclaim, they publicly refused to use Mac OS (which was offered for free) and then turn around and license XP. (Oh yeah, and disagreements with Negroponte is the reason Intel walked away)

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[LaughingCoder]

The mini-notebook phenom has most definitely highlighted the Windows tax on computer hardware./blockquote> Since Windows is *optional* on these notebooks I think calling it a Windows *tax* is no longer warranted. FWIW, I strongly suspect that for only $100 more, many (most?) will opt to purchase Windows on these devices. But I agree with you ... making Windows optional is the way it should be. From my perspective, I hope each flavor garners about half of the market so the competition remains stiff. That is when we the consumers win.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[Constantine XVI]

The important thing to note is that the Linux-based Wind has a smaller battery, no Bluetooth, and less RAM. So there's a good bit more there than the price of a Windows license.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[speedtux]

That's silly. Negroponte didn't invent cheap machines or cheap laptops, and when the conditions are right, they appear in the market, as they have done a number of times before. Furthermore, no OLPC technologies have actually made it into any of the low cost laptops. It's a shame, really, because Negroponte and his project really could have made a contribution in this area.

The Eee PC would exist without the OLPC, but both OLPC and the Eee owe their existence to FOSS.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a large part of the reason FOSS has been so central to the emergence of these computers is the mindset it gives people making the devices. FOSS makes it much easier to see the advantage of making a general purpose PC instead of a much more closed internet appliance.

If you are using FOSS there is no reason not to include a spread sheet, word processor, photo editor, games and so on. In effect it changes thinking from "What can we cut out to save costs?" to "What can we cut out to save disk space?". Once you have got to that point the idea of locking down the system becomes a little silly unless you have a really good reason to do it.

So starting with the idea people want a little device to surf the web you end up with an eeepc that can do a lot instead of an internet appliance that can do a couple of things.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[mseeger]

Hi,

here in germany, they don't sell the Asus EEE PC with Linux. The only available version is the XP version with 12GB Flash and it costs 600$ (400 Euro). It seems that Microsoft has "convinced" Asus not to ruin their market here.

An unhappy Martin

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[mseeger]

Correction: They don't sell the 900 with Linux. Only the 700 is available with Linux. You can dualboot the 900 with Linux, but you have to pay for the XP :-(

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[couchslug]

"Drop that, and you lose binary compatibility (a small loss for this application)"

Sell THAT idea to people who want the convenience of running the same binaries on all their machines.
What do you think makes small x86 computers so popular?

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[cmacb]

And the motivation for it all has not been that people begrudge Bill Gates his collection of 19th century gold plated toilet plungers, but the fact that people want choices and free markets in software and hardware.

I find it disgusting that people continue to pick on Bill Gates and his enormous wealth. Don't forget that he not only *invented* the PC, but also wrote most of the software that runs on it.

Furthermore, he is devoted full-time now to charitable works, such as providing 19th century gold plated toilet plungers for Africa!

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[colmore]

Don't know much or care much about the man, but OLPC has been a good example of how (in everything) great tech isn't enough to solve a problem. The lack of teacher training and software interfaces designed for those totally unfamiliar with computers have (temporarily, one hopes) held the project back.

But still, even if it hasn't been the revolution for every single kid that it was dreamed to be (and given the kind of rhetoric surrounding the project -- there's no way it could fully live up to expectation. People in the international activism world rolled their eyes too.) it's a Very Good Thing. Now a techy teenager in Mali has a much better chance of getting her hands on a real computer than she did before the project.

DIY tech and microfinancing are fantastic ways of providing meaningful aid.

Whether or not Negroponte maintains full OS orthodoxy and where he stands on MS vs Apple is certainly interesting to ME but I'm hardly the person who matters in this discussion, and that kind of thing is hardly the most important issue.

Efforts to assist the underdeveloped world that aren't just bags of food or plans to turn them into a labor market for western business should be applauded, not nitpicked.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[colmore]

It certainly helps that the manufacturers can tailor the OS to their hardware themselves.

Free and infinitely configurable vs. pricey and fixed featureset isn't much of a competition.

Of course

Compatible with my files from work vs. not isn't either.

The best thing going for FOSS right now is that for most users application support is an issue of diminishing importance. Media and document formats are everything. If you can view web pages, you can do most everything, if you can edit word, excel, and powerpoint you can do everything else.

However crappy MS's XML format is, it's a sign of things to come. That they're even making motions toward being open is a pretty strong bit of writing on the wall.

Microsoft is a combination of IBM and DEC. They had a very lucrative decade, but they've lost their ability to launch new products and shape the market. They're going to have a long, slow decline. They will be purchased by some company for lucrative support contracts with an installed base. A decade or so after the purchase, there will be few traces of their tech remaining. Their primary legacy will be that they enabled commodity hardware, and inspired a generation of programmers to compete with them for free.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[colmore]

Google around for Linus' statements on Itanium.

He's pretty fond of x86, and takes the perspective (pretty obvious one for him if you've looked inside the Kernel) that a collection of hacks and cruft like you see in the intel instruction set is the sign of good engineers dealing with problems that don't come up in theoretical exercises.

Aside from the fact that x86 is a conceptual mess, do you have evidence to back up you aversion to the architecture? Intel is bending over backwards (in their own interest to be sure) to tailor-make a PC to this spec. There would need to be some overwhelming reasons to go with an incompatible architecture that would require many many more engineer-hours to build to (a far bigger consideration than the user's experience with binary compatibility) wouldn't support the parallel windows line, and probably wouldn't have any real world advantage on price/performance.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that he not only *invented* the PC, but also wrote most of the software that runs on it.

Just on the off chance that you might actually be serious: of course, Bill Gates did no such thing.

Every major Microsoft software product since DOS was either bought or ripped off. It is really amazing how consistently Microsoft has failed to innovate.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[heteromonomer]

Mod parent up. Very valid point. It was XO that started it all, and MS and intel tried to ignore it, mock it, stop it and finally joined it and will soon probably claim it as their own.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[dcam]

For some people that tax is very visible.

I just replaced my 2 parents computers over the weekend. Of the ~$485 (AUD, which are now roughly equal to USD), $109 was XP Home OEM. The proportional cost of windows is growing massively.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[speedtux]

Very valid point. It was XO that started it all,

Started what? Cheap computers? I don't think so. We had the Sinclair ZX80, the Commodore 64, the TRS80-100, the Apple eMate, and the Dana Alphasmart, all the ITX-based machines, to name just a few. (Some of them missed their price targets, but then so did the XO.)

This notion of cheap/easy-to-use computers for education/the masses comes back about once a decade. OLPC was a little ahead of the curve this time, but it's hardly ground breaking.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[abirdman]

Gates only wrote the BASIC interpreter (which almost no one used), and licensed the operating system-- a CPM alternative, because the guy who wrote CPM wouldn't talk to IBM-- from elsewhere (Seattle Computers?). He was a lucky guy in the right place at the right time. IBM *invented* the PC-- meaning they made the market for it. Since then he's been prescient enough to recognize trends (windowing GUI's, the internet browser, office applications, email) after the fact and hop onto the bandwagon soon enough to own the bandwagon in a short time.

I have my own thoughts about Gates' wealth, but please don't give him credit for things he most certainly didn't do.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[newsdee]

Look up the GP2X and the Pandora. They're primarely designed as game consoles so they're smaller and pack less Mhz, but they are fully open platforms based on ARM. They have TV out and USB for a keyboard if you want to use it as a PC...

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[vuffi_raa]

IBM *invented* the PC-- meaning they made the market for it. wrong on both fronts- xerox invented the PC and IBM stole it- windows made IBM's PC marketable to the masses- or at least acceptable to market to the masses to get the pc to where it is today- FOSS wouldn't be anywhere if it weren't a unified reaction to a unified public that was using a majorly marketed OS- we would still be in the days where every mass marketed computer was using separate OS's with different kernals and different code- meaning there would be different app support on everything, like there was with commodore and IBM and TI and others in the late early days or even worse before that.

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Why can't I get the top spec hardware with Linux?

Re:FOSS is working as intended

[RespekMyAthorati]

If I see any more WOOSHES I'll strain my neck.

What part of "He is devoted full-time now to charitable works, such as providing 19th century gold plated toilet plungers for Africa!" didn't you get?

Outdated chipset

[niko9]

It worries me that the chipset consumes more power than the CPU itself. Since my
Thnkpad X40 sub note book is working just fine, I guess I'll hold off until the next revision of the Atom
platform is released and then reevaluate.

Re:Outdated chipset

[Kjella]

Your next computer will be faster, smaller, cheaper, more memory, better graphics, consume less power, be quieter and whatnot. I guess all I conclude was that you already have a good machine in this category and isn't in the market for a new one yet. I agree it has potential for improvement but I'd be very concerned if it didn't. To me it sounds like a very good machine available now (or close to).

Re:Outdated chipset

[aliens]

What difference does the power drain of the chipset make if it still gives you 7 hours battery time?

Sure, a lower wattage chipset would give you more, but what exactly is there to worry about?

Re:Outdated chipset

[Anonymous Coward]

Because 7 hours of battery life on a so-called "portable computer" is so stupid and insulting as to not even be a joke.

Re:Outdated chipset

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I don't think you explain it very well. Seven hours isn't enough? Or are you saying that the seven hours is fudged? Seven hours is still better than most notebooks available today.

Re:Outdated chipset

[Anonymous Coward]

Because 7 hours of battery life on a so-called "portable computer" is so stupid and insulting as to not even be a joke. I hear you, Brother (or Sister)! I, myself, am refusing to buy a laptop until they can at least outlast me without having to recharge.

Re:Outdated chipset

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm saying seven hours is far from enough. The fact that it's "better than most notebooks available today" only shows how low our expectations have been driven. I don't want a goddamn gigahertz crotch warmer whose battery life is barely adequate to play a movie off its stupid-ass built-in DVD-ROM drive. Shit, even "portable" TELEPHONES are starting to need charging every day. That's pathetic.

Re:Outdated chipset

[CastrTroy]

I agree. I bought a laptop. Although I certainly don't use it as a portable computer. I use it because it's nice to use on the couch, or is easily transported to the kitchen so I don't have to print recipes. It's almost always plugged in. The amount of battery power in laptops is dispicable. 7 hours should the the minimum for basic laptops. Not something to be happy about. A laptop should at least be able to work all day without worrying about the battery.

Re:Outdated chipset

[niko9]

What difference does the power drain of the chipset make if it still gives you 7 hours battery time?

Sure, a lower wattage chipset would give you more, but what exactly is there to worry about?

What difference does the power drain of the chipset make if it still gives you 7 hours battery time?

