Asus 3epc, Have you seen it? Options

[ghostshadow]

This thing looks pretty nice. It's not a palm sized device, but it's pretty close. Basically it's an ultra portable. It's going to be flash based. I think with 4gb of storage at launch, there are rumors of an 8 gig and possibly a 16 gig one will be out too.

It will have 512 megs of ram which is shared with the video, it will also have built in wifi, usb, audio jacks. (i hope a PCMCIA slot) 5200mAh battery. It looks like it's going to be a nice little machine, it will come factory shipped with Xandros, it will also be able to run XP (yeuck) if desired. But, of course XP will cost you an additional 100 dollars.

The unit is priced at 200 USD, which sounds spectacular. With it having linux already embedded, I really think it's going to be a really nice companion, especially for the hackability. I really think it'll be a nice little success, I just hope it'll have a PCMCIA slot for additional wifi cards

Edit: here it is on linux devices.

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9292516116.html

I want one, very cool.

[desertrat]

This thing looks pretty nice. It's not a palm sized device, but it's pretty close.

Jeez, you must've giant palms It's twice as long and twice as wide as the Z.

The unit is priced at 200 USD, which sounds spectacular.

For that price it's a pretty good portable device.

With it having linux already embedded, I really think it's going to be a really nice companion, especially for the hackability.

It will only be cool if you can easily install your own flavour of Linux and hence have access to a full range of apps. If you're stuck with some embedded version of Linux (like eg Qtopia on the Sharp rom) with no easy to compile/port standard linux apps then it will be of marginal interest to me. That's why pdaXrom rocks

[adf]

This thing looks pretty nice. It's not a palm sized device, but it's pretty close.

Jeez, you must've giant palms It's twice as long and twice as wide as the Z.

The unit is priced at 200 USD, which sounds spectacular.

For that price it's a pretty good portable device.

With it having linux already embedded, I really think it's going to be a really nice companion, especially for the hackability.

It will only be cool if you can easily install your own flavour of Linux and hence have access to a full range of apps. If you're stuck with some embedded version of Linux (like eg Qtopia on the Sharp rom) with no easy to compile/port standard linux apps then it will be of marginal interest to me. That's why pdaXrom rocks

I was thinking a pdaXrom port to this and other olpc-alikes would be a good idea, actually.

[B_Lizzard]

Hothardware's preview of the Asus Eee, if you haven't seen it yet.

[Capn_Fish]

Looks good. These mobile devices keep getting better (and, luckily, cheaper).

[ghostshadow]

Wow,

Those pictures were awesome! It looks really sleek I think. SD slot and 4 usb 2.0's. Hmm, it'd be sweet if it could boot from one of those ports. If it can, then installing a different distro might be feasible. I hope!

[Snappy]

Looks good. These mobile devices keep getting better (and, luckily, cheaper).

Yeah, especially the cheaper part! It's like did they just discovered some underground mines that has a huge cache of pre-fabbed casing or cpu wafer? Or did they had an overnight meeting and decided to stop fleecing us like killing babies?

Anyway, I hope consumers don't hold out too long that the manufacturers loose interest in this new segments.

I was reading the psion history article and I could not help but wonder how much of psion's demise was due to its bad pricing.

[desertrat]

Yeah, especially the cheaper part! It's like did they just discovered some underground mines that has a huge cache of pre-fabbed casing or cpu wafer? Or did they had an overnight meeting and decided to stop fleecing us like killing babies?

Maybe Intel are doing an M$ and are giving away the CPUs to Asus - in an attempt to undermine the OLPC? Note that Intel's own "low cost" effort isn't exactly low cost, but they cannot afford to sell it at lower than cost price without facing charges of dumping - they can sidestep that by making a deal with Asus. Am I sounding too much like a conspiracy theorist?

Anyway, I hope consumers don't hold out too long that the manufacturers loose interest in this new segments.

At less than $200 I shouldn't think they have much difficulty shifting units especially to Linux enthusiasts. But it's not going to be released until Autumn and I can't wait

I was reading the psion history article and I could not help but wonder how much of psion's demise was due to its bad pricing.

I believe their pricing was very reasonable considering what you got for the money. Remember it came with a full productivity suite builtin (Word, Sheet, Data etc) which eg on the Palms you had buy 3rd party apps for. The memory and screen was far bigger than any Palm of that vintage. As for the wince machines some may have had better hardware by the time Psion withdrew from the market, but they were and still are crippled by an inferior OS and inferior bundled apps. The bottom line is that for the other machines to begin approaching the productivity that you can get out of a stock Psion you would have to spend a fair bit of money on 3rd party apps - so IMO the Psions are very good value for money. Then there are the things that money can't buy - the excellent keyboard, the stability of the OS, the benefits of an OS specifically designed around the peculiarities of a small device.

