Pea-soup green:
Posted on 01/05/2008 5:51:16 AM PST by twntaipan
Who in the *** is Asustek, and why does Microsoft hate them more than any other company in the industry? Why does Apple, Dell and Palm Computing hate them?
And why does Intel love them?
Taiwan's Asustek -- better known as ASUS -- is one of the most interesting, innovative and fastest-growing companies in technology.
At its core, Asustek makes motherboards -- more than any other company. Asustek motherboards are the heart of Sony's PlayStation 2 consoles, Apple MacBooks, Alienware PCs, and some HP computers.
But that's not why they're hated. The source of ire is a tiny laptop called the ASUS Eee PC. This open, flexible, relatively powerful, and very small laptop is notable for one feature above all: It's price. The Eee PC can be had for as little as $299. (Go here to read the reviews -- they're all positive.)
Let's take a moment to ponder how cheap that is. This full-featured laptop costs $69 less than the 16 GB Apple iPod Touch. It's $100 less than an Amazon Kindle e-book reader. The most expensive configuration for the ASUS Eee PC on Amazon.com is $499.
Even though ASUS isn't a well-known consumer brand, and even though the company just started selling them in late 2007, the company expects to sell up to a half million units by March, and up to 5 million by 2009.
The reason Microsoft hates Asustek couldn't be more obvious. The Eee PC runs Linux (Xandros running KDE) and uses an appealing and innovative tabbed-based user interface developed by Asustek. The device also comes with OpenOffice, a Microsoft Office replacement, and Firefox. The entire system -- hardware, OS, office suite and applications -- costs $30 less than Amazon.com's discounted price for Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate alone. The Asus Eee PC is demonstrating to the world that its success depends on aggressively *avoiding* any Microsoft product.
Apple and Dell hate Asustek because these companies have been planning for quite a while to introduce flash storage-based mini laptops. But by the time they get around to shipping, the ASUS Eee PC will have already gobbled up some of the market. Worse, the ASUS Eee PC is preemptively poisoning the well by applying enormous price pressure on these two companies.
In truth, Apple isn't all that concerned because they'll do what they do, and the masses will respond. But poor Dell. That company's flash-based mini-laptop will probably cost five times as much as the ASUS. It will be 10% better and 500% more expensive than the ASUS Eee PC. Good luck with that, Dell!
Palm, Inc. hates Asustek because the company has made a fool out of them. Palm announced in May its Foleo mini-laptop. The device was slightly bigger than the ASUS Eee PC, but less capable and twice the price. The Foleo focused on connecting to the Internet through Palm's own line of giant cell phones. While many think Palm "killed" the Foleo, they in fact only killed the idea of shipping with a Linux-based OS.
In his blog announcement, Palm's CEO vowed to come back with a Foleo-like device that runs the same proprietary OS that powers Palm's next-generation of cell phones. By the time Palm gets around to shipping something, the market will be saturated with millions of ASUS Eee PCs on the low end, and thousands of Apple and Dell units on the high end.
Meanwhile, Intel loves Asustek. The ASUS Eee PC is powered by -- you guessed it! -- an Intel processor, namely the 900 MHz Intel Celeron-M. More than that, Intel respects Asustek for its engineering prowess. Intel discovered this fact when the company was struggling in the 1990s to fix a range of design flaws in its own 486 motherboard prototypes. Asustek was able to fix it, and in fact already had a fully operational motherboard for the chipset before Intel did. Since then, the companies have been very close.
Now rumors are circulating that a new Intel Merom-based ASUS Eee PC that may ship as early as April will run so efficiently that it won't need a fan. The entire laptop will be solid state -- no moving parts. Intel loves that kind of thing.
There's no question about it -- Asustek is the most hated company in the industry. Microsoft, Apple, Dell and Palm hate Asustek because the company can give us something they can't: A super cheap, flexible, powerful mobile computer. At $299, why would anyone not buy one?
