Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices) [LWN.net]

Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices)

Posted Jul 16, 2007 21:19 UTC (Mon) by evgeny (guest, #774) [Link]

Sounds too good to be true... Given that similar devices today cost at least a few times more, it's surprising Asus wouldn't want to price it higher.

Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices)

Posted Jul 16, 2007 21:28 UTC (Mon) by tomsi (subscriber, #2306) [Link]

The point is that these computers should be "cheap as chips". This is of course to sell a lot of them.

My first thought when I saw the Foleo was "Neat. But it is way to expensive".

Tom

Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices)

Posted Jul 16, 2007 21:40 UTC (Mon) by evgeny (guest, #774) [Link]

OK, it's $250 already for the base version (http://www.eeeuser.com/). And I bet the final price will be closer to $400. Indeed, if the new Fujitsu costs above $1k (http://www.dynamism.com/u8240/pricing.shtml), this just can't be so cheap... And I even don't talk about Sony UX or OQO2. OK, there is no tablet input and HD, and the design obviously looks cheaper, but still...

Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices)

Posted Jul 17, 2007 16:52 UTC (Tue) by thebluesgnr (guest, #37963) [Link]

<i>OK, it's $250 already for the base version (http://www.eeeuser.com/). And I bet the final price will be closer to $400.</i>

They simply dropped the cheaper versions with 2 and 4GB storage capacity, the base now has 8GB and costs $250. I see no reason why the price won't be what ASUS already said it will be.

Keep in mind the Eee PC is coming real soon now. It was supposed to ship in July, but then moved to August. If they weren't planning to release it so soon I might agree with your point, but as it is...

Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices)

Posted Jul 16, 2007 21:34 UTC (Mon) by ibukanov (subscriber, #3942) [Link]

Well, they definitely put some efforts to customize Linux for the thing. It means that Windows tax is too high for the device so 200 USD may be realistic.

I hope most buyers would avoid Wndows tax either.

Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices)

Posted Jul 17, 2007 0:22 UTC (Tue) by dkite (guest, #4577) [Link]

One thing to remember is Palm already has software that can edit MS
Office files. Spreadsheet, wordprocessing and presentation. It works now
on my Tungsten E. Not MS Office, but it works.

Derek

Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices)

Posted Jul 16, 2007 21:53 UTC (Mon) by bk (guest, #25617) [Link]

The only problem is the 3hr battery life. I'd expect these devices to have at least 5-8hrs per charge to be fully useful (similar to a cellphone or ipod).

Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices)

Posted Jul 17, 2007 0:04 UTC (Tue) by dkite (guest, #4577) [Link]

I would be willing to spend another $2-300 for a full day's worth of
battery life.

If cheap is the goal, $200 is fine. If mobile usefulness is the goal,
then the competition is, what? How much does one have to pay for a laptop
that can be used all day? I don't think the $500 machines can do it.

Derek

Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices)

Posted Jul 17, 2007 5:03 UTC (Tue) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

Even without turning off WiFi, you may find that the Foleo's 5 hours is enough to work all day - most people don't use a computer all day, as they also have meetings, phone calls, lunch, etc, so this could be fine for an 8 hour day. For a longer day, just turn off WiFi when not needed, and turn down screen brightness etc.

Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices)

Posted Jul 17, 2007 5:01 UTC (Tue) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

Palm quotes 5 hours battery life with WiFi on and screen at default brightness (65%), which is significantly better than my heavy Dell D600 laptop with two batteries. The problem (for Palm only) is that Palm isn't lying about battery life the way most manufacturers do, so they look bad...

Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices)

Posted Jul 18, 2007 7:55 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

With Linux's newer powermanagement features.. Things like the new wireless stack (the dscape thing, what is it called now? n802.11?), powertop, tickless kernel, etc etc should help to extend the battery life on the thing.

How about another hour or so?

I am actually kinda excited about this laptop. For 2 reasons.. Firstly, personally I want one. Secondly, every review I've seen online always had people wanting to buy one, or several, just as a toy.

The thing is so cheap it should be popular just as a sort of secondary thing. But cheap, small laptops like this can possibly be a huge foot-in-the-door for Linux-on-the-desktop.

Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices)

Posted Jul 16, 2007 21:43 UTC (Mon) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

I think the article is right - Palm needs to focus on displacing standard laptops for many business trips, and on the user experience of instant on, easy application access, consistently quick operation, no viruses, no spyware, no antivirus, easy automated security updates (could be tricky - they do need mechanism for these) and so on.

Having wasted 6-8 hours on maintenance/fixing of two Windows PCs in the last 2 days, one of them a business laptop, I can really, really appreciate the virtues of an appliance like model for getting work done. Windows is just too complex and unreliable (today it wouldn't even finish booting until I'd removed a redundant firewall component installed by a VPN client... on Saturday it was consuming huge amounts of CPU in Firefox and IE for very simple web pages.... etc). Time to reset and start again with a clean appliance based model.

The one wildcard is whether Palm knows how to market this. Calling it a mobile companion is good in some ways, but a mistake in others - they need to focus more on its independent laptop nature, but focus on it being a 'laptop appliance' that just gets the job done, weighs less, has better battery life, etc. "Laptops for people who don't have time to faff around with Windows" maybe... Another domain for it is as the coffee-table laptop that almost never needs charging and is easily picked up to check something on the web or get email.

One interesting thing is that even though I like Linux a lot, I didn't mention Linux at all in the above. That part of Palm's marketing is exactly right, as the main target for this neither knows or cares that it runs Linux (just as they don't care that their TV is Linux based), though it also needs to ensure the machine is fully hackable and extensible so that the Linux developer community take it up and add features/fixes.

Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices)

Posted Jul 17, 2007 4:59 UTC (Tue) by Cato (subscriber, #7643) [Link]

You can add flash storage as CompactFlash (internal, under battery, replaces the built-in flash) or as an SD card. You can now get 16GB CompactFlash cards for less than $200, and 8GB SD (SDHC) cards, which also work with Treo 680s and other smartphones. So if you need lots of storage, 24 GB today sounds pretty good, larger than many laptop hard disks only a few years ago.

The main expansion issue is that you only get 128 MB RAM, but if the software is light enough (OLPC-like in fact) then it should still remain quite a useful platform.

Slim Linux laptop has potential (LinuxDevices)

Posted Jul 18, 2007 8:12 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

My plan is to build a system image in Qemu on my desktop, then stick it in a cramfs image.

Then I will set up initrd so that when the laptop boots up it will mount the cramfs image with unionfs overlay with a writable directory on the flash.

I've done this before with USB Flash storage, to make a bootable. It's very similar to how Knoppix works, except that instead of storing read-writes to ram it saves it in a directory.

This way you can get a full 2 gigs of software down to about 700-800 megs pretty easily, and still be able to update it and everything.

I will be able to try this out without risk also. :) I can leave the original system intact until I am sure I have it running well.

With the 8 gig model, then I'll have 6-7 or so gigs reserved for my home directory.

Also I have a 80gig laptop drive from my Ibook, which crapped out. (yay apple quality. So far Asus has been better to me then anything Apple ever made). The laptop is still fine so I'll stick it in a USB enclosure. It would be fine for large media files and other things.

So I expect it to work out.

The only thing that irritated me was the stupid single laptop button. I lived with it on my Ibook (running Debian) and I know of 3 or 4 ways around this limitation....