Sure, a lower wattage chipset would give you more, but what exactly is there to worry about? The difference is if Intel had mated the Atom CPU with a more apropos low power chipset you would be paying
same amount of your hard earned money for an ultra portable that had maybe 14 hours or more of battery life.

Imagine that. A sub note with close to 20 hours battery life, much like the Tandy 100.

As of now, the Intel Atom is mated to a 3-4(?) year old 945 chipset. Sounds like something was missed here.

Re:Outdated chipset

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel's chipsets often include an integrated graphics controller, which is the largest part of the chipset, and is often larger than the CPU itself. The next chipset for Nano will probably offer better graphics and a larger controller, I don't really expect the chipset power to decrease much.

Re:Outdated chipset

[10Ghz]

"I'm saying seven hours is far from enough."

So what exactly are you doing with your computer that requires something like 20-hour (the longevity you mentioned in your earlier post) battery-life? Last time I checked, there's 24 hours in a day, and we sleep roughly 8 of those hours. That leaves you 16 hours of potential computer-use a day. And none of us spend every single waking moment sitting on an untethered computer. If you do, then your problem is not laptop-batteries, but your lifestyle.

"Shit, even "portable" TELEPHONES are starting to need charging every day. That's pathetic."

I charge my phone every day. When I go to sleep, I plug it in. I unplug it when I wake up. Yes, I can see why that is such a big pain in the ass....

Re:Outdated chipset

[bgfay]

You watch 7+ hour long movies? Wow. Now that's a long attention span.

There are few times in my life when I'm 7+ hours away from an electrical socket.

Re:Outdated chipset

[diamondsw]

If Intel had waited for a low-power chipset to be ready, then we wouldn't have the Atom at all in the meantime, and you'd be getting a 3 hour battery life. It's coming, but Intel has said it's just not ready yet.

Re:Outdated chipset

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called efficiency. Perhaps you may have heard of it. We used to have more of it back in those quaint old days.

Re:Outdated chipset

[abirdman]

The Tandy 100 had no storage (plug in a cassette tape if you want to run or save a program), a 300 baud (maybe went up to 1200 baud) modem with cups that fit over the phone handset (which are no longer common), something like 256K of RAM, and a 24 x 8 character text only display. No network. No storage, no lighted display, no mouse, no pointing device or any kind, no USB ports, no sound, no wireless, no network software. They stopped making them because people stopped buying them. Sure the batteries lasted a long time. They had nothing to do. I believe we can stop romanticizing them.

Re:Outdated chipset

[solferino]

a more apropos low power chipset

You're using apropos as an adjective here. Apropos adj. means to the point, pertinent. Please don't try to be fancy with a word you don't have mastery of and just use the appropriate word instead.

Re:Outdated chipset

[Jeff DeMaagd]

It is about expectations. If the market generally expects more and more powerful devices, then that's what the sellers will produce. If the battery lasts long enough *for them* then the improvement can be made in brute power performance, or in reducing cost. Reducing cost and improving efficiency generally doesn't happen at the same time for entire systems.

Most movies don't last three hours, and that's what a lot of standard notebooks cost.

I'm sure this Eee can run for 20 hours if you were willing to add a couple pounds to the weight, but that takes away from the portability.

The heat is the reason why the industry calls portable computers *notebooks*. Even ten years ago, that's what they were called. They were never intended for on-lap use.

Re:Outdated chipset

[10Ghz]

Yes, we had it back when laptops were very expensive and had a fraction of the performance they have today. But as I guessed, you couldn't name any real need that requires a laptop with 20-hour battery-life.

Re:Outdated chipset

[Junior J. Junior III]

The Tandy 100 had no storage (plug in a cassette tape if you want to run or save a program), a 300 baud (maybe went up to 1200 baud) modem with cups that fit over the phone handset (which are no longer common), something like 256K of RAM, and a 24 x 8 character text only display. No network. No storage, no lighted display, no mouse, no pointing device or any kind, no USB ports, no sound, no wireless, no network software. They stopped making them because people stopped buying them. Sure the batteries lasted a long time. They had nothing to do. I believe we can stop romanticizing them. Hold on a minute... They had a really nice keyboard! OK, NOW we can stop romanticizing them.

Still one thing missing...

[Anonymous Coward]

That is for Asus to sell the Eee without an OS so we can avoid the Microsoft tax.

Re:Still one thing missing...

[bcrowell]

Here's a link with a higher signal to noise ratio.

Re:Still one thing missing...

[couchslug]

Offer to buy enough units and it's a fair bet they'd sell them to you wholesale.

Re:Still one thing missing...

[bgfay]

Doesn't selling it with Linux avoid that tax?

Re:Still one thing missing...

[diamondsw]

> Still one thing missing... That is for Asus to sell the Eee without an OS so we can avoid the Microsoft tax.

And the Linux version isn't doing EXACTLY THAT?

Re:Still one thing missing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the version of Linux is Xandros and I'm guessing from the link given that Xandros has made some sort of agreement with Microsoft.

Re:"A full school day"

[symbolset]

This works for me. If nothing better comes out in the next few weeks this or the MSI Wind is going back to school with my kids in the Fall.

It's small, cheap, light enough. It'll serve them all day. I don't have to freak out if they lose it or break it. It's got enough CPU power and memory to do real work.

I'll take one for me too. I'm tired of lugging around a full sized notebook when this is all I need. For real power and storage I can always remote to a real desktop under Citrix. For light spreadsheets and barcode scanning this will do the trick.

Ha, I wish ...

[ScrewMaster]

Reviews are hitting the net for the first Intel Atom-powered netbooks

If it really were atomic-powered, we wouldn't have to worry about battery life.

Sometimes I feel old...

[Kjella]

Combined with the lean and mean Linux OS, performance is snappy and responsive. With 1GB of RAM in support you can even have two or three programs open at any one time and not encounter any major problems unless you want to watch video, With one gig of RAM, you can even run two or three programs at once... Not that I long back to everything, seriously WTF it's what I ran on my desktop a few years ago and I had a lot more than that running. Looking at my memory stats 4GB is overkill and 2GB would do, and I got... 20 applications open including a virtualbox version of XP which itself runs 4 apps.

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[MMC Monster]

A few months ago I was going video editing on my desktop system, running Firefox2 (you know how much memory that takes!), and had amarok playing in the background.

Everything was working fine. No hiccups or anything.

A few weeks later the system died. When looking for a compatible motherboard and CPU for an upgrade, I was shocked to rediscover that my "workhorse" computer only had 512 MB of ram.

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[TrekkieTechie]

The Atom processor is specifically designed to do one thing at a time, for low-end applications such as the Eee and the E-box. It is a very low-powered single-core chip. So, yes, the fact that it can actually handle a little multitasking is something to take note of.

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[gbjbaanb]

but we've had multitasking since the pentium first appeared. Not only that, the Atom is a hyper-threaded CPU, so really you could say its designed for multi-tasking.

I think the point was that modern apps are so hungry for resources that you need lots of RAM and CPU, whereas we got the same stuff done with significantly less only a couple of years ago.

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pentium? What're you smoking, while Win95 was the first 'multitasking OS' from the windows line (actually NT 3.1 would've been, or was 3.5 the released version?)

And prior to that were plenty of multitasking apps, like DesqView and whatnot. It's been possible on x86s since the 286 era (386 was the first usable I believe.)

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't really thought about any of this stuff in a good 15 years.

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[colmore]

Modern web pages do in fact require that a whole lot of information be kept in memory (or swap). Other apps don't have as much excuse, but a browser can really only be as lightweight as the content you are browsing.

Also modern OSes expect a lot of extra memory and use it to do things like constantly maintain a search index, preload common software, run auto-defragging filesystems, and so on and so forth.

You engineer a computer differently when you have gigs of memory. There's an appeal to having a pile of raw untapped power under the hood, but it actually makes a lot of sense to use that power for something during the 99.999% of the time you aren't recompiling the kernel.

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[yomegaman]

I bought a cheapo laptop with a P3-600 and 320MB of RAM (circa 2002) and put Arch Linux on it just for fun. I was really disappointed at how sluggishly it runs Firefox and Thunderbird, it almost made me long for the good ol' days of Netscape 3.04. I used to run that on an AMD 5x86-133 and it was way more pleasant. Of course, this was back before CSS and Web 2.0 ruined everything. :-)

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[Anonymous Coward]

my 1Ghz 256MB win2000 primary office desktop begs to differ

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that the 286 brought preemptive multi-tasking to the personal computer, but MS didn't take advantage of that until '95, or NT.

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[snuf23]

I was using preemptive multitasking just fine back in 1987 on an Amiga with 1MB of RAM.

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[bennomatic]

Man, those were the days. Yours must have been an Amiga 1000. I got mine a bit later--an A500--that I eventually maxed out with 1MB internally, and another 2MB with an external memory module.

I used to do 3D animations, and I would set up the parameters for each frame, then run multiple instances of the rendering program to run overnight. One at a time, I'd get a frame about every two hours; four at a time, I'd fire it all off before going to sleep, and I'd have four frames waiting for me in the morning!

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[mrmeval]

http://offbyone.com/offbyone/

Try that. It's a rather amazing browser. The zip will fit on a floppy. The executable will but you won't be able to fit the SSLeay dlls on it.

Of course I go to fire it up to make sure it really works on my linux system under wine and wine has been updated to death again.

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[Geezle2]

OS/2 v1.3 provided preemptive multitasking for the PC in 1991. AmigaOS provided it on proprietary hardware earlier than that. Big iron has supported multitasking for many decades now.

gbjbaanb's point is a good one, however. Specifically, why is a typical contemporary desktop with Vista (and the necessary virus/trojan/spyware apps loaded and running) not significantly more responsive when doing typical tasks like word processing and web browsing than a 386 running Windows 3.1? How many people REALLY need the bloated bells and whistles in Office 2007, and can actually find the particular bell or whistle that they want in a timely and efficient manner? To prove the point to a particular Windows fanboy in grad school, I did all of my word processing on an old 512k Mac through a number of classes. My documents looked just as good, I got better grades, and I likely spent less time editing my papers, so what did XP buy him?

If you look at what could be done on an old Mostek 6502 machine, or a machine based on Motorola's 68000, then what you get today with "modern" apps and OSes is REALLY disappointing when you consider how much more advanced contemporary hardware is. Linux, for all that it is faster and more reliable than anything that Microsoft can produce, is superior not because it has tight and painstakingly optimized code or has brilliantly engineered structure but simply because it doesn't suck as bad.

