The Eee 901: Awesome

The Changelog

Recent Photos

Calendar

Back August '08 Forward
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
          1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31            

Archives

August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
Recent...
Older...

Quicksearch

Weblogs

Cliff Morrow
Dave Barry
Isaac Jones
Kayray
Lambda the Ultimate
Loonquawl
Marty Morrow
Shae Erisson
Terah Goerzen

Friday, August 1. 2008

Posted by John Goerzen

Comments (2)
Trackbacks (0)

1081 hits

The Eee 901: Awesome

An Eee 901 showed up here recently, and I've had a (little) time to play with it.

What an awesome little machine that thing is. The keyboard is better than I expected, and so is the screen.

I got annoyed at the lack of things like Emacs on the default Xandros install, so decided to zap it and install Debian. But first, I wanted to take a backup of it.

I was thinking to myself that this is a Linux environment, but I can't just boot up a Linux rescue thingy to get stuff off it because it's not a regular PC.

Oh wait. It IS a regular PC. It is so small that I wasn't even thinking about it in the right terms. So a little dd, gzip, and nc later I have my backup image.

Debian went on smoothly -- booted from a 16MB image on a USB drive. X, suspend/resume, etc. all worked out of the box. Compiled the wifi driver and it works.

This is, I think, the perfect laptop size. Also the price is good, it's solid... what's not to love?


Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

John,

the EEE PC is certainly cool; one of my friends has one (of the original 701 4G models), and he's very pleased. In fact, it's a huge success over here in Europe, and being the first one, you could call it a trendsetter.

But to your question about "What's not to love?"

It's the non-existent margin IMHO. Let me explain:

I opened up the European (German) ZaReason, a company which existed already in the US, and whose attitude to Open Source I liked very much. Besides that, Earl & Cathy are really nice people, so why not build on their work and experience, and offer the same here - that is what I thought. I'm not a Debian developer, but I tried to support it since years, helping out with manning booths at FOSDEM, giving a talk at LinuxTag, helping at Systems again, stuff like that.

Now, the problem is: offering pre-built Linux machines around here is close to impossible. While Earl & Cathy for instance can offer several different Asus models on their American ZaReason page, I have difficulties with getting even one of them (the S or Z37), and soon my only distributor here will cease to offer them because of Intel's new Centrino2 platform.

With the EEE PC (both the original and the 901), it's even worse. Ok; by now I could get the 701 4G and offer it, with a very low margin. The problem is: end customers can get it cheaper with tax included than I would have to pay net. And again, for businesses, there's a sole distributor offering it, and I don't know for how long.

The 901? You don't even get the 20G (read: the Linux version) here in Europe! Not even as an end consumer (just searched price comparison websites and such, it's all about the 12G with Windows).

Alternatives? The MSI "Wind" for instance? Aye, even in pink - but with Windows only.

So what's not to like is that people like me - who know that without people like you, we wouldn't have a business at all - cannot even offer what we'd like to. The state of Linux laptops in Europe? Still a sad one...

Thanks for your work for Debian,
best,
Wolfgang
#1 Wolfgang Lonien (Homepage) on 2008-08-01 19:41 (Reply)
Sorry to contradict, but I just got my Linux eee 901 today.

They are now starting to show up in the UK. Hopefully they will show up in the rest of europe soon enough.

As for margins - I'm sure everyone's margin on the 901 is tight, it's a pretty cheap machine.
#1.1 David Hicks on 2008-08-06 08:10 (Reply)

Add Comment

HTML-Tags will be converted to Entities.
BBCode format allowed

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA
 
 

Frontpage - Top level

The Changelog

About The Changelog
All Categories
All Tags

Most Popular Tags

  ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,   ,  

Syndicate This Blog

Comments

Arnt Richard Johansen about Dot-Matrix Teletype Simulator Update and Request for Teletype Info
Tue, 26.08.2008 15:46
On a Decwriter IV, the print h ead usually obscures the last couple of characters before th e text. There is a speci [...]


John Goerzen about From Dell, a Uniquely Terrible Experience
Tue, 26.08.2008 11:29
I should have warned you. It only works on wheat.


cliff about Dot-Matrix Teletype Simulator Update and Request for Teletype Info
Tue, 26.08.2008 07:31
John, the comment I left on th e previous post belongs up her e. Sorry.


cliff about From Dell, a Uniquely Terrible Experience
Tue, 26.08.2008 07:28
John, I tried your 'TERM=escpt erm telnet localhost > /dev/lp 0' trick and I still have wee ds in my corn field.


Kevin Mark about I Want Something eBay Doesn't Have
Mon, 25.08.2008 11:23
One of the mailing lists I'm o n was looking for one too[0]. Lord only knows what evil they want it for ;-) When I [...]


vaporland about Dot-Matrix Teletype Simulator Update and Request for Teletype Info
Mon, 25.08.2008 08:46
On a teletype the typebar move s out of the way immediately a fter each character is printer . You can see what you a [...]


william lai about Why Do Alarm Clocks Stink?
Sun, 24.08.2008 23:12
Ah, the AB1 is probably the be st single best piece of machin ery I've ever owned. It has b een reliably waking me u [...]


Bob Proulx about Dot-Matrix Teletype Simulator Update and Request for Teletype Info
Sun, 24.08.2008 20:48
In classic ribbon type printer s the print head would jump up , print, return down, such tha t if typing slowly you c [...]


Blog Administration

Open login screen