Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Changing the game
The Asus Eee PC on top of a 13-inch MacBook.
WHAT’S the best-selling notebook computer on Amazon.com? If you guessed the new MacBook Air, guess again. Five of the 10 best-selling notebooks, including the top three models this weekend do not run Windows or Mac OS X. In fact, they are different models of the same diminutive notebook the Asus Eee PC—that runs on Linux. The significance of this development is easy to miss, particularly if you have your head buried in the Windows or Mac OS X world. (The other five models on Amazon’s list over the weekend were versions of the MacBook; there were no Windows machines in the top 10.) For the first time, a Linux-based consumer product is making waves, not just among geeks but among buyers.
Posted by Chin on 01/29 at 04:33 AM
Hardware • Gadgets • Open Source • Linux • Personal computing • Portable computing • (7) Comments • Permalink
Hardware • Gadgets • Open Source • Linux • Personal computing • Portable computing • (7) Comments • Permalink
THE significant improvements in the latest version of Gimp (GNU Image Manipulation Program) make it an excellent tool for most home users, digital photographers and Web designers, many of whom will be able to break free of the Photoshop trap, whether they are on Windows, Mac OS X or Linux.
Every once in awhile, it’s nice to be able to check e-mail or read the news online without having to stop by an Internet café or whipping out your notebook. It would be great, too, not to have to pay through the nose for such access. Happily, with the right mobile phone and service provider, these are not such outlandish wishes.
THE One Laptop per Child project had hoped to persuade governments in developing countries to buy millions of XOs and hand them out as educational tools, but that has not happened in a big way for a number of reasons. What’s more, products such as the Classmate PC and the Asus Eee PC—a Linux machine with a less cryptic interface—compete for much the same educational market, so it is far from certain that the XO will lead the revolution Negroponte envisioned.
