MobileViews Blog

Category: Netbook

Netbook (was the now defunct Ultra Mobile Personal Computer)

Asus Eee PC Prices Dropping on Amazon
Just noticed that prices of two Asus Eee PC Models dropped on Amazon.com. And, these are the ones sold and shipped directly by Amazon, not 3rd party vendors. All Amazon prices quoted below are from information on their site today (Aug. 3) in U.S. dollars.

Asus Eee PC 4G $384.49
ASUS Eee PC 900 16G $399.99

They’ve also got the new Atom powered Eee PCs at list prices but with free shipping.

ASUS Eee PC 901 12G (8.9″ Display, 1.6 GHz Intel ATOM Processor, 1 GB RAM, 12 GB Solid State Drive, XP Home, 6 Cell Battery) $599.99
ASUS Eee PC 901 20G (8.9″ Display, 1.6 GHz Intel ATOM Processor, 1 GB RAM, 20 GB Solid State Drive, Linux, 6 Cell Battery) Fine Ebony $599.99
ASUS Eee PC 1000H 80G (10″ Display, 1.6 GHz Intel ATOM Processor, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard Drive, XP Home, 6 Cell Battery) $649.99

I think Amazon has a typo in the last item listed above. The 1000H does NOT have a hard drive. It is probably the 1000HD model based on the presence of the 80GB hard drive.
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August 3, 2008
ars technica Shows How To Install Ubuntu on an Eee PC
If you have an Eee PC (I’ve got it in my wish list), ars technica has a how-to article you might be interested in reading…

How to: Installing and running Ubuntu on the Eee PC
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July 27, 2008
OLPC 8.1.0 Build 703
I didn’t notice until today that OLPC 8.1.0 Build 703 was released a month ago (June 5).

What’s new in the official-703 (8.1.0) release?

The big end-user change is that closing the lid now suspends the XO and opening resumes operation. I was shocked that it didn’t do this from day 1.

The other big change is that applications (activities in OLPC-speak) are now updated separately from the OLPC Sugar OS itself. This makes sense but is a giant pain in the rear to perform. You need to save this separate download to a USB flash drive, reboot, let the updates install, remove the flash drive, and then reboot again. Yikes, Microsoft Windows is not as annoying as this for most application updates.

The OLPC XO has been a huge disappointment. I should have bought an Asus Eee PC 701 instead last winter. At least my daughter might have found that more interesting and actually used it.
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July 5, 2008
Google Docs Blog Looking for Eee PC/Small Screen Comments
I’m not a regular reader of the Google Docs Blog. So, this is a bit dated (from June 18).

Google Docs on the Eee PC

One of the Google Docs team members bought an Eee PC, tried Google Docs on it, noted a few oddities, and now asks the public: What could we change in Docs to make the experience better on the smaller screen? Let us know by leaving a comment.

One sidenote: Google Docs and many AJAX-y sites don’t work well on the OLPC XO. My recollection is that the cursor disappears when typing in a Google Docs text window. I should fire up the XO and confirm that this is still the case.
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July 3, 2008
Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition
I watched/read the various articles and blog posts about the recently released…

Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition

earlier this week. I’ve been working with various Red Hat related distros myself (mostly CentOS and, to a lesser extent, Fedora Core) for most of this decade. But, I’ve downloaded and tried all of the Ubuntu distros when they come out. I have to say that this MID Edition is the one that most interests me the most of any Ubuntu release so far. The irony is that I don’t have any actual MID devices at all (unless you count the OLPC XO). I wonder if Ubuntu is going to provide some kind of ready-to-install ISO file that could be installed in a virtual machine for testing.
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June 25, 2008
Eee PC 901, 1000, or 1000(H)???
Wasn’t it less than a year ago that we didn’t have any sub-$1000 ultralight notebooks? I bought an OLPC XO because I thought it was a good idea to have one donated somewhere and another for my daughter to play with. Unfortunately, the XO provides little interest for a child who grew up with full-powered Windows PCs and Apple Macs around her. I probably should have bought the original Asus Eee PC model at the time. Ah well. Now, we have a bunch of copycat sub-$1000 mini-notebooks from many vendors. And, here comes Asus again to up the ante with new models powered by the new Atom processor.

Asus Eee PC 901, 1000, and 1000(H) specifications

I’m leaning towards getting the 901. But, I’ll wait for the Dell Inspiron Mini to get a release date before making a decision.
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June 13, 2008