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Asus Budget Ultraportable Notebook Sold Sans OS
EconolineCrush writes "Tired of paying the Windows tax on notebooks? Asus's Eee PC 1201T budget ultraportable comes without a traditional operating system and sells for only $380. The 12-inch system has promising specifications, sporting an Athlon Neo processor, Radeon HD 3200 graphics, Bluetooth, and 802.11n Wi-Fi. It weighs just 3.2lbs with a 6-cell battery and can even handle light gaming duties. However, battery life in Ubuntu is considerably shorter than it is under Windows. Are there any better options for would-be laptop Linux users?"
Didn't they sell for less than that WITH an OS a year ago? Does "netbook" not mean what I think it means (cheap, low power, long battery life, not a desktop replacement)?
It Also Comes Sans Serif.
Yes, I have a large budget for my anus. But is that any of your business? I think not.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
How well does that built in micro OS really work? Seems like for a lot of folks that might be all the "OS" they really need.
Fuck you for even bringing up the fucking iPad.
Netbooks are passe now that we have iPads. PCs are passe now that we have iPads.
Actually creating something is passe now that we have iPad. Go and consume, consume, consume.
It Also Comes Sans Serif.
But it does not come sans deputy.
Hi, you must be new. Welcome to the interweb! When you see underlined text on a "web site" you can "click" on the words to get more information. In this case if you clicked on "comes without a traditional operating system" you would have learned that "Asus ships the Eee PC 1201T with only its ExpressGate instant-on OS". Isn't that neat? Have fun!
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Traditionally, laptops and netbooks come with an operating system of some sort.
Sure. However, "traditional" implies there is some category of "non-traditional" that carries with it some quality that sets it apart.
One that's old, stupid, popular and yet used by millions of people.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
support more than 2GB of RAM? Add any OS and the memory hungry Firefox and I'm already out of available RAM and the netbook is performing like crap.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It means Windows. That's the main headline without saying it outright: this notebook is being sold without Windows.
Any other questions?
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Consumers will finally be able to install what every Linux distro desired in order to write code, inexpensively.
Yes, I'm being sarcastic.
Debian Eee
Gentoo Eee
EasyPeasy
Ubuntu Of course Ubuntu has a Eee flavor of the kernel, I chose to go a full blown Hardy Heron install on my netbook. I was given mine by a friend who was gonna throw it away. I removed the Xandros that was on it and installed Ubuntu and other than a bit of fun hacking around with it, it's quite useless other than using the terminal. Firefox on the web with it is crap, no memory whatsoever so if you have more than 1 tab open it takes forever to do anything. Forget about compiling something while websurfing cause that won't happen. My advice to people thinking about getting these, for the price if you double it, you get a pretty kick ass laptop these days. Go for the laptop, more power, more space, more ram, more CPU, more functional!
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
I don't understand why there are no laptops with a small power supply and (barely..) no battery.
95% of my laptop work is close to a socket and to a wifi internet connection. The trouble is that most laptops i used until now do not have a small power adapter. You still have to lug a considerabele power supply.
Battery is useful, but i could live without, and it would shave a small amount of the price and weight. And with a modularised design it could just be an other option.
Seriously. Why didn't they just dump something like vanilla ubuntu on the laptop? At least it would have something on it. If it's being sold without an OS, presumably it's being sold to someone who knows how to install. Even Asus' Splashtop would have been good.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Expressgate is to traditional OS as Knara is to traditional human being. Expressgate can do simple things, like browse the web, but is incapable of more advanced tasks, similar to how Knara can (apparently) browse the web, but fails at more complex tasks like thinking.
While I don't share your desire for an integrated power supply I can relate to someone who doesn't find current products that fit their needs (I'm the same way with cell phones and other items). I imagine the heat created is a big factor. You know how blisteringly hot those power bricks get? Stick that into the laptop case and all of a sudden you've doubled or tripled your cooling needs.
