Asus Eee PC sails into Australia - part 2

Stan Beer
Sunday, 04 November 2007 06:09

Opinion and Analysis

"But just think of the cost of 64GB!" I can hear the fanboys (and Asusexecs) shouting. How on earth could Asus provide all that extra solidstate storage in a package that costs just $499 in Australia?

If I have my facts right (and I'm sure the fanboys will tell me if Ihaven't) the Eee PC currently runs a pre-installed Xandros Linuxdistribution. If so, then Eee PC users are paying a license fee fortheir Linux operating system just as they would if their little notebook wasrunning Windows. Yes, that's right, Xandros costs money - and quite alot!

Here's a suggestion. Why doesn't Asus drop Xandros, install UbuntuGutsy Gibbon, which is free, and with the extra money it saves on theoperating system increase the hardware specs to include 64GB of FlashRAM.

And since they now have all that extra storage, why not drop the card reader and put in a DVD drive.

Oh, the fanboys are screaming, who needs a DVD drive when you have acard reader and memory sticks. Well guys, if I could find movies forsale or rent on cards or sticks (now there's an idea) I would agreewith you. But I can't, so other than movie downloads, which are not asreadily available globally (legally) as DVDs, I need a DVD drivebecause I do like to take a movie or two away with me. Hey, blame themovie studios for the DRM restrictions on the media they use todistribute their products, not me.

Oh again, I copped a bit of criticism for calling the Celeron 900MHz underpowered (I meant compared to real notebook processors). I apologize profusely. I should have said underpowered yet power hungry. Aparently, the average battery life on the Eee PC is only about 3.5 hours.

But hey, what can I expect for just $499? Well, Acer is about torelease a US$348 Windows notebook and Everex, which just released aUS$199 customised Ubuntu desktop, has signalled that it will release asub $300 Ubuntu notebook early in 2008. Yes, I know they'll be full blownnotebooks with 80GB disks instead of handy little sub-notebooks with4GB of Flash storage, but the new price points are evidence thatcomputers are now becoming commodities.

Notebooks - especially Linux notebooks - are fast becoming dirt cheap.So if I'm going to spend nearly $500, I want something that doesn'tcompromise on the two things that should be mandatory in all computerstoday - a decent amount of storage and an optical disk player.