There's a news story about the old-style Eee that doesn't show THAT picture. Yes, you know the one.

Finally a decent mini-notebook for all purposes.

I was going to buy an ASUS Eee at one point, but when ASUS suddenly began favouring M$ products on their dimunitive machine I decided to go with something else. As it turns out the (much) smaller Nokia N810 fills the need quite nicely thank you.

I wanted a small PC, I got a (really) small PC.

I wanted Linux and I got it.

Now it would be nice if manufacturers would stop catering to Redmond and be honest with us consumers. When only XP is available for your hardware don't try to tell us that there is a shortage of CPUs or other nonsensical BS, do you think we were born yesterday? You had enough to make a whopping pile of XP based machines but nothing else?

I think you're selling what you're being paid to sell... that is to say you're not so much in the business of creating and selling innovative mobile hardware solutions as you are in the business of floating Redmond's bloat until they can replace the last abomination they tried to force-feed to the world.

Paris. Because even she wouldn't swallow what you think we will.

Or alternatively, no one is interested in the linux versions except a few geeks and it isn't worth the SKUs?

Pers

The problem that Asus and, to a lesser degree the other manufacturers have is that they have picked lemons for their distributions. Try as I might, installing software onto the Xandros based 701 is a pain of epic proportions. I've used linux for a number of years and settled on Elive. In comparison Elive and Ubuntu are a breeze to install new software onto, well supported and with their own communities.

Xandros, at least in the form supplied by Asus is a mut, and a badly put together one at that, I've not had this many issues with a distro since a Morphos liveCD of late 2000 vintage. There are no updates, no reliable way of installing new software (some works, a lot doesn't). It's an absolute mockery of a distribution.

And it wouldn't be so bad if what came out of the box could be considered up to date, it's not just old, it's decrepit.

If linux is to drive the netbook market, Manufacturers need to look into getting the communities on board working with them hand in hand, rather then shipping some middle of the road mut of their own design without the resource or experience to maintain a distribution.

Otherwise, look forward to more windows only netbooks and net-tops.

Even if the Linux options do run very marginally better (though no better on battery), the time saved is negated by the time spent fannying around trying to get stuff to work. Assuming that there even is a way.

Bang on all you like about how Linux has alternatives, but there are some glaring holes that even Wine or "the forums" can't sort out.

The so-called "Windows Tax" for having XP on these SCCs runs at around £20. To me, that's a fair price. And the best value for money (for me) is represented by running FOSS (+ a few select others) on XP.

Remember that if your prefered Linux configuration is not available then you can buy the Windows machine, decline to accept MS's T's&C's, install Linux, and claim the cost of the MS licence back.

But, as Lintards are so fond of saying: "You might need to do some searching around in the forums on how to do that." . :-)

I suppose the next series will be start their numbers 7000 and 9000 (depending on screensize) and onwards.

In that case, I will want the HDD-equipped extra-light version (HAL) of the 9incher.

really - not for me, I don't knit my own jumpers and I'm not knitting my own operating system either.

For all its faults xp is hugely superior to the lump of geeky shite that is linux.

Some folks seem to be forgetting the Reg's own advice when these things first came out - they make the most sense when thought of as appliances, not full-fledged laptops. That is, they're not really meant for the user to mess around with but simply to use.

Now, OK, I've tweaked my original 7" 2G Eee quite a lot. And, despite all the assertions above, I've had very few problems. There is (again, despite the assertions above) a very active Eee community. I had no trouble at all installing OOo3 and Opera on my Eee, and they work very nicely, thank you.

The newer machines may have the grunt to make make Windows work (although all the benchmarks show that in the real-world examples it runs about 25% slower) but the Linux versions are still faster. And most users really wouldn't know which OS they're running, which is pretty much the idea.

I was going to write a different comment, but what I see is an audience unfit.

Up yours at all the 'Lintard' and 'geeky shite that is linux' and like-minded comments above.

When was the last time you actually learned to use an operating system? yes learning! or are you taking your 'skills' for granted, gramps? go buy some new geraniums and get out of the way already before we have a road sign made especially for you lot. Oh wait, we did.

If you want to actually have something to say, I suggest you first update your knowledge and skills, then we shall talk.

Guess what I'm using? What? no, I haven't touched a compiler in 12 years, why should I?. What? oh you mean using it? do 15 years of Microsoft products and 12 years of Linux products count then?.

Do I support both? Quite happily!

Holy crap, people. You disappoint me.

These discharge their batteries to nothing in about a week, when switched off. The original 900 suffers and as it's supposed to be something to do with the Celeron CPU I bet these suffer just the same. Asus will "repair" it if you complain, by pointlessly replacing the motherboard. They did this twice with me, before I returned it to the supplier as unfit for purpose.

Sorry - didn't notice it had the Atom processor. I'd have assumed it would be called 90x, where x>0, if it did.

"The original 900 suffers and as it's supposed to be something to do with the Celeron CPU I bet these suffer just the same."

Long discussion of this here: http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=34479.

Atom-based EEE's aren't affected. It has to do with how the Celeron-based systems work.