«

bAZZ wrote:
> In article <4742bb0f$>, says...
>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>> In article <>, Craig Shore did
>>> write:
>>>
>>>> There's some really small decent laptops around. The only thing they're
>>>> lacking in is screen size. They don't have DVD drives in them either as
>>>> they're too small, buy you can use USB for that if needed.
>>>> They're not cheap though, probably start around $2500
>>>> Dell & Compaq do them.
>>> That's over four times what I paid for my Eee.
>>
>>
>> The Eee is really quite stunning, but only a forerunner of the systems
>> that are going to become available over the next year or two. There's a
>> lot of room for lower powered devices that don't need to run Vista. Some
>> of them might even have hinges that don't look like they came off a
>> toasted sandwich maker.
>>
>> The simplified interface Asus have developed for the Eee is very smart.
>> A refreshing contrast to just shrinking down a desktop UI onto a small
>> device.
>>
>> The MS based UMPC is going to fail almost completely in this time - they
>> are too expensive, and the hardware requirements for UMPCs running Vista
>> are such that flash memory and SSD aren't feasible at almost any price.
>> MS have painted themselves into a corner in that market; only with XP
>> can they currently maintain a presence in the MID and Eee type of market.
>>
>> While people argue over the merits of desktop CPUs, the real action for
>> the manufacturers is more efficient cpus for mobile devices; the market
>> is vastly bigger and probably easier to support. Most people never
>> install third arty apps on their PDAs, they probably won't install much
>> on the Eee and similar devices either. They don't expect these devices
>> to be upgradeable or to have long lifetimes, either.
>>
>> (Your Eee was about 4 times what I paid for my (new) system, which has
>> the same resolution and is also Linux based.)
>>
>
> Go on put me out of my misery. It is......??????

Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. A bit of a dog compared to the Eee, but then
the Eee won't fit in your pocket, and isn't all that great compared to
some of the subnotebooks, either. Price isn't everything - but the Nokia
was only $175 new. It's great for web browsing in social situations,
also good as a remote control for music around the house, listening to
internet radio, showing photos etc.

>
> Time to givemy kids my old HP jornada and am looking for a replacement.
> Might turn it into a universal remote and divx player or let them have
> it instead of getting new ipod for xmas LOL.

Heh, I've got an ipaq that I only really ever use for watching NASA TV
when there is a space shuttle mission running

In article <4751cbab$>, -=rjh=- did write:

> Price isn't everything ...

But it is a big deal. According to the news reports I can find, Asus are
projecting they'll ship 3.8 million units in the coming year.

Also I've seen a statement that the upcoming Windows version will cost
USD100 more--that's an extra third on the price of the Linux version. That
sort of jump makes the Windows version look much less attractive.

And don't forget that other vendors have noticed the market demand, and are
also jumping on this bandwagon--look at the Everex gPC running gOS, also
Wal-Mart in the US offered a Linux-based desktop unit for USD199 and
promptly sold out. And of course the OLPC, which started this whole thing
off, is actually shipping now.

I think the era of desktop Linux has begun.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In article <4751cbab$>, -=rjh=- did write:
>
>> Price isn't everything ...
>
> But it is a big deal. According to the news reports I can find, Asus are
> projecting they'll ship 3.8 million units in the coming year.

Agreed, but only if other things are equivalent. For example, it is
possible to buy photoframes for $350-$450 and also for $200 and less.
The cheap ones are utter crap cf to the expensive ones, and are so bad
as to be almost not worth having. Price isn't everything, if the
compromises made to achieve it render the device useless.

Asus have done a pretty good job of making the right compromises with
the Eee, but I'd still be happy to pay extra for a similarly configured
slate device (no keyboard and a touchscreen). Such a device would
actually achieve the intent (as far as the user is concerned; not
Microsoft) of Origami and the whole UMPC thing.

That aside, though, of course price is a factor - I was shocked when I
read the article that I commented on here:

http://hindesite.wordpress.com/2007/...t-dont-get-it/

Maybe Samsung thought they'd sell a few million, too. Talk about abject
failure.

>
> Also I've seen a statement that the upcoming Windows version will cost
> USD100 more--that's an extra third on the price of the Linux version. That
> sort of jump makes the Windows version look much less attractive.

I can't figure out why MS hasn't shut this down already, by threatening
Asus' ability to license Windows cheaply for their other PCs, which must
surely outsell the Eee many times over. Maybe MS are betting that the
Eee isn't desirable without Windows, in which case they probably haven't
used one.

