John Cooper wrote:
> alan c wrote:
>
>> Being a Guardian reader, I do not often see offerings in The Sun.
>> However, google has triumphed to show me an article, apparently
>> published today:
>> =========================
>> Is this the greatest laptop ever made?
>> http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/fun/gizmo/article495677.ece
>> =========================
>>
>> Not a bad comment at all, and even comes from a windows fan. They are
>> going to be in even more short supply when The Sun readers buy some
>>
> Great article which will appeal to people who wouldn't normally touch
> Linux due to the unknown. I'm sure it will not be long before M$ fire a
> shot to kill this dead but I hope it will be too late to prevent further
> take up. The mini PCs are the opposite end of the Vista market and
> hopefully it will make people realise that they just don't need Vista,
> M$ will then collapse and I'll have a job for life :-)
>
> John.
>
I think you're on the right track there John. Putting bloatware like
Vista or even XP on this type of device is converse to the design
philosophy - it's NOT intended to be a computing panacea as most MS O/S
based PC's purport to be - it's supposed to provide simple access to a
limited number of functions with great portability and reasonable
performance; anyone who buys one should do so on that basis.
As soon as you install 'Doze on it that expectation changes. For
starters, 4Gb (and even 8) is light for an MS O/S. The CPU is
underpowered for Vista, and again, light for XP. Linux however because
of its modular rather than monolithic (should I say megalithic) design
plays well with the original design because the un-needed stuff can be
left out. Those who want a windows based machine will expect it to do
all the things they can do on a more powerful notebook or desktop
machine. The worst that will happen is that the EEE pc's name will be
tarnished as a result because "it has crap performance under Vista/XP"
or "there's not enough memory" etc. Leave it along with the cut down
Xandros it has, and it stands a chance.
I totally disagree with the comment in the article where
it says "a 1GB machine has been mentioned for the future incorporating
Windows Vista. Now that would blow the mainstream laptop market wide
open even if it was £100 or so more costly."
It won't work, The article authors lack understanding of design and
architecture is shown up by this comment, but this kind of thing is what
presents the real danger to this excellent little machine (and even
though Asus seem to be in violation of the GPL, I hope this is just an
oversight).
Cheers
jfk
