[svlug] $400 ultraportable linux boxes

[Scott Hess]

On Dec 17, 2007 11:34 AM, Larry Colen <lrc at red4est.com> wrote:
> There are three linux boxes in the size/price range that intrigue me:
>
> olpc xo
> asus eee pc
> Nokia N810
>
> The OLPC has a lot going for it, but it is not meant for grownups to
> use it, right out of the box. The display is mighty tempting though.

I got an 8G Eee, and have an OLPC on order.  The latter is for my son,
the former is for personal travel.  My last visit to family convinced
me that I'm no longer comfortable checking email from their computers
(at least not any email accounts which might have any importance to my
life :-).  I also plan to use it as backup photo storage when
travelling.

The Eee has a small keyboard.  The trackpad is annoying, but I hate
all trackpads.  I find myself mixed on the default OS - it's not
horrible, but I'd be happier if they didn't have so many "Look what I
can do" stupid pet tricks involved.  I'd rather see a straight Ubuntu.
 eeeXubuntu may be going in the right direction, but certainly needs
some simmering before I'm ready to go there.  All that said, I think
I'm going to be happy with the Eee for what I got it for, and I expect
that in a couple months I'll have replaced the default install with
something like eeeXubuntu.

I borrowed a friend's OLPC for a day.  It was interesting enough that
I wanted to get one for my kids, but I found that I wasn't willing to
commit _my_ usage to it.  I found it significantly slower than the
Eee, it has less memory, and less disk space, and the OS is less
normal.  Of course, it costs 1/2 as much, but while the difference
between a $2500 ultraportable Vaio and a $500 Eee was important to me,
the difference between $500 and $200 wasn't too important to me.
[Besides that you have to put up $400 to get an OLPC.]

What turned me to the Eee rather than the Nokia is that the Eee is a
regular x86.  Over time I've worked with various Linux-based personal
computing devices on my home network (routers, NAS devices, etc).  The
non-x86 devices are often smaller and use less power and stuff, which
is good.  But the x86 devices have always won out in the end, because
I can more easily port things around.  This is a win both when getting
them setup (you don't have to hope someone has ported stuff for you,
and you don't have to spend as long in setup), and when replacing them
(you can spin up a replacement box lickety-split).  No doubt this
experience will manifest somewhat differently with these portable
personal computing devices, but things like eeeXubuntu give me hope
that I'll be able to have my cake and eat it too.

-scott