May the trend of cheap laptots continue.

Hello! can you see what we are buying? small efficient and Useful Devices!!

Take your bloat and sink!

As I once said, 'If the job can be done by 64k Why would anyone want more than 64k?'

I own a 701 EEE PC (4G, 7" screen) running Linux, and with the exception of Firefox that now locks up daily as I'm running out of memory, the machine is extremely reliable - way more so than any Mac or PC I have ever owned, so ASUS deserve this success. All said, if Apple could shove OS X into something with the same form factor with an SSD drive, I would happily spend £500 on it. Until then, a black EEE PC 901 is on the radar. (BTW, I am driving my wide screen Philips 200XW 22" monitor from my EEE PC at 1600 x 1200 resolution! Neither devices are supposed to support that and yet are working just fine. Not bad for £350 worth of hardware in total!)

1. Who hasn't got a 1080p telly these days?

2. Who, therefore, needs a monitor, or speakers?

3. Why, therefore, (if they really want to make one cheap,) don't they just completely bin d-type, dvi, audio out, and route the whole thing through an hdmi cable?

Yet, look for a cheap and quiet computer that does this. Where are they? I know I can build one myself, but it's not like they're all over the place is it?

What on earth has this got to do with MS? Nothing is what.

My EeePC survived with its Linux distribution for about 3 days. After that I decided that I could no longer put up with the pain, and I needed to install an OS that was actually useful. One XP install later and all is good.

My point is though, what the we need is more of these type of devices with the flexibility to use them as WE want to use them. Not as someone else thinks we SHOULD want to.

Most HD Ready TVs are rubbish as TVs or computer monitors.

32" @ 1366 x768 is too big for the resolution / reading distance for PC

1366 x768p is rubbish for 1920 x1080i. Or perhaps you only want to play games?

Less than 20% have these sets, a tiny fraction of which are 1080p, so answer is that maybe 98% of people have not got a 1080p TV.

where the hell can I buy my EEPC 901 Linux ? Azerty keyboard if possible, as it is for my parents, but just finding it is a problem....

Thanks for that, I was wondering if I was the only person without one!

Done some more digging since and it appears that exactly 0% of my HD-weilding friends actually have true 1080p HD. One guy who described himself as 'pissed off- this HD thing's crap, innit' turned out to have a 40-or-so" 1024x768 screen! Thought it was a bit odd he'd paid so little for an HDTV

HD really is an overused term!

Oh, and the eeePC rocks. Got one, don't know how I did without it- light, compact, it can be leg mounted (with a small strap and wrist-mounted 3.5" VGA touchscreen monitor- which is just awesome :P) so I can take it to the shops without having to wear a backpack or forgo the use of a computer (sometimes being computerless is just impractical, you know?). And on the original OS even my elderly grandmother and technophone mother were able to use it. And mum has trouble using the on/off button on the TV without instruction...

..and the majority of them are for the Linux version. This along with Dells and business, military, government, education etc Linux adoption leads me to suspect that the 'less than one percent of the market' Linux figures are pure bollocks (and thats not counting servers BTW). When will one of these highly paid statistical analysts give up calculating likelihood of wining the lottery if you take 2 sugars in your tea (or whatever) to work out what the real figure is?

Anyway, rant over... fair play asus, good sales from a deservedly good reputation.

It's got a heck of alot to do with MS

What this shows is that cheap devices sell, even without windows, which many (including me even though I am a linux fan) have thought to be a problem for mass sales.

It also shows that Vista was a mistake, in many ways - but especially including the expensive hardware requirement.

Sorry you didn't give your Linux eee much of a chance, but I bet over 95% of 701s are still running Linux.

When you get bunged up with viruses or the workload of antvirus software, give it another chance. I'm sure you still have the restore CD!

If so, what is your experience?

"1. Who hasn't got a 1080p telly these days?"

Me! :-)

@ Paul R

"My EeePC survived with its Linux distribution for about 3 days. After that I decided that I could no longer put up with the pain, and I needed to install an OS that was actually useful. One XP install later and all is good."

Maybe (and I hope you paid for that XP), but I guess the REAL reason, in contrast with the rationalization, is another. Let me fix that for you: "After that I was so ashamed of not being able to use a system even an undernourished African child could learn that I decided to install an OS that would give me the good old Pavlovian drool response. One XP install later and all is good." There, you're welcome.

And yes the 1% figure is ancient - last I saw it was 5% a few years back.

Roll in a few countries outside of the UK and USA and the adoption figures are higher.

The problem is the 'one eyed windows lad', they find it hard to make the shift, primarily because what they have learned is not that transferable (power cycling). It takes quite a few years to be good on a Linux system, though only an hour or so for the average user to be happily computing along.

The eeepc 1000h has just been released in Australia with xp as the OS, no Linux. Not interested now ASUS.

But have heard that Apple are going to release a device to fit in between the iphone and a macbook and it will be reasonably priced.

So where are the parachute pod babes holding up their portable re-entry navigation units based on the EEEpc ?

@Paul R.

Well! to quote Abraham Lincoln "You can fool some of the people all of the time"

I thought that the idea of the Eee was to be cheap but by putting XP on it you have managed to inflate the price by about 25% to 30%.

Can't handle Linux? My six year old nephew took to it like a duck to water, still I suppose the older you get the more inflexible and resistant to change you become.

spegru is right, after all the money spent in vain to protect your Eee you might like to try Linux again, after all what do you want to do with it, use Photoshop or Autocad?

1. Who hasn't got a 1080p telly these days?

Well, me for one!

As the picture quality of television continues to improve so the quality of things to watch continues to deteriorate.

Lately, I have settled for just watching the ten o'clock news. End of!

My last-century 28" CRT does just fine for that and when it breaks, I will save the cost of a TV licence rather than buy a new HDTV. I expect the cost of both will be about the same.

"One XP install later and all is good."

(shakes head in sorrow...) I'll pray for you, unenlightened one...

Paris, because even she could probably use a modern Linux distro.

With the sentiments expressed by other posters. I don't see why you would install XP on your EEE unless you had specific apps to run. If that is the case, why did you buy a linux laptop? I've yet to see any common task the EEE (with its stock OS) can't do, and do well.

Admittedly I replaced the stock OS on mine with ubuntu, but that's because I'm a fiddler and like changing things for the sake of it. I do intend to go back to the slightly more performant Xandros though.

Novel idea: dinky hardware, low-cost, linux distro, no MS$... quadruple appeal... add in its easy to use, easy to change/modify (other distros and/or say KDE on Xandros), so who cares if XP is chucked on it... it is shipped with linux.

Now maybe that might be the tipping point; past:ship kit with MS$ might consider change to linux... future:ship with linux*, just maybe (or not) change to MS$-lite..."Clapham junction, all change here"?

*or Apple