That shouldn't be an issue on these systems, since everything is integrated. You won't be dealing with hardware from multiple vendors, just like the way everything seems to work seamlessly with an Apple. Since the hardware and software all come from one vendor, incompatibilities will be rare. You may still have problems getting certain printers to work, especially any "WinPrinters," which reguire the Windows GDI to actually render the page. But I don't know if those printers still exist any more. It's out of my area of specialty.
Mark
It will run Open Office which is MSOffice compatible and will run MS Office if you buy a more expensive model that has XP on it
Will your son put up with a small keyboard?
On the very bright side this laptop is very cool and happening and portable. Your son will take better care of it if he can show it off to friends
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Pea-soup green:
* Much too small a screen and keyboard.
* CPU and GPU are weak.
* Lots of bloatware installed (very 'Dell-like')
I want my laptop to be very powerful, easy to use/read, and able to run most demanding apps (design apps/games/video editing). I currently have a high-end HP (17"/2gb RAM/Centrino Duo/WinXP/Quadro FX 1500m/DVD burner/120gb hdd . . . ) and it will run even CAD apps and demanding games. If I want a small, super-portable, capability-limited, web-surfing device I'll try an iPhone.
These new mini-laptops fit somewhere between a true "laptop PC" and a handheld "device" - maybe this niche will work for them. More power to them if other consumers want these, but I'll pass.
The new Ubuntu is eerily compatible and good
dl.tv did a quick look at one of these babies and there’s a video here:
http://dl.tv/2007/12/dltv_episode_207_power_inverte_1.php
It’s a chance to see it in motion video rather than stills, and get a better sense of the scale of it.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Ditto re: Motherboards
I get stuff from a PC recycling place, used boards and power supplies, etc.
The ASUS stuff I’ve tried is very solid - I have an old P2L97 dual slot SMP board that I put a matched pair of Klamath core Celerons in. These are processors designed to run at 300 MHZ. But they have no “lock” on them. I’ve overclocked that board to around 525mhz, it’s got 512meg of RAM on it, for a ten year old piece of equipment, that’s pretty dm good.
I just got an ASUS CUR-DLS with dual PIII’s each running at a Gig. That one has 2.5 gig RAM, it’s rock solid.
Over the years, I’ve found their stuff to be very, very good.
By that post I could almost faultlessly predict you were in Seattle area. Not that I am.
1. Why don't companies these days tell what the cpu speed is?
2. I give PowerPoint presentations to various fishing groups,and usually borrow a laptop, install my disk , and connect to a PP projector.
I don't think this machine has a disk slot -so could I somehow put a copy of the the PP presentation in the machine, and run the PP show directly from this computer to the projector? - Tom
You are correct. And I’m curious what made you think that. Not that it’s bad or anything.
Get a USB disk. Or large card.
With only 2GB of (flash) disk and no CD/DVD drive, it seems to fill a niche of “big PDA” more than laptop. Still, quite useful in that niche if most of what you’re using it for is web surfing and taking notes
No moving parts is a matter of perspective. Admittedly, it has no fan, but it has a keyboard, and last time I checked, the keys had to move in order to register keystrokes.
Anyone Microslop hates has to be doing something right.
CPU speeds expressed on MHz/GHz used to be reliable in simpler times. But now complex architectures—including dual, quad and soon octal cores—mean clock speed is only one factor.
A 1.6GHz quad core is going to be much faster than a 1.6GHz Athlon or P4.
Linux of one sort or another will run great on all those machines. Some versions of Linux can be more system heavy (Ubuntu would work, but be slow on the 128mb ram machines—try Xubuntu for a snappier experience or gOS, which is an Ubuntu derivative).
The real question is “When did you try Linux?”. The most recent version of Ubuntu (7.10) got everything on my Asus W3J working (where as when I first bought this notebook in April 06 I had to build the wifi and ethernet drivers from source).
Download and try any new live CD to see how your wifi and printer work...all it costs you is a blank cd.
That’s just what I was thinking - a big PDA. Attach a GPS device and some map software. A nice tool, not much bigger than a book.
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