If Microsoft can be knocked down to about 60% market share and thereby forced to take standards and interoperability seriously, there would be plenty of room for small businesses to develop and market leaner and better engineered OSes, like BeOS, OS/2 or AmigaOS were, and provide competing applications. That could provoke a more general move by the consumer away from mammoth, rapid-application-developed, industrially manufactured, one size fits all mega-applications like Office. Smaller applications with smaller development teams can be more artfully optimized.

In any event, the 901 is plenty powerful. With a trimmed down Linux install, you should be able to keep a few dozen tabs open in your browser, a few documents open in an editor, a chat client running and whatnot while you watch your DVD.

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[Daniel Phillips]

With 1GB of RAM in support you can even have two or three programs open at any one time and not encounter any major problems Already been running more than a dozen at a time - ooffice, terminals, firefox, games, video recorder etc - with no problem. People sometimes forget just how much memory a gig really is.

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[sznupi]

Opera will run great on such hardware.

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[indi0144]

no way! I'm on a P3 at 900mhz and 256 of ram running ubuntu and firefox 3 and behaves just fine.. perhaps this thing is haunted. What laptop was that?

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[crhylove]

Just because Civilization 2 doesn't run well under Wine doesn't mean that you HAVE to have 20 applications including virtualbox running all day. I mean some of us have real jobs, like gold mining in WOW.

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[sznupi]

But that doesn't change that there are noticeable differences between browsers. (you might play a bit with Opera, preferably on some old machine to see the difference more clearly)

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[Inoshiro]

"but we've had multitasking since the pentium first appeared. "

Shit, I must've been on some good drugs back when I had a 486, because I must've hallucinated that multitasking I did.

No wonder the K&R guys never show up anywhere, they must've had a much harder trip when they thought the PDP-11 was multitasking and time-sharing!

I'm glad Intel showed us the way by introducing multitasking in the mid-1990s.

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[Lost Race]

My TRS-80 can run one program just fine with 16 kB of memory, so I reckon it could run 2 or 3 fine with 48 kB. What the heck is a GB, anyway? A million kB? That's crazy.

Re:Sometimes I feel old...

[renoX]

Uh? And what is this magical feature of the other CPUs that the Atom doesn't have that make it less able to 'multi-task' (except of course multi-core CPU)?
It's an in-order CPU yes but that has nothing to do with multi-tasking..

1024x600? Eew....

[Anonymous Coward]

And I thought 800x600 was a pain to work with on the previous model. I think this will only make it even more annoying since you're stretching your screen a lot this way. I'll pass...

It's the principle!

[mkcmkc]

What difference does the power drain of the chipset make if it still gives you 7 hours battery time? You might as well ask why we invaded Iraq if Osama bin Laden is in Afghanistan. You liberal types just don't know when to shut up...

Re:It's the principle!

[bgfay]

So what if Osama bin Laden is in Afghanistan. We all know that Saddam Hussein planned 9/11. Right? That's what Bush/Cheney/Fox told me. And they would _never_ lie.

Re:It's the principle!

[crhylove]

We know why we invaded Iraq though, we are fighting "terrorism" there, so we don't have to HERE.

God knows we don't want constitutionalist terrorists actually implementing actual democracy willy nilly on THIS continent!!! Think how much cheaper mochas would be and how much money I would lose on my Starbucks stock!

Re:1024x600? Eew....

[sokkalf]

It's pretty much like a normal widescreen with regards to the aspect ratio.. most laptops are fitted with widescreen LCDs anyway. Never tried the 700-series Eee, but I have a 900 with 1024x600, and it works really well. No need to scroll sideways while webbrowsing etc..

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is TOUCH SCREEN?

WHERE is Pixel Qi - Dual Mode battery saving Screen technology and 1 watt system use?
http://www.pixelqi.com/
(love the Pixel Qi products page with PaperWhite Screen Tech being worked on by them that uses very little power)

Where is OLPC like $10 user anywhere replaceable battery?

If DELL does the Pixel Qi stuff first, bye-bye Asus EeePC...
http://www.pixelqi.com/blog1/

Why a VGA port?

[Cannelloni]

Very cool, but why not DVI? That's insanely stupid.

Re:Why a VGA port?

[Breakfast Pants]

Business users still require VGA for presentations on old projectors. DVI can do both, but it requires an adaptor or special cord, and is more expensive.

Re:Why a VGA port?

[Ant P.]

DVI is physically about twice the size. Unless Asus suddenly decides to use that thing on Apple laptops (which probably carries a licensing fee) it's not going to change any time soon.

Re:Why a VGA port?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that big a deal to carry an adapter for a VGA projector if you really need to and with the other features they added like the 20G flash storage, bluetooth and wireless-n, why not DVI? It can't be much more expensive if you get it on budget graphics cards and mobos.

Re:Why a VGA port?

[Vellmont]

That's insanely stupid.

It sounds really stupid to me to have a DVI port, and not a VGA port. Why? Because there's a lot more VGA compatible hardware out their than their is DVI compatible hardware.

The small advantage of slightly better graphics output doesn't really outweigh the disadvantage of having to either have an adapter (that people will likely forget or lose), or use a display that supports DVI.

Re:Why a VGA port?

[Cannelloni]

I havent used a VGA-compatible monitor in about 9 years. And ALL modern displays are 100 percent DVI.

Re:Why a VGA port?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have strong beliefs that you're talking out your arse. DVI is only just 9 years old, are you trying to claim that you bought the first DVI monitor and never used anything else?

Re:Why a VGA port?

[Billly Gates]

DVI requires expensive TCPA drm chips I am guessing and perhaps expensive patents as well.

Re:Why a VGA port?

[Daniel Phillips]

Business users still require VGA for presentations on old projectors. DVI can do both, but it requires an adaptor or special cord, and is more expensive. It's also big, awkward to use and butt ugly, a contender for worst connector ever designed. Maybe hdmi will eventually save us from that idiocy.

Re:Why a VGA port?

[Anonymous Coward]

And ALL modern displays are 100 percent DVI.

Bollocks. My new Dell (3 months ago) is probably one of the most popular desktops in the world, and its accompanying 19" LCD monitor has DVI and VGA. Both cables were provided and it even had the VGA cable plugged in 'by default'.

Re:Why a VGA port?

[sapphire wyvern]

The DVI pin connections are actually a superset of the VGA pinouts. So DVI-VGA adaptors are trivially easy to make - they just connect a few DVI pins through to a VGA form-factor socket, without connecting the actual digital pins to anything.

The reverse is not true.

So, from the point of view of maximum compatibility, DVI > VGA. As other posters have pointed out, DVI is physically pretty bulky, though.

Re:Why a VGA port?

[Anonymous Coward]

You sure you are not thinking about HDMI with it's HDCP content encryption? I wasn't aware that you needed DRM chips for DVI, though I think you can have HDCP over DVI I think it is optional whereas it is a mandatory part of the HDMI spec.

Re:Why a VGA port?

[Cannelloni]

No, my previous flat-panel display had ADC. The current one has DVI.

Re:Why a VGA port?

[Cannelloni]

Of course. It's a Dell.

Atom is ok. But, VIA Nano can run Crysis... :)

[G3ckoG33k]

VIA Nano runs Crysis: http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/06/09/via-nano-runs-crysis And, Nano wins on specs too Nano http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_VIA_Nano_microprocessors Atom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Atom_microprocessors

Re:Atom is ok. But, VIA Nano can run Crysis... :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah with a nVidia 8600GT graphics card, hardly what you'd want in a low power laptop. And the most relevant spec, power consumption, can't really be compared from the info in the wikipedia articles. Before saying one is better than the other how about some real world benchmarks for both systems on performance and power consumption.

Re:Atom is ok. But, VIA Nano can run Crysis... :)

[10Ghz]

Nano also consumes a lot more power, so the two CPU's are not really comparable. While Atom consumes about 1-4w, Nano consumes about 20w

Re:Atom is ok. But, VIA Nano can run Crysis... :)

[dbcad7]

But can you run compiz fusion ?

Downward spiral of hardware prices

[1 a bee]

The rate at which hardware prices are dropping is simply breathtaking. Consider it from the seller's angle: a $500 drop in price from say $1500 represents a 33% drop in revenue; a $500 drop in price from $1000, on the other hand, represents a 50% drop in revenue. This wreaks havoc on a lot of business models--and of course, creates a lot of new ones.

Looking at this price trend, it seems like every home will soon be littered with a lot of portables--some fairly new, others, say, one or two years old. There might be one on every coffee table, you might throw one in the bathroom, as well as the one in the bedroom, and so on. Managing and maintaining the software on all these devices will be a chore.

In an article I co-wrote for the FaunOS project project, we argue that making the boot device detachable and largely hardware agnostic is an attractive solution. The idea is that users carry and maintain only a single copy of an operating environment which they can run on pretty much any device of their choosing. That way, the user accumulates and maintains know-how on a single evolving operating environment rather than having to duplicate that effort across multiple machines. Does this makes sense?

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[David Jao]

making the boot device detachable and largely hardware agnostic is an attractive solution. The idea is that users carry and maintain only a single copy of an operating environment which they can run on pretty much any device of their choosing. That way, the user accumulates and maintains know-how on a single evolving operating environment rather than having to duplicate that effort across multiple machines. Does this makes sense?

It makes sense, but the implementation leaves something to be desired. In this day and age, an operating system or operating environment is not viable for everyday use unless it has timely and usable mechanisms for installing, reporting, and keeping track of security updates. The problem is that very few linux distributions provide this kind of infrastructure, and of the ones that do, none of them is small enough to fit on a boot device.

What I want to see is something like FaunOS where security updates are reported and published in a transparent and timely fashion, and where a large block of updates can be applied without filling up the disk or reinstalling the system entirely. Ideally, the maintainers would also commit to supporting old versions for seven years (like Redhat), or even three years (like Ubuntu). If this sound impossible, it probably is -- maintaining a linux distribution is a lot of work, and only the large organizations have the resources to do it.

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, someone else thought of this! I call this pod-computing because you just bring your "computer"(HD actually) with you wherever you go. Then just use terminals/kiosks/portables to plug your flash drive into and you keep all your data with you. No need for internal HDs anymore.

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[gbjbaanb]

an operating system or operating environment is not viable for everyday use unless it has timely and usable mechanisms for installing, reporting, and keeping track of security updates

"Yum update" does that for me. Sure, I don't much care about security updates as I download all the updates regularly. Same with my Windows box, it tells me it wants to update something, so I let it. I don't actually know what it does but it keeps fixing this "critical" and "important" security update all the time.

