Synchronous
The Personal Interests (and Polemics) of Patrick O'Connor

Heard today about the launch of the Asus eee range of notebooks. I can hear you all yawn collectively, what could be so exciting about yet another notebook launch??

Well this one is quite a bit different. Its offered in sub-notebook sizes ranging from 7″ to 10″ screens. It uses solid state memory (available in 4, 8 and 16 GB flavours) and boasts a 3 hour battery life. Pretty impressive yes, but there’s more….

The system ships with a modified version of Xandros linux optimised for the power of the laptop. The result is a 10 second boot time with a 5 second shut down time on an OS that provides all your basic computer needs (music / video / email / messaging and document editting), and quite speedily too.

But there’s more! For its size it is packed with features, wirelees (802.11G, memory card reader, 3 x USB ports, VGA port, 300Kpixel camera and ethernet). To top it all, thanks to the solid state storage it runs exceedingly quiet.

You might think this is gonna cost you but here is the clincher and hence the seemingly overstated headline. The price ranges from $199 / $250 + depending on disk size and screen size.

This is hugely important well beyond the “wow that’s cool, I’ll probably get one of them” factor. Not only does it bring the availability of pc technology to a far wider audience but it also, I believe, will cause a change in the value that we associate with electronic goods. Consider for a moment the yet to launch Palm Folio. It is expected to be priced at $599, but who would buy a device like that when a more featureful alternative is available for 1/4 the cost. Similarly, many people might stay happy with their plain oldmobile phone instead of dishing out another $600 for the hot gadget of the month the iPhone. Sure its much more stylish but lets face i, the phone interface is never going to replace the tried and trested notebook format until there are some serious advances in technology (such as flexible LCD and a decent text input interface).

To sum it up, the ability to price ratio is way up there, well beyond most (if not all) similar devices in the market. That can only serve to cause a paradigm shift in our expectations of technology to the prices we pay.

For the icing on the cake, this platform could be a killer device to help in advancing the cause of the linux desktop. I can envisage a much broader market base for this class of product over traditional computing devices bringing the traditionally marginalised sectors of the poor, young and old into the fold.  These users will be presented wih a perfectly functional device for their needs, all provided by open source software. If they do expand their needs to require a more powerful device they will see little relevance in paying the Microsoft tax when all they required is offered by Open Source and Free Software. WayHey!! ))))

Judge for yourself…..