> My advice to people thinking about getting these, for the price if you double it, you get a pretty kick ass laptop these days. Go for the laptop, more power, more space, more ram, more CPU, more functional!
More missing the point?
+----------------- | What is the question!
If lack of RAM is the problem, then install more RAM. I upgraded my Eee 901 to 2GB of RAM and that brought total cost up to $300. It allows me to use RAM for /tmp which makes it not nearly so sluggish. Firefox is still problematic. I think it does a lot of disk writes and that causes unacceptably long freezes on the Eee so I use Chromium (on Ubuntu.)
I don't do compiles and I certainly would not recommend it for a desktop or laptop replacement, but when I travel it meets my needs for browsing, email, loading podasts on my Sansa and occasional word processing and presentations.
On a traditional operating system, you can run a compiler.
Here in Thailand, or at least in Chiang Mai, most of the computers and laptops I've seen come with FreeDOS preinstalled. If you don't want to install an OS yourself (and don''t prefer Freedos ;) you can just leave the new computer to the shop and pick it up with a OS of your choice a few hours later for a dollar or two extra install fee + price of the OS.
. . . is not having to support an OS. I bet they start losing money as soon as the phone rings.
95% of my laptop work is close to a socket and to a wifi internet connection.
A lot of restaurants provide free Wi-Fi but don't have any customer-accessible power outlets. And not everybody requires the Internet all the time; some laptop users (such as myself) can get work done while commuting on a bus, train, or carpool.
Even Asus' Splashtop would have been good.
From the article:
The impression that I get from this Wikipedia article is that Splashtop and ExpressGate are one and the same.
My Eee PC 1005HA has a very small brick. It's a little wider and taller bigger than a Zone candy bar and about as long. It also has very long battery life. The only problem (as mentioned below) is that it gets really hot (~7 Amps), probably because of the small surface area.
The government can't save you.
When you consider my old computers came with a OS on bios that booteed instatly and dropped you ito a prompt, ExpressGate is quite the definition of the "traditional" OS.
How is that OS different than a "traditional" operating system?
I'd challenge you to make your point, and be direct about it. You're leaving the reader to guess, but even on this site you're wrong to assume that we'll all jump to the same conclusion that you did.
some netbooks had soldered in ram which prohibited simply upgrading it.
The original Dell mini 10 for example.
I just bought a used Thinkpad T42 for $150 and put Ubuntu on it. It has an actual screen, keyboard, wifi and 40gb hard drive. It even has a supported 3d card so I can do the whizzy 3d desktop thing.
There are lots of offloaded business class laptops out there that run Linux great. They're usually very well built and full of Intel parts, which have solid Linux drivers.
You know, other solution would be to install software which makes more efficient use of available resources...
One that hath name thou can not otter
But the fact that this is rarely the case for any Linux-based desktop system tells me why power-saving and other (usually audio) features don't work well.
Its interesting that most of the (few) brands that work well with a distro like Ubuntu off the shelf also tend to be companies that offer certain models with Linux pre-installed. They're not like Dell, who will design a prototype from available components, then go to the component OEMs and say "We're making 2 million of this new system, but some of your chips come with standard features we'd rather leave out or fudge in software... chop that stuff off your chips and drop your price if you want our business".
Of course, the Linux drivers tend to be written for the OEM originals with their standard features intact, not the funky special-request variations made by Dell, Acer, etc. for their budget models.
What this translates into is that Johnny is perplexed as to why Linux has poor "PC compatibility".
Someone (that means us) needs to start insisting on systems that were designed with Linux or preferably a popular landmark distro like Ubuntu in mind. And we need to stop setting our friends and colleagues up for failed experiments when handing them discs expecting they can just run it on their PCs; It reflects badly on our judgment as individuals and on free open source software in general.
Exactly.
Converting a certain number of watts from AC to DC generates a certain amount of heat, and you can only improve the thermal efficiency of the inverter to a certain degree, then it starts getting more expensive very fast.