Now maybe these things can get a bit more security to them, as people who have them really want them as computer devices (like, say, a PVR), not general purpose computers. That means we need it to have quite locked down access to the internet, maybe sandbox the browser too.

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[Anonymous Coward]

You could try Ubuntu set up as a live usb drive with persistence. Not really sure how well it works, I only came across it when looking for a way to install Ubuntu from a USB drive so I didn't test the persistence feature, so I guess the updates may end up taking extra space where they don't on FaunOS. But for distros not fitting on a boot device, you can get 8GB and 16GB usb pendrives now which can easily accommodate a full install of pretty much any Linux distro.

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[colmore]

$sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade

there are gui frontends out there too. synaptic seems popular. personally if i'm not working with graphical data, i don't use a gui, but i'm a coder so my experience sure isn't the norm.

now it might not have that Norton guy's smiling face on it, but it's what you're talking about.

anyway, your combination of agressive ignorance and good grammar makes me think you're being paid to spread old-school IBM style FUD. please go away.

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[Comatose51]

How about just make the devices run a VM and just keep copying the VM? I think VMware ACE or Player would help in this regard. Maybe I misunderstood your intentions.

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got a 4 GB usb flash drive with PClinuxOS on it. I can boot up from my desktop hardware or, when I'm on the road, from my Eee. You could do the same thing with one of those little external hard drives and have lots more room -- if you really need it. It works.

I.

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[joshier]

Yes, it does make sense and that's why Fedoras live USB stick exists: https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[David Jao]

Nice try at a troll, but the entire problem is that FaunOS doesn't include apt-get. I am not aware of any apt-gettable distributions that even install onto a modest sized USB key, let alone one that deals well with being moved from machine to machine on a daily basis.

In addition, merely including apt-get is not the whole story. There needs to be a community in place to report and respond to security issues. There needs to be a commitment towards maintaining older versions, because not everyone enjoys upgrading their OS every year. These requirements alone (and there is nothing ignorant, FUD, or old school about them) rule out everything except Redhat, SuSE, Ubuntu, and possibly Debian. Out of these four, none of them is designed for USB keys, and none of them works anywhere near as well as FaunOS in that setting.

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[David Jao]

Again, "yum update" works wonderfully on Redhat and similar systems, but yum is not included in FaunOS. The entire problem that I'm trying to point out is that none of the USB-key based linux distributions include an easy mechanism for security updates, and certainly none of them make the issue of security updates very much of an organizational priority to the degree of mailing lists, bug reporting, and so on.

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[bartoku]

First off Portable Operating Environments (POE) are an exciting idea, an old promise that no one has ever come through on. But the idea of a detachable boot device does not make much sense, nor is a detachable boot device a necessary part of a POE. Live CDs and now Live USB drives are fun, but always impractical. The diversity of hardware out there makes a Live boot device intrinsically bloated with excessively useless drivers to support every possible piece of hardware it would encounter. If a Live boot device did not carry around all the extra weight it will assuredly be wasting the potential computer power of the hardware it encounters. The thin client is not dead, it looked bad for awhile but the internet resurrected it. While the thin client may live on in web-based email and now in Google apps perhaps, this is more the ugly disfigured inbred version of the thin client. The true successor to the thin client is the remote desktop. I have been carrying my desktop with me everywhere I go for years now. I simply fire up VNC, the JAVA http client is great if I cannot install the native client for the computer I am using. I have no increased concern about the security of my files and data since they always reside on my personal computer and are not directly accessible unless I allow them to be. Better yet I am not carrying my files around encrypted or not where they could get lost or stolen more readily. The remote desktop situation is improving by the minute. Bandwidth is better and internet connections more readily available, hell I can use it on my mobile phone over the cellular network. But there are still limitations. Running the applications locally will most always be more responsive then trying to stream video and key commands over TCP/IP, but again that is always improving. Local key loggers could be a problem as well with a remote desktop connection if you do not trust the client computer. The adoption drivers for POE are still pretty weak, especially crippled by the unnecessary tethering of POE to a USB drive. For users who have both desktop and a notebook, setting up identical apps and OSes both systems is easy, other than licensing issues, than I just need a simple desktop syncing program to make sure any changes on either system show up on the other, plus redundancy of incremental backup between both devices is a nice bonus. Hardware replacement, still brings up the issue of optimization for the platform and the fact that setting up a new OS is generally a onetime or rare occurrence. But the POE does offer a nice way to setup things like the app and desktop icon arrangements. Leave the notebook at home. Carrying nothing at all is even easier. Transferring the POE over the internet or remote desktop for the win. Of course no net access and a huge POE could be an inhibitor. I carry around a USB device with my large files if necessary, but it is a pain when I forget them, much easier to use the internet. Backup. How many times have USB drives failed me? Too many. How many times do I bother making a backup, not often enough. Backup needs to be automated, and that is hard when the POE does not know what hardware it will be encountering or if it is friendly to make a copy there. Lower cost of ownership, versus what? I guess if you are paying software licenses for your twenty computers spread through the house then it would be. But cost is in the hardware and there is no less of it. Development in Hardware benefits all solutions fairly equally. Privacy, never killed the pure thin client, the cost of the network versus the cost of distributed computing power made it not as appealing. The thin client is not popular because the resources needed to transport the data from the âoemainframeâ out weight the cost of duplicating the fraction of the mainframeâ(TM)s power being used locally. In other words it is of course cheaper to have a less powerful computer that out puts the same amount of computing power that the user would be getting from their fraction of the mainframe. In a remote desktop si

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[David Jao]

I've tried the "Ubuntu live usb with persistence" approach, and it still runs into problems. For starters, persistence is implemented as an overlay on top of a (compressed) base OS, which means that any security updates that you install are not compressed. As a consequence, the amount of space available for system files decreases over time as you overwrite more and more system files with updated versions. On small or even moderate size (4GB) drives, you can easily run out of space in this way. Configuring disk compression in the overlay is surely possible, but it is not easy.

The other problem with Ubuntu on a pendrive is memory pressure. If you're going to run your main OS off a removable pendrive (as the ggp post suggests), that drive needs to work with a wide variety of machines. Some of those machines will inevitably have lower amounts of RAM. Running a regular-sized linux distro like the most recent Ubuntu on a low RAM machine is quite limiting, for two reasons. One reason is that running off a live USB usually involves using a RAM drive (for performance, and to save wear on your device). The other reason is that you cannot put swap space on a removable pendrive (it will wear out the flash memory too fast). Memory optimization, in the form of smaller binaries compared to Ubuntu, is one of the key features that makes FaunOS and similar projects usable on diverse machines.

So, the problem in a nutshell is that small footprint linux distributions like FaunOS inevitably lack security infrastructure (by which I mean not only "aptitude upgrade" but also community and institutional commitment towards timely and long-term security updates). Large footprint linux distributions like Ubuntu lack the various optimizations that are really needed for using thumbdrive-based OSes as a replacement for traditional OSes. There is no solution available that offers both long term credible security support and small footprint, at least as far as I know. (I would love to be informed otherwise, if you have something else to suggest.)

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[Anonymous Coward]

"...we argue that making the boot device detachable and largely hardware agnostic is an attractive solution. The idea is that users carry and maintain only a single copy of an operating environment which they can run on pretty much any device of their choosing....Does this makes sense?"

Sure it makes sense, but how would anybody make money from that feature?

I think the future of OS is for people to pay less and less attention to it. In fact it will become indistinguishable from hardware. Open-license OS's will offer a price advantage, but that advantage will shrink to just a few dollars. They will eventually win, but only because they are more customizable and flexible in the post-PC age.

It seems like the "OS" of the future is Java and your web browser.

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[mds820]

You expect me to read that? Give me a />

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[bartoku]

Hehe! I do not comment much sorry, did not realize I could use html tags...

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[rrohbeck]

Sounds a lot like Knoppix on a stick to me.
I have one on my keychain.

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[maglor_83]

a $500 drop in price from say $1500 represents a 33% drop in revenue; a $500 drop in price from $1000, on the other hand, represents a 50% drop in revenue. No it doesn't. The drop in price is going to lead to more sales.

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[crhylove]

I'm still waiting for a Linux distro that can take all of my computers within range of my hotspot and turn them into a beowulf cluster with shared file storage automagically. Thanks in advance.

Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices

[colmore]

Damn Small Linux. Several other small debian-based projects.

Slackware can be made to install on pretty much anything, and those guys are very security concious.

Debian will install on a USB Key of 512 megs or more.

Your list of distros only really includes ones with commercial support. Which is a requirement in many situations, I know.

I'm not familiar with FaunOS which might be the only available option for a very narrow use profile.

Sorry about the insult, your first post did read a bit like "it doesn't have Norton, your boss won't approve it."

But honestly, in my professional experience, security on Linux is not as much of an issue. While the Unix model abounds with very real security risks, most of them are theoretical. If you are not in a position where people are going to be targetting cutting-edge security breaches directly at your organization, any frequently updated distribution piloted by a sysadmin with a few years of real linux server experience is going to be very secure. Your vulnerabilities are going to come from things like a misconfigured Apache or permissions settings on a web app or (the absolutely most likely) inside jobs.

It does sound like you're trying to make one to one feature comparasons between closed source and open source software security. Both worlds have their share of security problems, but they crop up in different places, and the solutions are very different.

You definitely don't have to keep reinstalling your OS though. On any enterprise distribution, keeping your packages updated will be enough, and you don't have to reinstall except for every X years when support finally lapses (and the 'reinstall' could very well just be a more thorough package update). X here is almost always at least 3 years.

Wifi-N?

[chill]

Maybe I missed a memo, but so far all I've found for WiFi-N support on Linux is "legacy mode" where it falls back to B/G. Is there real, MIMO and bonded WiFi-N under Linux for either the Intel or Atheros chipsets?

Re:Wifi-N?

[Trelane]

From what I can tell, it's in the works. Fortunately, it looks like the eeepc 901 has the Intel Link 5150 wireless chipset (http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/02/hands-on-with-atom-based-eee-pc-901/), and the latest info (Nov. 2007) indicates that Intel has been helping make 802.11n changes happen. (http://lwn.net/Articles/258591/) So things are hopeful. HTH.

Eee PC regrettably still lacks a touchscreen

[D4C5CE]

Even though modding projects like JKK's caused 7" touchscreen add-ons to sell out within weeks when the first Eee PC came to market last year, making clear this should be a built-in feature, unfortunately it is missing from the new edition nonetheless, though the review for some reason neither discusses nor deplores its omission.

Anyone coming e.g. from a Psion or Nokia Communicator will know what a difference a touchscreen makes on small devices, and would surely have appreciated it at least as an option.