[adf]

Yeah--- re the unfair competition in an attempt to killl the olpc and either addict or exclude the poor-- I'll buy an olpc for more, and wit for it, too---if they really intend to sell them to individuals

[zodttd]

I heard it will be 200 pounds. Which is closer to the $350 range.

[Snappy]

Yeah, especially the cheaper part! It's like did they just discovered some underground mines that has a huge cache of pre-fabbed casing or cpu wafer? Or did they had an overnight meeting and decided to stop fleecing us like killing babies?

Maybe Intel are doing an M$ and are giving away the CPUs to Asus - in an attempt to undermine the OLPC? Note that Intel's own "low cost" effort isn't exactly low cost, but they cannot afford to sell it at lower than cost price without facing charges of dumping - they can sidestep that by making a deal with Asus. Am I sounding too much like a conspiracy theorist?

It is possible. They could do it to push for their Intel platform, like by subsidizing the per chip cost with marketing or business development funds. The wonders of accounting!

Anyway, I hope consumers don't hold out too long that the manufacturers loose interest in this new segments.

At less than $200 I shouldn't think they have much difficulty shifting units especially to Linux enthusiasts. But it's not going to be released until Autumn and I can't wait

Aye ... that's why the Kohjinsha is such a winner ... ... it is delivered. And although it still misses the $500 price and all day computing promise, I would say that it is one of the closes hit compared to other UMPC devices.

The one thing I hope manufacturers realise is that when they open up their platform, whether through open sourcing their whole OS, or at least provide a comprehensive SDK, then users and hobbists alike can develop apps and grow their platform. Think Palm & Psion.

I was reading the psion history article and I could not help but wonder how much of psion's demise was due to its bad pricing.

I believe their pricing was very reasonable considering what you got for the money. Remember it came with a full productivity suite builtin (Word, Sheet, Data etc) which eg on the Palms you had buy 3rd party apps for. The memory and screen was far bigger than any Palm of that vintage. As for the wince machines some may have had better hardware by the time Psion withdrew from the market, but they were and still are crippled by an inferior OS and inferior bundled apps. The bottom line is that for the other machines to begin approaching the productivity that you can get out of a stock Psion you would have to spend a fair bit of money on 3rd party apps - so IMO the Psions are very good value for money. Then there are the things that money can't buy - the excellent keyboard, the stability of the OS, the benefits of an OS specifically designed around the peculiarities of a small device.

Guess you are right, I should be honest with myself. When the psion was out, I was still a broke student and the retailers and businesses here do not necessarily bring in good stuffs in those days. They only cared about short term matters like paying the bills and not planning long term strategies such as working on partnerships with OEMs, though I should confess that OEMs may not be interested with small frys as well ...

Anyway ... yes, Psions are quite useful productivity tools, matter of fact, as I mentioned in another thread, I've got the psion emulator installed so that I can use the Agenda program amongst others.

Let's see how this pan out. Hopefully, these companies would open source their contribution so that their implementation is not stuck in one device. Then again ... ...

[Snappy]

Yeah--- re the unfair competition in an attempt to killl the olpc and either addict or exclude the poor-- I'll buy an olpc for more, and wit for it, too---if they really intend to sell them to individuals

Well, Intel is a business entity. But still, sometimes it is quite a sad human state to see how they will criticise a project or vision just on the merit (or demerit) that it is proposed by a business competitor. *sic*

Reminds me of politicians.

I wonder if there will ever be the day when businesses (or politicians) will give due praise to their competitor's work and not just criticise based on banner and slogan.

ok, getting too complicated for this thread ...

[adf]

The way I see it, though is not that Intel/MS want to rplace the OLPC with something better and cheaper. They want to squeeze it out, even if it means short term losses to them. Afterwhich, they will attmpt as near a perfect monopoly as possible and abuse it to the extent they can. We really shouldn't tolerate this sort of thing-it was obviously immoral at the end of the 19th century. Why should we excuse it as "just business" at the beginning of th 21st? Are trying to model ourselves on the more unfortunate extras from "The Sporanos?." Businesses can be held accountable to standards of decent and reasonable behavior if we want them to be. This is why, for example, we have governments ( Hobbes figuired out this bit 300 years ago).

[desertrat]

But the problem is that governments (members of government to be precise) are funded by businesses to look after their interests. You have to break that vicious circle.

[adf]

Yeah... we do have a problem along those lines theae days