The smaller they make the power supply that provides a given wattage, the more problems you're going to have cooling it due to a smaller surface from which to radiate the heat.
Making it internal would be a nightmare, because then all that heat would be contained inside the case when you are trying to use it on AC power.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
The article says they used Ubuntu, but doesn't say whether they're using regular desktop Ubuntu or the Netbook remix. They admit that they haven't optimized the kernel: it's entirely possible that battery life could be improved by recompiling the kernel with different flags or some equally esoteric maneuver. Of course normal users shouldn't have to optimize their kernels, but installing the netbook edition shouldn't be that esoteric. The article doesn't say if they did that or not, but if they had, I suspect that they would say so.
I haven't installed plain Ubuntu in a while, so I don't know if it offers to optimize for netbooks at install time. It would be nice if it did that.
KTHXBYE
Instead of big Linux e.g Ubuntu etc, try a smaller Linux such as Puppy, http://www.puppylinux.com/ Approximately 100MB and fast.
Nowadays, with cheap cellular access, you can have plenty good enough internet "while commuting on a bus, train, or carpool"...
One that hath name thou can not otter
I imagine the heat created is a big factor. You know how blisteringly hot those power bricks get? Stick that into the laptop case and all of a sudden you've doubled or tripled your cooling needs.
As someone who frequently gets them so hot that the fail-safes kick in - well:
This.
It unfortunately tries (unsuccessfully) to perform throttling based upon load rather than having discrete under/overclocking modes as the proprietary Catalyst driver does. The result of which is that the GPU always draws excessive amounts of power even when running off the battery. The only real solution at this point is to swap out the open source driver for the ATI proprietary one and then use the "aticonfig" utility to set the power state according to your need at the time. Other non-GPU optimizations can be done as well, however, the power wasting the GPU is doing with the xf86 drivers is an order of magnitude greater.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
Laptops with (barely...) no battery were the norm for many years. Still are, actually.
And the size of that power supply is so because you want "speed", "big screen", etc.
One that hath name thou can not otter
This is actually better than your usual juvenile AC drivel. Oh, for a mod point...
Not bad. You have promise.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I may have something similar, an eee 900a with 1Mb RAM and 4Gb ssd. The problem is that not only is 4Gb too small, but it's a very slow ssd, worse than any hard drive. I spend about $50 to replace it with a much faster 16Gb, and installed Ubuntu NBR. It's now quite reasonable for web surfing. Flash movies are slow, but watching video with mplayer or vlc, even full-screen, is fine. It's great for traveling, as it fits in a small shoe bag and gets 3-4 hours battery life.
I understand that you are being purposefully obtuse to make a point. There is a quality that separates Windows from non-traditional operating systems. Market share. People "traditionally" bought PCs with Windows on them. This doesn't follow that tradition, and thus either has no OS or a non-traditional one.
It looks like you are fishing for some deeper meaning, and it isn't there. The statement is 100% correct, and your feigned confusion could have been mistaken for real the first post, but when you continue to work very hard to be purposefully obtuse when people clarify indicates you are asking questions for rhetorical reasons, and not because you want an answer.
Learn to love Alaska
The E-Machine:
64 Bit Windows Home Premium
15" 1366x768 Screen
Dual core 2.2 GHz Intel CPU
3 GB DDR 2 RAM
250 GB HDD
DVD Burner
Intel 4500M graphics
5-in-1 media card reader
eMachines Black 15.6" eME725-4520 Laptop PC with Intel Pentium Dual Core Processor & Windows 7 Home Premium
The Asus 12 inch Intel-Ion netbook with Win 7 Home Premium is $470 with a one year warranty. ASUS Silver 12.1" Eee PC 1201N-PU17-SL Netbook PC with Intel Atom N330 Processor & Windows 7 Home Premium
One that, in Winston Churchill's immortal words, runs on "flogging, grog and sodomy." ... No, wait. That was the Royal Navy.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Obviously. Just wondering why they even bothered with the pretense, since the euphemism is semantically problematic.