Re:Eee PC regrettably still lacks a touchscreen

[chrispugh]

The whole point of the Eee is its low cost and low weight. A touch screen would increase both, especially the cost. Asus aren't stupid. If they thought that adding a touch screen would generate more sales than it would cost, it would have a touch screen.

Re:1024x600? Eew....

[WegianWarrior]

Actually, the previous (well, still current in fact) 700-series uses a resolution of 800x480.

It's remarable usable if you take some care to tweak firefox into eating less vertical real estate.

ASUS not committed to Linux

[zaivala]

What bothers me is that ASUS is no longer committed to Linux, and the 901 is the last Eee that will feature Linux as the preferred OS. I'm waiting for other companies to bring out an Atom, and also waiting for Ubuntu to finish their notepad version of 8.04 to run on one of these... which should be very soon.

Re:ASUS not committed to Linux

[zaivala]

Sorry, meant "netbook", not "notepad". Hard to keep up with terminology...

Re:ASUS not committed to Linux

[diamondsw]

Um, the 1000 runs Linux, and on a 40GB SSD too. If anything, their commitment to SSD is waning, evidenced by the 1000(H) with an 80GB hard drive.

Re:ASUS not committed to Linux

[Wonderkid]

a) MS are very effective lobbyists, often paying vendors to install their awful OS so they can then charge users for all those silly upgrades - not to mention the huge aftermarket in security/anti-virus utilities. b) MS aside, people seek solutions - and if a killer Linux/Web app appears, then people will order their EEE PC (or other mini laptop) with their preferred OS. Truth be told, in an era of web apps, it's the browser that really counts. I own a 7" EEE PC (black of course) and it's so useful having all the apps there - and it's SSD makes it robust. All for £1000 less than my MacBook that is far less stable. I'm upgrading to a 901 Linux black soon as poss as I could do with the 9" screen! (Only real limitation after a while with the 7".)

Re:ASUS not committed to Linux

[Billly Gates]

I imagined they were getting alot of support calls wondering why wow and ms word can't run on the 901's.

It shows monopoly abuse by Microsoft owning all the proprietary apis that the software market uses.

I would support a verison of Eee with windowsxp too for that reason but also offer linux. THe market demands win32 software unfortunately

Re:ASUS not committed to Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, the Eee will have lots of competition. Watch what happens when the price goes down to $300, then $200, then $100 -- especially after Microsoft kills XP.

Re:ASUS not committed to Linux

[fwarren]

MS are very effective lobbyists, often paying vendors to install their awful OS so they can then charge users for all those silly upgrades

I think Microsoft's days are numbered at doing this. They are big on sponsoring research into cool new tech. Now I realize that all they were doing was making sure there would be a new stream of expensive laptops and computers to "hide" the price of the OS in. After all $200.00 of Windows is easier to hide on a $1000.00 system than on a $500.00 system.

Market forces want to make the PC a commodity product. They hardware wants to be commodity. Microsoft is fighting the OS being commodity.

Once it is made available, people will want 9 or 10 inch touch screens at 1024x768, 16gig solid state drives, 8 to 12 hour battery life. What ever OS will let that puppy do wireless and browse the internet at $300.00 or less will eventually win the day

A Cartel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel works until someone inside of it realizes that there is a lot of money to be had by being the FIRST company to bail on it and sell at a lower price. It is only a matter of time till it is financially advantageous to skip Microsoft. To produce cheap hardware with just the right mix of features. Such as anything on Microsoft list of "thou shalt not do this and be able to load XP home on a laptop".

Cheapening the masses

[Anonymous Coward]

$2000 is alot more reasonable for a quality product.
When you demand cheap sh*t you drag down the entire industry.
1. The costs of chip design and manufacture are going up, not down.
a) example: reticles are about 10x more expensive than they used to be ($1 million+ versus $100K)
b) chips are getting harder to get working. PCIE, SATA2, HDMI, especially USB, are all serial high speed devices with funny protocols that never ever work quite right. They can be sensitive to jitter, thermals, etc and all take time and $$$ to debug thoroughly. Many of the subfeatures, like PCIE's power saving modes, are chronically broken in all chipsets. And don't get me started on ACPI.
c) fighting power consumption on modern processes (90nm and lower) is insane. We had brief respite at 65nm but not much. The trend is still onward and upward. Yes, really.
d) fab costs are rising with each generation

2. The value of the dollar is half what it was not long ago. $2000 today is really $1000 yesterday.

3. Margins of everyone (save perhaps Intel) are razor-thin as it is.

So stop demanding cheapness. You're not encouraging quality. You're asking hard-working engineers to work more than the 60-80 hours a week they already do and eventually get laid off anyway. The industry _will_ implode if this trend continues.

Re:Cheapening the masses

[wellingj]

A consumer can demand whatever he wants for his money, and it's up to the companies to provide however they see fit, or if they choose to not provide it, then so be it. As long as there is demand for some product, some one will create the supply or there won't be a market. This implosion you are talking about is the same implosion for the typewriter and traditional print media industry. Companies don't need protection and neither do engineers. If you feel like you need the protection, that tells me what kind of company your work at and what kind of engineer you are.

Re:Cheapening the masses

[bgfay]

I totally disagree. I'm not demanding cheapness. Instead I want a machine that does the things I want it to do, does them efficiently, is in a package that works for me, and doesn't cost too much. The Eee is just that machine for me.

I'm not looking for a powerhouse PC.

Now, when this HP laptop on which I'm typing right now dies, I will replace it with a MacBook since that's what works for my wife (the primary user of this machine). So it's not a matter of every computer being cheap (as you put it). But there needs to be a market for machines like the Eee. Why? Because people want it. A $2000 machine is no longer an option for me. It's a crazy amount of money to pay for something on which I'm going to run Firefox and listen to music. For that, I'll stick with the Eee and buy something for around $500.

Re:Cheapening the masses

[maglor_83]

Precisely! That is why I only ever buy $500 network cables.

Re:"A full school day"

[CastrTroy]

How much money do you have, and how spoiled are your kids? From the first link I saw, the MSI Wind is supposed to be priced between $458 to $1072 depending on options. Even at $458, that's quite an expensive device. Not expensive for a portable computer, but expensive none the less. If my kid lost or broke a $500 thing, I would be quite annoyed, and I would not be playing to replace it. Especially considering that a portable computer is nowhere near necessary for kids to have.

Where is the tilde?

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume the keyboard on the review is a US one, which is supposed to have the ` and ~ key on the left of the "1" key. Where is it?

Anyone can go ALT+96 or ALT+126, yes, but ~ being the "home" character on Linux means it's quite used..

Re:Where is the tilde?

[Constantine XVI]

On the 701, it's to the right of Esc and above the 2. From the screens, doesn't look like they've changed the keyboard much.

Re:Where is the tilde?

[miscz]

It's between Esc and F1 keys.

Re:Where is the tilde?

[Idbar]

I guess you didn't RTFA, or that you missed this picture

Re:1024x600? Eew....

[Breakfast Pants]

I reccommend the "Compact Menu" extension.

Re:"A full school day"

[billcopc]

The argument these days is that a cheap portable is not much pricier than a cheap desktop, might as well get the portable. I hate to say it, but I have to agree... most people would be perfectly satisfied with a cheap laptop.

Me, I'm the opposite: I have no use for a laptop whatsoever. Not unless they make a dual-processor, 8gb ram Raid-5 laptop with dual NICs and gaming-class graphics. Overclockable too, while we're at it.

Until then, the closest thing I'll have to a laptop is a 40lb ATX cube with an LCD panel velcroed to the side.

how spoiled are your kids?

[symbolset]

how spoiled are your kids?

Pretty close to ruined, I'd say. They get their first real PC at 2, by 13 they're expected to build their own. Cable broadband. This is pretty standard for our larger family - we're all in IT.

An Xbox with a couple games and controllers runs more than this and there's no way I'd buy them that.

I didn't say I'd be happy about it if their mini notebook was lost or trashed, but it wouldn't be a disaster. The first one that gets broken will just be another toy for me to play with the leftover bits. Motherboard? That looks like it would fit in an RC plane...

Re:how spoiled are your kids?

[colmore]

If they have to pay for even part of their own car when the time comes, you'll more than make up for the toys and be well ahead of a whole lot of middle class families.

They'll also treat the car better.

Re:how spoiled are your kids?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, you don't even need to do that, just buy them a junker for like 300 bucks, dump a bunch of parts and a service manual in front of it, and tell them they've got a car when this thing is running :D

I mean c'mon, no techie should be unable to disassemble and reassemble a car while diagnosing what's wrong with it :D

Except maybe rebuilding/tuning carbuerators, and that should be extra credit :)

Re:how spoiled are your kids?

[Clover_Kicker]

carb? Just how old will the junker be?

Re:how spoiled are your kids?

[fractoid]

If it's got carbs... old enough to be a collector's item if the kid does a good enough restoration job. :)

A ferrari to get to the store

[symbolset]

Impressive specifications there. Y'know, I never knew anybody that thought he needed that much computer that also knew what to do with it when he got it.

Re:A ferrari to get to the store

[Anonymous Coward]

:)

Many simulations wanders through a whole suite of parameters, where any new parameter added multiplies the total time with two. Any doubling of CPU cores may almost half that time.

We may still be talking talking weeks or months for a full analysis even on that puppy machine "billcopc" mentioned. :)

Re:A ferrari to get to the store

[symbolset]

And you're doing this on a laptop because... why again? Because you can?

If you need this kind of processing you're not doing it on a laptop - but you can always open a window to your compute farm on your mini-notebook as long as you're somewhere your cellular broadband has coverage.

Re:A ferrari to get to the store

[billcopc]

Need ? Who cares about need, it's about fun!

It's like those idiotic teenagers and their 400hp Honda Civics that never actually race professionally... except I actually benefit from my toy whenever I do video processing or launch a few dozen VM's for application testing and network simulation.

Or would you rather I add another dozen PCs to my apartment ? My wife would kill me, then she'd go looking for you! :)

Re:A ferrari to get to the store

[symbolset]

except I actually benefit from my toy whenever I do video processing or launch a few dozen VM's for application testing and network simulation.

It's amazing what you can do with a few of these (a hundred bucks at fry's) and some these, a few of these and some creative sheet metal work on one of these.

You'll need a few other bits too. If you get carried away it would look something like this. If you keep your wits nobody would know it from a typical filing cabinet except that instead of storing files it renders frames with 32 cores running at 2.6GHz or launches your precious VMs.

And you can still remote to it with your mini notebook from the beach.

So what will the next version of OLPC look like?