>
> And don't forget that other vendors have noticed the market demand, and are
> also jumping on this bandwagon--look at the Everex gPC running gOS, also
> Wal-Mart in the US offered a Linux-based desktop unit for USD199 and
> promptly sold out. And of course the OLPC, which started this whole thing
> off, is actually shipping now.
>
> I think the era of desktop Linux has begun.

Hope not. If Linux focuses on the desktop it will miss the boat, just as
surely as MS will. The real action is on other devices, instead of
arguing about Nvidia vs ATI, people should be looking at (for example)
Metronome vs Apollo, ARM vs VIA, etc.

In article <>, -=rjh=- did write:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> I think the era of desktop Linux has begun.
>
> Hope not. If Linux focuses on the desktop it will miss the boat...

I don't understand what you mean there. "Linux" isn't a single company, with
a "focus" on anything--there are groups developing Linux for use on just
about everything, from the usual desktops and servers, to supercomputers,
embedded devices, loads of things. There is no single "boat" that they're
all liable to miss.

> The real action is on other devices, instead of
> arguing about Nvidia vs ATI, people should be looking at (for example)
> Metronome vs Apollo, ARM vs VIA, etc.

You mean, non-x86 CPUs, in something like an Eee form factor? That could
become a real possibility. once companies become confident that a device
like this can sell sufficiently well without needing the insurance of
Windows compatibility.

That can be the next step, perhaps a couple or so years down the track. For
now I'm quite pleased to see desktop Linux taking off on x86 machines like
this one.

In article <4751cbab$>, says...
> bAZZ wrote:
> > In article <4742bb0f$>, says...
> >> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> >>> In article <>, Craig Shore did
> >>> write:
> >>>
> >>>> There's some really small decent laptops around. The only thing they're
> >>>> lacking in is screen size. They don't have DVD drives in them either as
> >>>> they're too small, buy you can use USB for that if needed.
> >>>> They're not cheap though, probably start around $2500
> >>>> Dell & Compaq do them.
> >>> That's over four times what I paid for my Eee.
> >>
> >>
> >> The Eee is really quite stunning, but only a forerunner of the systems
> >> that are going to become available over the next year or two. There's a
> >> lot of room for lower powered devices that don't need to run Vista. Some
> >> of them might even have hinges that don't look like they came off a
> >> toasted sandwich maker.
> >>
> >> The simplified interface Asus have developed for the Eee is very smart.
> >> A refreshing contrast to just shrinking down a desktop UI onto a small
> >> device.
> >>
> >> The MS based UMPC is going to fail almost completely in this time - they
> >> are too expensive, and the hardware requirements for UMPCs running Vista
> >> are such that flash memory and SSD aren't feasible at almost any price.
> >> MS have painted themselves into a corner in that market; only with XP
> >> can they currently maintain a presence in the MID and Eee type of market.
> >>
> >> While people argue over the merits of desktop CPUs, the real action for
> >> the manufacturers is more efficient cpus for mobile devices; the market
> >> is vastly bigger and probably easier to support. Most people never
> >> install third arty apps on their PDAs, they probably won't install much
> >> on the Eee and similar devices either. They don't expect these devices
> >> to be upgradeable or to have long lifetimes, either.
> >>
> >> (Your Eee was about 4 times what I paid for my (new) system, which has
> >> the same resolution and is also Linux based.)
> >>
> >
> > Go on put me out of my misery. It is......??????
>
> Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. A bit of a dog compared to the Eee, but then
> the Eee won't fit in your pocket, and isn't all that great compared to
> some of the subnotebooks, either. Price isn't everything - but the Nokia
> was only $175 new. It's great for web browsing in social situations,
> also good as a remote control for music around the house, listening to
> internet radio, showing photos etc.
>
> >
> > Time to givemy kids my old HP jornada and am looking for a replacement.
> > Might turn it into a universal remote and divx player or let them have
> > it instead of getting new ipod for xmas LOL.
>
> Heh, I've got an ipaq that I only really ever use for watching NASA TV
> when there is a space shuttle mission running
>

Cheers thanks for that. Found some on Trademe and expansys but are close
to 300 bucks. Hmmmm. Have to think on that for a bit I think.
--

See Ya

bAZZ .. >>
--
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you try me, you'll buy me
If you buy me, you'll use me
If you use me, you'll abuse me
If you abuse me, I'll own you.

The single application that I've been spending most of my time in on this
machine is Firefox. I've previously mentioned that, on my Shuttles, Firefox
would typically run continuously for days, occasionally even for weeks, at
a time, before it started misbehaving and needed to be killed and
restarted.