An interesting idea (and so far the most intelligent reply to my question).
Not at all. They use "traditional operating system" to mean something (even though they're very obviously trying to avoid saying "without Windows"). I want to know why they used that term instead of the plainly obvious, obfuscated meaning.
Instant on... It's on a chip, not the drive. It's paired down and loads quick but would be a pain to use all day for all your computing needs.
You can embed many operating systems (including Windows). Does that make them then "non-traditional"?
But you fail to see the point. The phrase "without a traditional operating system" is very different than "without the traditional operating system."
I'm curious as to why they even bothered to say anything but "without Windows" when they clearly meant "without Windows".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
if it doesn't have an OS, how do I denigrate its existence?
signed, /.
Smaller size(volume) does not necessarily mean a smaller surface area.
Halving the thickness of a normal power brick changes the area very little, and can be compensated by making it slightly wider.
cheap cellular access
I happen not to live in such a country. Instead, I live in the United States, where "3G" is how much one would have to spend over the course of four years for mobile broadband service at $60 per month, capped at 5 GB per month. (Right now, my Virgin Mobile phone bill is $80 per year.) Business managers can justify the expense, but I can't, especially when I have to pay another $60 per month for cable Internet at home.
Actually you can get a used ultraportable from the CoreDuo generation for same price.
A bit bigger, a lot more powerful and a real keyboard to boot.
IBM X60 series used or Dell D4XX series = same price as cheap netbook
upgrade to 2Gb + 320Gb HDD = same as expensive netbook but full size kb, screen can go higher than 1024x600 (even 1024x768 is a vast improvement considering how most websites are formatted), decent processor in return for less portability.
I went down this road and am much happier with my X60s than my earlier period with a dell mini 9. You have to optimize the heck out of whatever OS/build you do on netbook (in fact, funnily I found hackintosh build to be 'snappiest') on an atom. However with my X60s (CULV CoreDuo) stock XP, ubuntu, Win7 all fly along nicely. And its still way more portable than say my work 15.4' machine.
http://www1.ca.dell.com/ca/en/home/Laptops/laptop-inspiron-1545/pd.aspx?refid=laptop-inspiron-1545&s=dhs&cs=cadhs1&ref=lthp
Not sure why you wouldn't get an Inspiron 1545. Full XP Driver support, runs Ubuntu or Fedora, or heaven forbid, comes with Windows 7.
4GB ram, 2.2Ghz dual core, and a 320GB drive for $500, and the 15.6" screen is a WHITE LED backlight.
The features and prices of that model have been increasing since January 2009, while the price has been the same or lower. Go Dell!
I'm curious as to why they even bothered to say anything but "without Windows" when they clearly meant "without Windows".
Because netbooks are also sold with Ubuntu or Xandros installed on them. Netbooks are commonly sold with instant-on environments and a general purpose operating system on the hard disk. But hardly ever are desktop computers and laptops sold with nothing on them at all except for an instant-on operating system environment. Hence the use of the term "traditional".
I've tried a few flavors of linux on my netbook, and so far the best performer has been mandriva running xfce4. Great power consumption, firefox runs pretty well (some slowdowns with video frames), but most flash sites run just fine. With NoScript and adblock I can do just about anything I need to. Although to be honest, I find my smartphone encroaching on the featureset I used my netbook fore these days.
Q.E.D.
OK, so EMACS is a 'traditional Operating System"?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
does that mean that it could both suck and blow?
The article linked showed battery life using different models of the Eee. Maybe I'm blind, but I did not see ANY listings of battery life under different OS. I know that UNR 9.10 does not get the battery life of ASUS' remix of Gentoo that came with my Eee 901, but the added functionality is more than worth it. I would assume the bloat of Windows 7 would also eat more juice -- or be handicapped, the way the version of XP that came with some 701 and 901s was. I will be upgrading my Eee soon to UNE 10.04 (Ubuntu changed the name, from Remix to Edition).