[Dr. Spork]

I'm pretty allured by these things, but I sort of had my heart set on playing with an OLPC machine. I just love the idea, and who knows, I thought I might find something in the software to help develop or improve.

If AMD can't put out a competitor to Atom, I hope Negroponte decides to go with Intel for the next version of OLPC. I also hope that high volumes could get the prices even lower than $600. But... yeah, I'm definitely intrigued.

Seven hours from a wall outlet

[symbolset]

If I'm seven hours distant from a wall outlet what I want is not a mini laptop. What I need there is a fishing pole.

Re:Seven hours from a wall outlet

[mjwx]

If I'm seven hours distant from a wall outlet what I want is not a mini laptop. What I need there is a fishing pole.

Jokes aside, have you ever taken a 7 hour flight with a battery that lasts two hours?

Re:Seven hours from a wall outlet

[symbolset]

Jokes aside, have you ever taken a 7 hour flight with a battery that lasts two hours?

I don't often fly that far and when I do I normally sleep. I understand that's a NY-Boston run these days if you figure in the tarmac wait though.

The specified battery for the device under discussion goes for "up to seven hours". For a longer flight than that I could take spares. Swapping out the battery every seven hours on a flight from LA to Australia would be the least of my worries. With two spare batteries this thing still weighs less than my laptop and I could watch transcoded DVDs while I type my novel for a whole twelve hour flight. That would be much to the delight of my random seatmate who probably wants to read a book and take a nap.

Re:Seven hours from a wall outlet

[mjwx]

Taking an extra battery may seem like a good idea except when you are traveling with only carry on luggage and every inch of space is precious. Business and sales people do this all the time, my only experience was when I did a short tour of Malaysia and Cambodia with only carry on luggage (4 days) whilst leaving the rest of my stuff in Thailand and with 4 changes of clothes, Cash, Documentation, Toiletries, Phone, 15" laptop, Camera and power supplies (with adapters) there was no room for a spare battery (for the most part I used Padlocks to hold the bag together). Granted my longest flight was 1:45 but I know people people regularly fly between Perth and Sydney which is a 4:30 hour flight with everything in their laptop bags.

For the record my longest flight is 7 hours, I take the midnight/morning flights as they are cheaper and I can't sleep on planes (I use my MP3 player, laptop, in flight entertainment and booze not necessarily in that order). During layovers (up to 6 hours) I am yet to find an accessible power point at a LCC (Low Cost Carrier) terminal although KLIA (Kuala Lumpor International Airport) had free Wi-Fi everywhere

Re:Seven hours from a wall outlet

[taskforce]

Or at least one of those little bags of peanuts which they give you on the plane.

Haiku OS

[Anonymous Coward]

i can't wait for those haiku guys to finish their stuff so i can run it on one of those puppy. Those 512M and 4G flash entry model are useless exept if you use haiku/beos on it, then it saturate (meaning you will not even see the difference going larger-stronger).

www.haiku-os.org

Re:Haiku OS

[Anonymous Coward]

I get that you love Haiku, but don't you think it is a bit much saying the 512M RAM 4GB flash entry model is useless with anything else when lots of people have been satisfied using Linux with those specs.

From whence the anon haters come?

[symbolset]

The anonymous naysayers showed up quick in this thread.

Perhaps someone is trying to squish the MID market? Why? Is it because these things don't run Vista well?

Re:From whence the anon haters come?

[yomegaman]

The "haters" are complaining about laptop batteries in general, so if someone is paying them to troll against subnotebooks they're not getting their money's worth. Who's paying you to come here and bash Vista?

Re:From whence the anon haters come?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's paying you to come here and bash Vista?

That I do for free. It's my contribution to public service. We have all got to have hobbies. Some people collect lint.

Re:Quality.

[sethstorm]

The problem is that they are cutting more than the physical corners of the laptop.

Unfortunately doesn't work like that

[Kupfernigk]

Laptop!=cpu+chipset. There is that big screen thingy with its drivers and backlight,RAM and the Flash - which still needs power to write and read. Then there is the analog audio drive, the wireless modules, and probably a load of other stuff. A laptop consists of two main parts that dissipate heat partly through ducted air and partly through convection from the surface. Cutting the CPU power may reduce the fan load quite a lot, but the fan is there mainly to remove heat from a very small, very hot area. A lot of heat gets dissipated from the entire case.

Changing the north and south bridges might increase the battery life by perhaps 20%, depending on the attached peripherals, but it will not double or triple it. In fact, even this may be wrong; you do not know how efficient the chipset is already, and it may not be possible to reduce the power significantly.

Re:"A full school day"

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are saving or paying for college for your kids, I don't think $458 is a lot of money for a computer. In other news, poor people can't afford stuff because they spend $200 a month on cell phone service and cable tv, and wonder why they can't afford gas for their 3 year old car with 2 years left on the note. Ever heard of priorities? Maybe a portable computer isn't necessary, but it isn't expensive unless your idea of supporting children is counting food stamps. Or you have 8 kids, since 8*$458 is a significant amount of median household income. $458 won't even buy cigarettes for a year.

Re:"A full school day"

[Gavagai80]

Actually, most people don't have good enough eyesight for one of these minilaptops to be practical. That's why they're mostly for kids. Show me a $400 laptop with a 19+" LCD and I'll switch to a laptop next time I'm in the market.

Re:1024x600? Eew....

[colmore]

And I'd reccomend dwm.

http://www.suckless.org/wiki/dwm

Re:"A full school day"

[backpackcomputing]

You might want to consider the newest Eee PC, the 1000. It, like the MSI Wind, sports a 10 inch screen. But it also comes with either a 80 GB HDD or a 40 SSD. The 1000 was just released Taiwan a few days ago and hopefully should be stateside within a month or so. For more details checkout http://backpackcomputing.com/

Case in point: Thinkpads

[sethstorm]

While it may not be at the chip level, it's an example that illustrates this clearly.

When you demand cheap sh*t you drag down the entire industry. Definitely agreeing with you on this. The disappearance of Flexview(S-IPS) is only the tip of the iceberg. Quality may be up on some models such as the x300(but not the Reserve Edition), but mainstream models are not so.
The R series and the T series have seen their quality erode greatly(post-sale). The R50p was the last in the R series. The T60p was the last in the T series. The latter has gotten bad enough that people will rip out a 14" T61p mainboard + electronics and put them in place of the T60p just to keep S-IPS.

The question is - where can one buy quality and not end up with a ODM/knockoff?

(sidenote: Now where's that -1, "Blindly ignoring reality" mod for wellingj? There is a need for protection - less junk.)

You don't know much about Lenovo Thinkpads...

[sethstorm]

Cheap is dragging them down in a bad way. Those "efficiencies" are worth nothing if the entire package is unreliable.

IBM built up the design, Lenovo tears it down. Now who else will make the high-quality/high-performance laptops that the T series used to be(S-IPS 4:3 15", firm chassis, maintenance friendly design, long warranty policies, openly available manuals/product roadmaps, and near-infinite parts availability)?

Apple, HP, and Dell don't come close. Asus, MSI, and others similar are not in the same ballpark.

Re:You don't know much about Lenovo Thinkpads...

[mvdwege]

How about Panasonic? Their ToughBook line seems to fit almost all your requirements. Performance is a bit on the low side if you look at the specs, but in actual practice the use of well-tested chipsets and decent design make up for a lot. My little second-hand CF-18, with its ICH4 ATA controller and 5400 RPM Hitachi disk, blows away my work-supplied Dell with Intel SATA and a nominally faster disk. It runs compiz fast and fluid on a 900Mhz PIIIM and Intel 865 GMA, while the Dell, with a Core2 and two generations improvement in its Intel GMA chipset, struggles with the visual effects.

And when I broke off a few keycaps, Panasonic just sent me a form to order new parts, no whining about support, just a price list with decent prices (EUR 25 for a new keyboard), and I got that a full working day after my first enquiry.

I'd mention the generally lower resolutions on the Panasonic LCD screens, but you're coming from IBM/Lenovo, which also runs two tiers below the competition resolution-wise, so I gather that will not be much of a problem.

The 25-50% price premium for a fully-rugged ToughBook is a bit of a turn-off. You could, however, go for one of the 'executive' (semi-rugged) models, which are about as rugged as a ThinkPad, and about as expensive.

Mart

Re:You don't know much about Lenovo Thinkpads...

[sethstorm]

I've looked at Toughbooks, but they seem like that they started in ruggedness where Thinkpads left off. Both serve different audiences with very little overlap.

The Toughbooks sound like they're built more towards ruggedness than speed. Their "business rugged" could only replace the average T/R series. The T*p series and R*p series are performance models that would not be served by any Toughbook line.

The T/R served as thin(or relatively thin for R) workstations you could bring about anywhere. They had somewhat exotic hardware and good build quality. What you could get out of them is high-performance video(display, video card) and long battery life in a thin, non-compromising package.

In the upper T/R series, you could get:
* IPS displays aka Flexview, or 1920x1200 15"(R50p)
* FireGL Mobility/Nvidia Quadro
* Dual Cardbus or Cardbus+ExpressCard
* 4:3 Displays (until recently, up to 15", now only up to 14")

The first one is probably unobtainable anywhere(although it is a difference that is seen best with a model on display). The rest are still present on the Lenovo line in some form (ATI FireGL->Nvidia Quadro, Cardbus->Cardbus+Expresscard). Their delay in being behind in displays is partially due to their reliance on a business audience. Now it's the "I don't know or care about quality" audience slightly leading versus the "quality is worth the cost" audience.

In short, the low end models are about equivalent, performance models are what make them unique(to IBM/Lenovo).

No "ASUS" logo on the case.

[blind biker]

Well, ASUS made good on their announcement to remove the ASUS logo from upcoming models of the Eee PC. This is, apparently, the first step towards spinning off the Eee PC as a separate company.

My opinion? DUMB! ASUS are having the much-envied iPod moment - and they're just throwing it out of the window. The Eee PC is doing/could have done wonders for ASUS' brand name, just as iPod did for Apple's. Too afraid of success, I guess? Nicer/safer to be a mediocrity?

For the record, I am a very satisfied Eee PC 701 user. Toss it into my backpack and go riding my bike to the uni - can't even feel the little critter.

Re:No "ASUS" logo on the case.

[Anonymous Coward]

no, not an ipod moment sadly. you see apple's pretty sure about their bunch of fans bailing them out even with a shitty product. but yu know apple does not release a shitty product, they'd be releasing a shiny lifestyle product, overpriced but definitely picked up by their fanboys. so apple had everything on its side. besides asus eepc is a cheap UMPC, not an expensive one, with no fanboys. they were never going to have the ipod status. you are right in them not being able to monetize the name they garnered with the initial hype. but there were a gazillion clones winged in anticipation of a success, and asus knew that very well. now, the clones look much better than the asus shell - thats their usp. asus is kinda stuck with not being able to generate an ipod moment. an apple they arent.

