A mix of MacBook Air and Lenovo's X300 - the perfect portable?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 24 March 2008 21:42

Opinion and Analysis

The Asus Eee PC is an excellent example of a company being able to build a cheap computer that just works – whether you’re running Xandros Linux – or Windows XP.

With Intel working on their Atom processor, as well as Eee competitors from Everex and others promising larger screens and better features, the trend will be towards thin, cheap computers that are still powerful enough for most everyday computing tasks, even basic audio and video editing, without costing thousands of dollars.

Although we’ll always have big, powerful, grunty computers that run at a zillion gigahertz and can do everything, computers are finally morphing into appliances that just work, appliances that my mother doesn’t need to be an expert in to use, so she can surf the web with ease, talk to my sister over webcam and Skype and just get whatever she needs done, quickly and easily.

The Asus Eee PC is a great example of this today, not in 2010.

The MacBook Air, the Lenovo X300 and the HTC Shift are still relatively complicated computers that cost a lot and require you to be conversant with computing.

I could teach my mother how to use an Asus Eee PC very quickly, but a regular computer would need a lot more tuition.

The perfect portable is one that is thin, light and powerful, yet doesn’t cost a monthly home mortgage payment – and comes in two versions – one with a simple Linux OS like the Eee, and the other with Windows, OS X or regular Linux for those who want and prefer the extra power a full OS brings.

The Asus Eee PC is the closest to the goal of delivering the perfect portable, in my eyes, especially when they release upcoming newer versions with a larger screen, larger keyboard and more powerful components (while keeping the cost down).

It’s obvious that Asus – and its competitors in this space – will get there long before Apple, Lenovo or HTC.

Apple, Lenovo, HTC, HP, Dell, Acer and the rest had better start thinking about it, and developing products for that space and price range, or face losing ever bigger chunks of the general consumer market share to the Eee and its brethren over the next couple of years.