But you fail to see the point. The phrase "without a traditional operating system" is very different than "without the traditional operating system."
You seem to have a problem with understanding that I can see your point, understand your logic, and yet still disagree. If I'm in a one-car-family and I get ready to go to the store and someone calls after me "are you taking a bus to the store?" I could answer "No, I'm taking a car." This word usage distinguishes one method of transport from another without regard to whether there is "a" car or "the" car. The same is happening here. For whatever reason, they decided to distinguish between "traditional OS" and "non traditional OS" without regard to the fact that there's really only one "traditional OS." Apparently, you disagree with that choice. And, for whatever reason, you have determined that your opinion as to their construct being incorrect is not an opinion, but fact, such that anyone not agreeing with you must be because they "just don't understand." I understand and disagree. From the other responses, they understand and disagree as well. Your personal opinion on their wording is not fact. Even if technically incorrect, it is not ambiguous to most people. And, you've had it explicitly explained to you and you state you understand what they meant (thus it was not ambiguous to you either) but that you disagreed with their wording.
I'm curious as to why they even bothered to say anything but "without Windows" when they clearly meant "without Windows".
I'm curious whether you realize you are a troll. You posted a question that you obviously thought would gather responses, then disagreed with all those who responded. You didn't ask a question to get an answer, but instead asked a question to get responses and attack those who do respond. That meets the definition of a troll. Perhaps, next time you could just state your opinion, rather than questions that look contrived to convince people that your opinion is a correct fact. "I think their wording is bad." There, was that so hard?
Learn to love Alaska
"traditional operating system" sounds like install media that will run on most motherboards over many generations of hardware.
Think of the new OS efforts linked to hardware like web 2.0 ready TRON idea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_Project
Some may recall the 'TRON was once killed by the former Minister of International Trade and Industry, Hashimoto, because he was at that time under the pressure of United States" part too.
The world has seen efforts to remove the MS tax and the swift MS response over many years.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Yes, if a computer came with an instant-on and read-only version of Windows I would consider that non-traditional.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Which is why the battery life sucks on Ubuntu.
Of course noone will ever read my post, and the misinformed battery life benchmark will stick to this otherwise superb netbook (the Radeon 3200 is millions times superior to Intel IGPs).
In java/C/php not equal is expressed as !=
In Visual basic you might say "not equal to"
In SQL you would use <>
=/= seems to be popular these days. Programming hasn't been a major function of my career for about 5 years so I am a little out of the loop. What language uses =/= to mean not equal?
I have a gateway netbook with an Athlon 64 L110 (1.2GHz Athlon 64) and R690M chipset, and Gateway thoughtfully disabled AMD-V in the BIOS and gave me no option to enable it, so I can't use vmware, virtualbox, et cetera. The bastards suggested I pay for support in order to beg for an updated BIOS. Does this machine come with AMD-V enabled? I hope to replace my BIOS with Coreboot one day, my chipset and processor family are supported...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, you forgot how contraposition works.
a => b
!b => !a
So:
Traditional OS => Run compiler
!Run compiler => !Traditional OS
I have an Asus EEEPC 2G Surf--you really can't get lower end on a netbook than this one. I use it regularly for IRC, Web, and programming projects and while, yes, it is sluggish, the key is to go for a minimal Debian install and work your way up from there. Forget about GNOME or KDE, if you're looking for a desktop experience, then you're looking at the wrong place.
As old and outdated as this computer is, is more than beats the user experience of an iPad since I can comfortably rest it on my lap in the lazyboy and tilt the screen up while using it :)
Actually, I just had to deal with a notebook where the exact opposite was true - Toshiba Satellite A40.