At $750, so what?

[walterbyrd]

I loved the idea of little linux notebook for $300. But a $750 notebook just does not seem that exciting.

Re:At $750, so what?

[Billly Gates]

My amd turion-x64 dual core laptop with 2 gigs of ram and a 200 gig hd costs the same price. It also has a 15.1 wide inch screen that is not too bad for cheap notebooks. I prefer my wife's viao but for $750 I agree is too much for a subnotebook when I could get a full thing many times faster for cheaper.

display is too small...

[code4fun]

What I really want is a MacBook Air, but that is too expensive. I'm really excited about the Atom, but I would like a larger display. The screen is just too small to be usable for me. What I really like is my Sony VAIO Z505. Now, that's a nice portable machine. It was the most expensive laptop I ever bought. I like the 12.1" display and 1024x768 is the minimum for me. I still use my VAIO today. It runs Fedora Linux just fine, but it is showing its age so I'll need a replacement. I'm thinking either the HP 2133 or the Dell E just because they offer higher resolution than ASUS. There isn't a lot of info about the E, but it is the only one that is offering 12" display so that is probably what I end up with. I just hope they are affordable.

Re:"A full school day"

[PopeRatzo]

Until then, the closest thing I'll have to a laptop is a 40lb ATX cube with an LCD panel velcroed to the side.

So what you're saying is that you don't need a portable computer. That's fine. Now exactly what does that have to do with our discussion of portable machines?

The closest thing I'll have to a laptop is a PDP11 with a card reader velcroed to the side. Does that make my dick bigger than yours?

Nuclear powered laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

And only four to seven hours runtime? What an atomic waste! ;)

does anyone have actual benchmarks for this thing?

[petermgreen]

Just how does the performance of this thing compare to the old celeron based model? is it faster or are they sacrificing even more performance to impvove battery life.

Enviromental impact

[Anonymous Coward]

If its low cost, its not made where you live, its not worth taking care of , so you will probably use quite a few of these.

This kind of sub standard trash is exactlly what we dont need.

We need quality stuff that lasts a lifetime...

Shopping is dooming us all.....

Re:"A full school day"

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit makin shit up. I've spent the majority of my life being poor and being around poor families. I don't know *anyone* that puts cable tv or a cell phone over food/gas/rent, and I know plenty of ppl who don't watch tv because they can't afford cable.

I want to know why this week there's suddenly dozens of ppl on tv, radio, and the net trying to make the claim that poor ppl are poor because they can't/won't manage their money properly. WTF did you guys have a meeting or what?

Re:"A full school day"

[personman21]

$1000? I wonder where they got that figure. Take a look under the specifications. http://www.msimobile.com/DetailPage.aspx?model=Wind_NB_Windows $499 for the 6 cell version, $479 for the 3 cell. The highest priced wind that will be available in the USA at launch (tomorrow) should only be $499.

Why the new look?

[Drenaran]

No one else has said it yet - so I will. Why did Asus change the beautiful look and feel of the 700 Eee which was nice and had a textured surface that wasn't all smooth/shiny/fingerprint'tastic (everything I hate about cheap mass-produced technology)? The new one is... smooth/shiny/fingerprint'tastic. I.E. it looks cheap. Something I would be embarrassed to be seen with - everything the 700's weren't. I agree, the hardware stats have improved across the board, so it is a shame it has been made so ugly.

Then there is the new logo on it. I liked the old one - it was straight forward, simple, made it clear that this thing was functional and useful - not just a toy meant only to look nice but served no real use. The new logo on it looks like they're trying oh so hard to be "fancy" - effectively making it just that much more something that I would never/ever want to bad.

It's a shame because I really do want to buy one, I have been saving up to buy the 700 because I loved it - I only wished it had a nicer screen/touchpad/battery time/storage. Which is everything the 901 has. Except now the nice yet functional look has been replaced with a continuous punch in the crotch. So now I won't buy it, and I won't buy the 700 'cause I'll know what I'm missing. I'm sad now.

Re:Why the new look?

[Drenaran]

want to be seen with* (not "want to bad")

Sorry, I usually am better about stuff like that.

Re:Why the new look?

[Keramos]

want to be seen with* (not "want to bad")
Sorry, I usually am better about stuff like that. That's OK. We all just assumed you made a typo when typing "want to bed".
Perhaps you're not a lover of technology, after all.

Re:Why the new look?

[slider3618]

Me, I'll take ugly but cheap any day. Probably because I'm ugly and cheap.

Re:"A full school day"

[billcopc]

No, I'm pretty sure I've got the biggest dick on /. - dare you to prove me wrong ;)

But seriously, what I'm saying is portables make a lot of sense for the average user because the baseline specs are quite sufficient for just about any common task. If anything, I'm moaning over the lack of a high-end laptop. I've looked at some fancy Sager notebooks a while back, which were huge, heavy and quite powerful, but there isn't enough movement in that segment.

I still don't see why they couldn't have a massive portable frame with at least quad-core support, 8gb ddr2 and four disks... I've seen tiny blade servers with those specs, dial the speed (and heat) down a bit, slap on a hinged LCD and a power brick. I'm not overly concerned about weight or battery life, I really just want a portable powerhouse that I can take to client meetings and plug in for a demo.

Misinformation?

[rkphil]

This contradits a lot of what I've been coming across recently. Apparently the Eee 901 and 1000 will cost much more than their predecessors, as discussed as 'confirmed' by Gizmodo (http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2008/06/_asus_prices_the_eee_pc_out_of_its_own_market_-2.html). Also, I heard that they've stopped flying the Linux banner, which has shifted to Acer with it's Aspire One. At one of the recent computer stores, Microsoft banners were everywhere and almost all the demos were running XP. One banner said "Runs better with Windows", or something along those lines. Can't dig up the reference at the moment but seems like an interesting move.

Re:Misinformation?

[fwarren]

It was actually the trade show Computex.

The MS BASIC nobody used

[Per Abrahamsen]

> Gates only wrote the BASIC interpreter (which almost no one used),

Hey, we are a generation of programmers who were brought up with MS BASIC. It was included in most of the 8-bit home computers, most notably the Commodore 64.

PS: I'm almost certain the GP was sarcastic.

Re:The MS BASIC nobody used

[abirdman]

D'Oh. You're right. I wasn't wearing my sarcasm detector-- whooshed right over my head.

Re:"A full school day"

[JohnBailey]

I still don't see why they couldn't have a massive portable frame with at least quad-core support, 8gb ddr2 and four disks... I've seen tiny blade servers with those specs, dial the speed (and heat) down a bit, slap on a hinged LCD and a power brick. I'm not overly concerned about weight or battery life, I really just want a portable powerhouse that I can take to client meetings and plug in for a demo. Which kind of defeats the whole laptop concept. The idea is to have something that can work independent of a mains electricity supply for a useful amount of time. There are some monster gaming laptops, but they get miserable battery life, and are really only designed for taking to LAN parties and the like. Laptops and higher power are not really possible with current battery tech. In a few years, who knows.

If you really want something with the specs you mention, build one. Simple method would be a tower case with an LCD built into the side. Then you can put every high powered component you want in there. More complex would be something like one of these, but with a PC instead of a console. http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/10/the-ps3-laptop-from-ben-heck-to-engadget-with-love/ Very expensive I would imagine, but it would certainly make an impact at a meeting.

Best new feature is...

[mrgsd]

The return of the infamous turbo button!

Cheap as Chips

[Anonymous Coward]

My niece is on her second laptop for University.
First one got leaked on by one of her flatmates cats, Second one suffered a trip to the floor when she fell asleep with it on the bed 8)
At $1200 a pop for these, I can see the advantage in a $500 laptop for the "kids", even the older ones 8)

Let me be the first to say it:

[LandruBek]

Seven hours ought to be enough for anybody!

Re:1024x600? Eew....

[maglor_83]

Is it possible to rotate the screen? That might work quite well for a lot of websites.

Obviously not if you need to type anything though.

Some people actually use the CPU, ya know

[Moraelin]

Look, no offense, but it's already getting old to hear that computers surely are used only for reading email and maybe watching a DVD. I keep hearing that since the 90's, and it didn't really get more true over time.

Even my old mom is into digital photos as a hobby. And I don't mean just taking the photos, but serious heavy duty filtering and processing too. Yeah, she could go do something else while those finish, but in practice that's not half as much fun. Waiting for a computer to finish something is, funnily enough, a lot more annoying than doing it by hand in 20 times the time. Because it's time when you do nothing but wait.

Plus some laptops are used for work, and some hobbies _are_ the exact same that other people call work. Some are used essentially as a portable desktop, rather than something to keep you amused on a plane or to haul your powerpoint presentations with.

E.g., you can have an application server, an Oracle database, and an IDE on your laptop, and notice the difference, for example. Waiting for, say, WebSphere to spend a quarter of an hour to start up with a lot of EJB's, trust me, you'll start thinking "man, I wish I had a faster machine." Especially when you've had to restart it just because you changed a tiny little detail in the configs and it can't use it without a restart. Twiddling your thumbs while Ant builds the project or while WebSphere deploys it, even more so. And the database alone can need arbitrary amounts of RAM and HDD just to do its job.

And then there are the cases where you need to debug it. Only recently, in version 6.1 IBM finally allegedly managed to be able to debug with the JIT enabled. Previously it would run in interpreted mode. Now that's enough to negate the last decade of Moore's Law in one fell swoop.

Other people use their computer for rendering, CAD, maths, simulations, etc. There are many ways to eat all those CPU cycles and then some.

And then there are the games. Some people use their laptop as, basically, an ultra-portable desktop that can be hauled to a LAN party with a minimum of fuss and effort.

Basically if your use for a computer is just to read emails, well, good for you. But you can stop extrapolating that everyone else doesn't need a fast one.

A spare battery fits in your pocket

[symbolset]

Wear pants with one more pocket. Is that so hard?

They sell pants with so many pockets you could carry on snacks, two spare batteries, a couple of beverages, your cell phone, your wallet and passport, and a few hundred hours of ripped DVD PRoN in high def on SDHC. What more could you want? How hard to I have to sell this?

You're right. You're not the target market. Go back to what you were doing before they invented this thing. Good luck to you.

Re:A spare battery fits in your pocket

[mjwx]

Wear pants with one more pocket. Is that so hard?

