Early Look At ASUS Eee PC 901 With Intel Atom CPU 235
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.
Re:Outdated chipset (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, a lower wattage chipset would give you more, but what exactly is there to worry about?
Anonymous Coward (Score:2, Interesting)
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/
Re:FOSS is working as intended (Score:4, Interesting)
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:
Computerworld [computerworld.com]
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 $$$.
Downward spiral of hardware prices (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [faunos.com] 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?
Wifi-N? (Score:4, Interesting)
ASUS not committed to Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:FOSS is working as intended (Score:5, Interesting)
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:"A full school day" (Score:4, Interesting)
how spoiled are your kids? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Sometimes I feel old... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why a VGA port? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Outdated chipset (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:FOSS is working as intended (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Sometimes I feel old... (Score:3, Interesting)
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:"A full school day" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices (Score:1, Interesting)
I.
Re:Downward spiral of hardware prices (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:FOSS is working as intended (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Outdated chipset (Score:3, Interesting)
Why the new look? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
I actually agree with everything you said... (Score:5, Interesting)
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?