It's an old Celeron laptop. ACPI in Windows XP is broken for it - no fan speed control, and the system takes the temperature from the wrong sensor, so it thinks it's overheating when in reality it's running at 40C.
What's it do when it overheats? Throttles back to about 10% speed. Slower than a 266mhz PII. :P
The irony is of course... it works great with Linux!
Put Xen Desktop on your big honking Linux desktop and remote access it for 10 hours at a time using Citrix Receiver on iPad.
And yet, it still comes with a Windows key. Even Apples don't have Apple keys any more!
> I don't understand why there are no laptops with a small power supply and (barely..) no battery.
I wondered this too: and whenever I pack my eeePC I think about leaving the battery module at home, to save weight. But I always take it anyway, just in case.
I guess one answer is to pickup a cheap, 2nd hand laptop (cheap because the battery is dud). Ripout the power cells to save weight, although it will not make it smaller, just lighter. (Maybe a clever case-modder could turn the space into a pens and earbuds storage !)
how do a laptop running on rechargeable AA's sound?
http://www.norhtec.com/products/gecko/index.html
the charger is right there in the computer.
iirc, they are also working on a computer in a keyboard. Basically a setup much like the C64 or amiga 500.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
What is this "gooey" you speak of? -- posted using links
So Linux kernel is the OS after all just like computer science has proofed.
To run a compiler on Linux, you also need a runtime library and a shell of some sort. In the case of GCC, which is written in C, one most commonly uses glibc as the C runtime library and Bash with Coreutils as the shell, whereas most versions of Linux in embedded systems use the "uClinux" stack: either uClibc or Newlib as the C runtime library and BusyBox as the shell.
And you can run compiler on it even when using the ExpressGate.
Is there a web page about a TCC, GCC, or Clang package to run on Splashtop aka ExpressGate?
But who would tell that to GNU and get killed because there is no such thing as GNU/Linux OS?
GNU/Linux is a combination of Linux, glibc, and Bash with Coreutils, used by the vast majority of desktop and server Linux systems. I have been using the term to mean "Linux that's not for an embedded system".
It can sort out those vacation photos and movies and better accomodate posting flammage on Slashdot.
The iPad will probably be left home. The netbook is still coming along. So is the Archos.
Sometimes a castrated machine is just castrated...
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Of course this ACPI stuff is yesterdays' FUD. Of course like always, the trolls
are stuck in the past and one step behind. It's not the question of ACPI support
that I would focus on with this machine. The more interesting question is whether
or not the GPU has any h264 support and if that applies to Flash as well.
What do you think is going to be overwhelming a netbook CPU anyways?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That computer takes 8 AAs. I have a camera that takes 8 AAs and I've learned the hard way - that many batteries weighs a lot. I use lithiums just because they're lighter.
No, what I want is a TRS 80 Model 100 with 8 gigs of internal flash, legacy ports replaced by 2 or 3 USB ports, and a text-based Linux distro like INX.
An ethernet port would be required; 802.11x would be optional but nice. Since the only thing I used my M100 for was writing, it's incredibly important that this fantasy machine have exactly the wonderful mechanical feel of the old M100. That thing was an unalloyed joy to type on. And since this is a writer's tool, exclusively, I could even forgo INX as long as I have a file system and VIM.
Seriously, if there were someone out there modding old M100s to these specs by ripping out and replacing the guts while maintaining the form factor and wonderful keyboard mechanicals, I'd buy it in a heartbeat for USD$500. I'd consider paying USD$1000.
The guy has a 4 digit id. He can be anything but new to the interweb ;-)
What people *mean* by traditional OS is the OS that dominates the market and it is expected by the average computer user: windows
Of course I don't agree with this definition and I guess that's the case with Knara also, which is the whole point of his the question anyways...
-- dnl
I can't decide if this reply if funny or trollish.
-- dnl
"aren't"
It's not nice to call Jesus stupid. God.