Think about the logistics of this for a second, a spare battery is large and in the confined space of an airplane seat the only usable pockets are the two side hip pockets unless you are wearing a large heavy overcoat (unless you are Calista Flockhart you wont fit into a seat with one of those on). Also it pays to have a bit of consideration for the person next to you as air travel can bring an arsehole out of even the most timid people (I am the kind of person who will let someone know in no uncertain terms when they are annoying me).

You're not the target market

On the contrary,

I am the target market, I do a fair bit of traveling and I would like a laptop that is relatively light with a long battery life. Clearly you don't travel that much, pockets are emphatically not a good place to store anything larger than your passport on an airplane. Besides this, in my pockets I would already have, my wallet, Passport, house/car keys, Baggage keys, any paperwork I will need at Immigration, my phone, my phone battery and if I have room my MP3 player so the last thing I need is a spare battery that is twice the size of any of these items digging in to my side for a 6 hour flight (keys are bad enough) and it makes going through the metal detectors even slower and more painful.

I'm sold on the notebook (I'll get one before I go back to SE Asia again if I can afford it), its the spare battery I don't want.

I actually agree with everything you said...

[symbolset]

except the part where these operations have to happen on your mini laptop. Have you not heard of Citrix? Remote Desktop? Cellular modems? It's possible to have all of this happening on your mainframe, the attached supercomputer cluster, and a few thousand desktops and access them all from the laptop referenced in the fine article via VPN tunnel over wireless modem, public wi-fi, hotel room Internet, or any other mode you choose. I actually do this all day.

I know of no reason why I'd need to debug an Oracle database, edit a photo for press, or update my CAD drawing while I was mid-stream fishing, nor while I was boarding a plane. For some things you just have to wade to shore, wait until the flight is airborne, pull up your pants. This laptop will not play consumer games nor will it run Vista well. If you want one that can join your AD domain you have to get the Linux one -- the XP home or Vista Basic one isn't up for that. For everything else, this laptop is fine.

There is no laptop that will impress your gamer friends. The minimum bar to clear there starts at a kilowatt. They're disgusting.

One more time... these things cost five hundred clams. They do all the stuff laptops do, including run business productivity apps. They're cute and they fit on the plane well. They last all day on one charge. They play media. They have USB ports . They have wireless. They support all of the remote desktop technologies you've ever heard of. They come with software that's truly free, and you can install as much more as you want for free via the Applications menu. They play video and audio. Your choice of operating systems are available. Some of them have firewire. FSM preserve us what the heck do you want from a mini laptop for a measly five Benjamins? Sex?

Re:I actually agree with everything you said...

[Moraelin]

One more time... these things cost five hundred clams. They do all the stuff laptops do, including run business productivity apps. They're cute and they fit on the plane well. They last all day on one charge. They play media. They have USB ports . They have wireless. They support all of the remote desktop technologies you've ever heard of. They come with software that's truly free, and you can install as much more as you want for free via the Applications menu. They play video and audio. Your choice of operating systems are available. Some of them have firewire. FSM preserve us what the heck do you want from a mini laptop for a measly five Benjamins? Sex?

I don't want anything in particular from it right now. I also don't see why it can't grow to do more later, in a few Moore cycles. It is very much possible to develop apps or run a database app on a 1024x600 screen, so why would I not wish to eventually be able to do just that eventually?

And if it can't do that atm, well, then maybe I'll get a larger laptop then. Yes, it'll cost more than 5 Benjamins, but, oh well, that's life. That's not to say that there's no market for the Eee, just that some people have different needs and have to use a different tool. Different tools for different jobs, and all that.

In a nutshell, I'm just sick and tired of people ranting about how everyone doesn't and shouldn't need faster computers. People who think that if they just read email and paint powerpoint presentations, or maybe admin a few servers over remote desktop or SSH, then surely noone else could _possibly_ have any use for more. I hate to break this to you, but you're not the yardstick and platinum standard for humanity as a whole. Different people have different jobs, hobbies, tastes and needs. Some need a lot less CPU power than you do, or indeed none at all. Some need a lot more. You can stop pretending that everyone should need exactly as big a computer as you do.

Have you not heard of Citrix? Remote Desktop? Cellular modems? It's possible to have all of this happening on your mainframe, the attached supercomputer cluster, and a few thousand desktops and access them all from the laptop referenced in the fine article via VPN tunnel over wireless modem, public wi-fi, hotel room Internet, or any other mode you choose. I actually do this all day.

On a plane? Most airlines still don't even allow phones. Or do you propose that for a hobby at home I should set up a mainframe in my basement and tunnel into it, instead of having all I need on a laptop? Or that my mom needs to use remote desktop to edit her holiday photos? Surely you're able to see how pointless that would be. _Why_ should I go through all those loops, instead of simply installing the apps I need right there on my computer?

I know of no reason why I'd need to debug an Oracle database, edit a photo for press, or update my CAD drawing while I was mid-stream fishing, nor while I was boarding a plane. For some things you just have to wade to shore, wait until the flight is airborne, pull up your pants

Dude, did you just presume to tell me what I must do with my computer and where? Do you want to pay me a salary to do the things _you_ wish me to do in that time, or what the fuck?

Basically that should already give you ranting folks pause for thought and point the obvious flaw. If you have to introduce restrictions for what I can do and where and when, and generally it becomes what _you_ want to do instead of what _I_ want to do, then the whole "nobody needs a faster computer" charade falls flat on its face. If it needs those changes of plans, then it's not what _I_ need in a computer.

Re:I actually agree with everything you said...

[symbolset]

I also don't see why it can't grow to do more later, in a few Moore cycles.

In a few more "Moore cycles" this will be that and the game will have changed again. What you want will have changed again too. Get over it. This is Progress. By the time That is this wireless broadband will be assumed and you will have forgotten the question.

No, I'm not telling you what to do with your computer and where or when. I'm telling you how to do what you want with your computer right now wherever you want. I really don't think the difference is subtle at all and I don't thing being this helpful is presumptive. If you do, well I'm sorry. Let me recommend a solution.

ROFL

[Moraelin]

In a few more "Moore cycles" this will be that and the game will have changed again.

So then I'll buy a machine which fits my need for _that_ game. And it will probably still be a different one from what all the "OMG, noone needs anything faster" gang think I should get.

What you want will have changed again too.

Very much so. And I'll get a machine and a way of working that fits that, not your funny ideas that everyone should use Cytrix to do their hobbies.

Get over it. This is Progress.

No. This is your strawman.

By the time That is this wireless broadband will be assumed and you will have forgotten the question.

No. Chances are I'll still want to use one computer, not virtual desktops into a _second_ home computer. That idea will still be just as retarded then as it is now.

No, I'm not telling you what to do with your computer and where or when. I'm telling you how to do what you want with your computer right now wherever you want. I really don't think the difference is subtle at all and I don't thing being this helpful is presumptive.

You actually told me when I shouldn't do that, that I should wait until I'm somewhere else, and even claimed that you don't see why anyone would want to do that then.

So, you know, at least show some backbone. Pretending you said something different within the same thread is _lame_.

But, yes, you also proposed some... funny solutions. Guess what? Using a second computer is more expensive, uses up more electricity, has abysmal performance for a lot of applications (the latency kills anything that needs a lot of screen redraw), and depends on a third resource being there when I need it. Compared to just getting a laptop which can do that right there, it's just an incredibly inefficient Rube Goldberg contraption. It's akin to building a mouse trap out of a ventilator, which makes a toy ship sail, then hits a ball which falls on a seesaw, then [...] until the safe falls on the mouse. Instead of just using a plain old mouse trap. Even if it works, what's the point? Same here. Why _should_ I use two computers, some expensive terminal server software, and depend on broadband availability, when just buying a bigger laptop does the same job simpler and cheaper? No, seriously. If that's your being "helpful", I'll take my chances without your help, thank you very much.

If you do, well I'm sorry. Let me recommend a solution.

ROFL. So basically, if I disagree with your view of how I should do my work, I need anxiety treatments.

Dude, get over yourself. No, seriously. You're just another arse-clown pretending you're teh-uber genius, and what would we all do without you enlightening us about how to use our computers. You're not. You're just another in an army of arse-clowns with their head so far up their own arses, that they don't notice the world outside them.

This should be fun

[symbolset]

You actually told me when I shouldn't do that, that I should wait until I'm somewhere else, and even claimed that you don't see why anyone would want to do that then.

If you have plans for or photos of a computer you can use in midstream while you're fishing, while you're boarding an airplane, and while your pants are around your ankles and the images are safe for work, I'd love to see them. I'm sure the rest of the slashdot crowd would find it interesting too. Go ahead and post a link.

Re:"A full school day"

[crhylove]

Um, if his kids are going to college and don't have a computer, they will have a SERIOUS DISADVANTAGE. It's 2008... For higher education a laptop is pretty much necessary at this point. I might even argue it's benefits make it nearly essential in high school. I mean, unless you are planning on learning how to survive in 1950 or something.

Re:1024x600? Eew....

[CronoCloud]

Not with this sort of developer attitude:

Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it's pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions.

Shouldn't even release it to the wild if they think like that.

QPro... that IS old.

[xtracto]

It wasn't exactly me, but my dad used to do killer spreadsheet programs in Quattro Pro for DOS. He is a biologist and developed several models which could be ran in QPro. One of those was a cool biorythm model which could generate a 1 month-graph of your personalized biorythm.

And all that in a simple 386... in DOS, no fancy Windows, at most 4096KB of RAM and maybe 100 MB of HDD.

I have never understood what good is there in being able to run a bazillion programs when you have only one screen and keyboard... and just a pair of eyes.

VNC

[Anonymous Coward]

Just use VNC to your desktop. Aside from that, I usually sync my home directory off my main PC which keeps things the same no matter where I go.

Re:1024x600? Eew....

[colmore]

Why on Earth should *everything* be designed for novices? Not everything is for everyone, and people shouldn't get mad about stuff out there that's designed with people other than themselves in mind.

American Idol doesn't piss me off because it isn't for me. The Discovery Channel pisses me off because it *should* be for me but isn't. It's like that.

They're being a bit tongue in cheek.

Great, but

[Anonymous Coward]

... I'm still waiting for a $200 unit.

Re:"A full school day"

[billcopc]

Simple method would be a tower case with an LCD built into the side Yep, that's what I do (mentioned a few posts earlier). I have a big ATX cube with a carrying handle, and an LCD panel mounted to a ghetto side-panel. A while back I tried using gel batteries for temporary power, but it was too heavy for the limited run-time (~15 mins per 7ah slab). I don't really need it operational on the go, I just plug in when I get there.