On the Eee, I don't think I've been able to run Firefox continuously for
more than maybe a couple of days, before the whole machine starts suffering
long pauses. (It's always definitely Firefox that's the problem, because
killing and relaunching that is sufficient to restore things to normal,
without needing to do anything else, let alone reboot the machine.) The
beastie only has a half gig of RAM, but then so does my older Shuttle. The
main difference, I think, is that it has no swap space configured--besides
the big chunk it would take out of the 4GB SSD, I suspect the continual
writes would shorten the life of the drive considerably.

bAZZ wrote:
> In article <4751cbab$>, says...
>> bAZZ wrote:
>>> In article <4742bb0f$>, says...
>>>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>>> In article <>, Craig Shore did
>>>>> write:
>>>>>
>>>>>> There's some really small decent laptops around. The only thing they're
>>>>>> lacking in is screen size. They don't have DVD drives in them either as
>>>>>> they're too small, buy you can use USB for that if needed.
>>>>>> They're not cheap though, probably start around $2500
>>>>>> Dell & Compaq do them.
>>>>> That's over four times what I paid for my Eee.
>>>>
>>>> The Eee is really quite stunning, but only a forerunner of the systems
>>>> that are going to become available over the next year or two. There's a
>>>> lot of room for lower powered devices that don't need to run Vista. Some
>>>> of them might even have hinges that don't look like they came off a
>>>> toasted sandwich maker.
>>>>
>>>> The simplified interface Asus have developed for the Eee is very smart.
>>>> A refreshing contrast to just shrinking down a desktop UI onto a small
>>>> device.
>>>>
>>>> The MS based UMPC is going to fail almost completely in this time - they
>>>> are too expensive, and the hardware requirements for UMPCs running Vista
>>>> are such that flash memory and SSD aren't feasible at almost any price.
>>>> MS have painted themselves into a corner in that market; only with XP
>>>> can they currently maintain a presence in the MID and Eee type of market.
>>>>
>>>> While people argue over the merits of desktop CPUs, the real action for
>>>> the manufacturers is more efficient cpus for mobile devices; the market
>>>> is vastly bigger and probably easier to support. Most people never
>>>> install third arty apps on their PDAs, they probably won't install much
>>>> on the Eee and similar devices either. They don't expect these devices
>>>> to be upgradeable or to have long lifetimes, either.
>>>>
>>>> (Your Eee was about 4 times what I paid for my (new) system, which has
>>>> the same resolution and is also Linux based.)
>>>>
>>> Go on put me out of my misery. It is......??????
>> Nokia 770 Internet Tablet. A bit of a dog compared to the Eee, but then
>> the Eee won't fit in your pocket, and isn't all that great compared to
>> some of the subnotebooks, either. Price isn't everything - but the Nokia
>> was only $175 new. It's great for web browsing in social situations,
>> also good as a remote control for music around the house, listening to
>> internet radio, showing photos etc.
>>
>>> Time to givemy kids my old HP jornada and am looking for a replacement.
>>> Might turn it into a universal remote and divx player or let them have
>>> it instead of getting new ipod for xmas LOL.
>> Heh, I've got an ipaq that I only really ever use for watching NASA TV
>> when there is a space shuttle mission running
>>
>
> Cheers thanks for that. Found some on Trademe and expansys but are close
> to 300 bucks. Hmmmm. Have to think on that for a bit I think.

I don't think the 770 is available at Expansys any more, and besides -
you don't want one. These devices are like having your own roulette
wheel in your pocket, sooner or later when you reboot, the display
driver hardware will fail. A widespread and documented problem. The
answer of course is to never reboot

The N800 looks pretty good and will support the new IT2008 OS, it hasn't
been discontinued and will sell alongside the n810 (which has GPS built in)

(BTW I was talking NZD, the N800 is pretty good value at around NZ$450
ex expansys hongkong).

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In article <>, -=rjh=- did write:
>
>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>
>>> I think the era of desktop Linux has begun.
>> Hope not. If Linux focuses on the desktop it will miss the boat...
>
> I don't understand what you mean there. "Linux" isn't a single company, with
> a "focus" on anything--there are groups developing Linux for use on just
> about everything, from the usual desktops and servers, to supercomputers,
> embedded devices, loads of things. There is no single "boat" that they're
> all liable to miss.

No, but there is a limited development community and these seem to tend
to follow trends and fads; in fact they behave quite irrationally.

Also media coverage and promotion is a big deal, especially for OS
projects with no budgets or sponsors for promotion. Every page in a
magazine about some Linux desktop is a page less likely to be written
about other Linux devices.

Media coverage and retail presentation of devices is already very fickle
and confined to quite a limited range.

The other factor to consider is funding - OS projects are usually funded
by (often large) companies with something to gain by doing this. These
companies get to pick areas of development, and if they can't see a
market for non-desktop devices there won't be any development for them.