I have been a little surprised to see the price on a computer go up. I blame it mostly on the big computer manufactures getting into the game and not being able to make a profit on a machine that asus/msi/etc are willing to sell for just a few dollars profit. The key is just to ignore the name brand netbook manufactures, I picked up a MSI L1350, running win7 starter this weekend with a cheezy inkjet for $200 (frys). The "no-name" ones regularly go on sale for less than $230.
Contraposition only works with "if and only if", aka <=>. Otherwise I could say "If it's a Toyota, then it's a car. If it's NOT a Toyota, then it's NOT a car".
So I think what you meant was:
Traditional OS <=> Run Compiler
!(Run Compiler) <=> !(Traditional OS)
I'm pretty sure by traditional they don't mean Windows, they mean an OS installed an a hard disk with a normal boot procedure which you can install and run your own software on. This system comes with a instant-on, read-only OS with a limited set of apps that can't be changed by the user.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Looking back at TFA, I guess you are right.
-- dnl
well, it can also use custom lithium packs, tho i am unsure how that will effect the weight. Heck, it maybe able to run of the wall socket without batteries inserted for all i know.
now that TRS you linked to made me think of this:
http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=wxnpgpW4BIy2IJoX
the asus eeekeyboard. But the charger there seems to be the same that they are using for the eeepc series of netbooks. Not the biggest i have seen, but still a brick to carry around.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
No, it doesn't require if and only if. Your logic is wrong.
Toyota => car
!car => !Toyota
You need to flip and negate. You only negated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraposition
p => q
!q => !p
replying to myself, the person with the emacs comment flipped but didn't negate. With the toyota example you negated but didn't flip. Both need to be done to make the logic correct.
I've seen Asus page before. It's intriguing, but it's not portable. There's no display. If there were a way to use that touch screen as a display, it would still be awkwardly sized and the keyboard looks to be anything but the writer's joy that the M100 was.
As an alternative to the M100, there are low-end computers aimed at the educational and writer's market such as the Dana. However, I've had a chance to hold a Dana and some competing models. None of them have the "Damn, this is so perfect!" feel to their keyboard as the M100. That thing was special.
Of course, all this talk of tactile interfaces is really subjective. I learned to type during the switchover from manuals to electrics in my high school typing class. So the "mechanicalness" of the M100 just feels perfect to me in a way that few other devices (a particular model of Panasonic electric typewriter comes to mind) possibly can. No matter how much I long for that sort of device, I doubt I'll ever have one. I should probably get a Dana and see if I can adapt.
What bugs me is that I know such a thing as an updated M100 is possible. There's a market for the Happy Hacking keyboard, right? So how hard would it be to graft an 8-line monochrome LCD display on top of that? If somebody does it, I'll buy it.
iirc, it can act as a display, as the UI shown on it is basically a windows program.
but yes, it may have been more useful if it was a strip across the top, like say the logitech G15:
http://www.logitech.com/en-us/gaming/mice_keyboard_combos/devices/3498
to bad samsung never exported this:
http://www.umpcportal.com/products/Samsung/SPH-P9200
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Anyone want to speculate why NewEgg is hiding the prices for the ones with Windows?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=EEE+1201&x=0&y=0
The polite thing would be to say that it's simply because it's "high". At least they aren't doing the reverse and hiding the price of the no-OS one.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
while I am indeed used recently to the concept of prepaid 4 GB for ~$15 recharge, valid two months
I was in a Best Buy store yesterday, and I checked on this. It turns out that Virgin Mobile offers 1 GB for $40 or 5 GB for $60, valid one month.
Plenty good enough internet "while commuting on a bus, train, or carpool" isn't that painful on the amount of data transferred.
Until your operating system's automatic update manager notices that there is an Internet connection and proceeds to helpfully start background-downloading all 250 MB of the next service pack. Or are the update managers in Windows 7, Mac OS X 10.6, and Ubuntu 10.04 flexible enough that the user can block update downloads over specific network interfaces or specific WLAN SSIDs?