With various big flash drives on the market, using high-quality RAM chips and ingenious controller chips to maximise useful life, I can see supply of parts getting a bit tight. And, if the stuff I've seen is correct, the big drives can last a long time, just because of the time needed to write 60+ gigabytes a few hundred thousand times.

But this is a small drive, and if the long-life RAM can't be obtained the system could have an embarrassingly short life.

Twice the flash RAM doubles the potential life, if you can maintain the write-cycle limit.

(And the wear-balancing in the controller is why just getting a big SD card might not help.)

An 8Gb Wifi laptop with slightly bigger screen at 299 Euros.

The alternative for mobile surfing is a 16GB iPod touch at 365 euros with that clever browser. Great for mobile surfing but something with a keyboard and bigger screen is a much better choice for that.

They really should get their act together and get the next version out.

Android is coming too soon. Google's first OS which will be clean and modern and presumably user friendly, and leverage all their online applications, office, surfing, search, calender, gmail, maps, route planning etc. It may initially be for a phone, but how difficult would it be to add a keyboard to that spec?

No wonder Microsoft is desperate to buy Yahoo. Who needs Vista? When you can get a fully integrated set of applications and web on dedicated platforms for a fraction of the price.

I thought that the 8GB eee had already been shipped to other countries and it was just a case of Europe getting stuff last as usual. Does that mean those models will have problems with the 8GB SSD? Oh well, I'm even happier that I bought a 4GB one now.

Also, I would be surprised if here were many technical difficulties in fitting a bigger flash disk. So i wonder if the reason is really that the prices of 8G flash is too high - or indeed if the 4G ones are selling well enough thankyou.

Persoanally, having used mine for a month or so, 4G is reasonable, esp with a 4G plug in card as well. However a bigger screen (in the existing case) really would be cool!

spegru

I like the Eee but I wish it had a slightly bigger display - not just resolution, but the border around the edge could be made thinner to accommodate say an 8 in display (if there is such a thing) but not increase the overall size of the machine.

Still - seems a good value device.

I currently have 4GB model, if you strip of Asus Xandros and chuck on plain Ubuntu, you get a lot more software, faster system and more user space to play in. Additionally you get more control over the filesystem type and usage patterns to try to save wear and tear on it. If you use your own O/S like Uby, you can boot the O/S from the SD card in the slot in the side. Ever so slightly slower, but barely noticieble. 50 quid for a 16GB SD card, slap Uby on it and boot it from that. If it lasts 9-12 months, great, then chuck it away and buy a new card. Even better with the new 32GB SDHC cards, when the price drops.

Sod the 8Gigs, when is *SHE* available ??

Well the same one actually, but who's complaining?