Availability of hardware determines OS projects, most software is
written for desktops because that is what currently exists. Very hard to
get developers to spend time on devices that aren't documented or don't
exist in hardware.

So yes, I contend that Linux does tend to have a "focus", it isn't
absolute, but the trend is there. Look how projects like OpenMoko have
very poor representation, and how few similar projects there are.

>
>> The real action is on other devices, instead of
>> arguing about Nvidia vs ATI, people should be looking at (for example)
>> Metronome vs Apollo, ARM vs VIA, etc.
>
> You mean, non-x86 CPUs, in something like an Eee form factor? That could
> become a real possibility. once companies become confident that a device
> like this can sell sufficiently well without needing the insurance of
> Windows compatibility.

I think that's right, but I wasn't thinking about a subnotebook format
at all. Metronome and Apollo are driver hardware for e-ink displays;
E-Ink have AFAIK only recently released a Linux SDK and documentation
for them. What about multimedia players, fileservers, media servers,
backups, home automation, network appliances, PDAs, e-book readers, IM
pads, Chumbies, wearable devices and other devices not yet conceived?
The Eee is a very cautious first step, in that it is Windows compatible.
Other devices can't possibly be.
>
> That can be the next step, perhaps a couple or so years down the track. For
> now I'm quite pleased to see desktop Linux taking off on x86 machines like
> this one.

I don't care either way; while I'd prefer not to use Windows, I don't
care whether others do so or not. In less than 10 years it will be
almost irrelevant, (even now the OS doesn't matter); a few people will
still use desktops (they'll probably still be waiting for Windows 7 SP1
or using Ubuntu Zany Zebra) but most of the world will be using devices
like the XO and derivatives of the Classmate and the Eee, powerful
phones, and multiple dedicated devices like the Cybook, ipod and other
devices yet to be imagined. Hopefully they'll be concentrating on their
data and won't care about the technology; it's incredibly sad that we
are not at that stage already. Still, I guess it took quite a while for
the initial bugs with pen and paper to be worked out but hopefully IT
won't take *that* long.

When I look at our household collection of currently used computing
devices, there are 5 x86 devices (2 desktops (one is a fileserver), a
tablet PC, 2 laptops) but many more non-x86 devices, (2 ARM tablets, a
TT3, an iPaq, one of those Telecom T3G Harrier things (or whatever) a
couple of phones, 2 media players (one of which itself has 2
processors). The balance is already shifting. Only 3 of those devices
run desktop Windows. Linux has a huge advantage here, and will almost
certainly piddle over (for example) any UMPC-style device trying to run
Vista - on any terms; price, performance and interface, as demonstrated
in the subnotebook area by the Eee.

In that context, Linux on the desktop or subnotebook isn't a big deal,
though it is great to see these devices being produced:

"The CE260 is built on VIA Technologies' VIA C7-M processor and VX700
chipset. It supports a 7-inch WVGA touch screen and a 1.8-inch hard disk
drive (HDD) that can be up to 30GB in capacity."

http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20071115PD222.html

In article <475491cd$>, -=rjh=- did write:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> In article <>, -=rjh=- did write:
>>
>>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think the era of desktop Linux has begun.
>>> Hope not. If Linux focuses on the desktop it will miss the boat...
>>
>> I don't understand what you mean there. "Linux" isn't a single company,
>> with a "focus" on anything--there are groups developing Linux for use on
>> just about everything, from the usual desktops and servers, to
>> supercomputers, embedded devices, loads of things. There is no single
>> "boat" that they're all liable to miss.
>
> No, but there is a limited development community and these seem to tend
> to follow trends and fads; in fact they behave quite irrationally.

What a load of nonsense. Have you looked at any studies of Linux development
at all? Go read Jonathan Corbet's analyses of contributors mentioned in
changelogs: you will see a large and very diverse community of
contributors, some of whom are on the payroll of large companies, while
others are not.

> Media coverage and retail presentation of devices is already very fickle
> and confined to quite a limited range.

Who cares. Item: the Eee has not triggered anywhere near the media feeding
frenzy of the iPhone, yet I think it will go on to sell more.

> The other factor to consider is funding - OS projects are usually funded
> by (often large) companies with something to gain by doing this.

Like I said, go look at some actual studies of how Linux and other
open-source development efforts are actually funded. You might learn
something.

It's hit Australia <http://www.itwire.com/content/view/15630/1144/>. The
first shipment sold out, and the second shipment, due Thursday, has also
been completely presold.

And, get this: Microsoft is offering a 30% discount to those who want to put
Windows on their Eee. Da-da-da-dum...