Hardware Archive

Linux.com reviews the Asus Eee PC. "The Asus Eee PC has been heralded as a groundbreaking new computing experience and great for children. While the computer didn't bowl me over, my kids were another matter. When you hear about how small the Eee is, believe it: the unit measures approximately nine by six inches and weighs a mere two pounds. It's hard to take something that small seriously because it looks like a toy (and its name sounds like a sneeze). Open the lid, however, and you'll find power and features that belie its diminutive size."

PC vendor Lenovo has promised ThinkPads with pre-installed Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 for some time now. Lenovo will deliver the goods the week of Jan. 14. Lenovo will release pre-installed SLED 10 on its Intel Centrino processor-powered ThinkPad T61 and R61 14-inch-wide notebooks. In February, Lenovo's pre-integrated Novell Linux offering will expand to include some Penryn-based ThinkPads.

The One Laptop Per Child Project and Microsoft are working together to develop a dual-boot system to put both Linux and Windows on laptops aimed at kids in developing countries, the head of OLPC said in an interview Tuesday. "We are working with them very closely to make a dual-boot system so that, like on an Apple, you can boot either one up. The version that's up and running of Windows on the XO is very fast, it's very, very successful. We're working very hard to do both," said Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC.

Geeks.com was so kind as to send me the Vizio VX32L for review, a 32" widescreen LCD TV capable of doing 1080i. At USD 469.99, this 32" LCD television is quite affordable, so read on to find out if it is worth your money.

"The Cray-1 is to supercomputers what Sigmund Freud is to psychiatrists. That is to say: it's likely the only one of the bunch that you've heard about, and you can feign cleverness just by dropping the name. So let's take a whack at this computer legend."

Lenovo is undertaking an Olympic-size effort to establish itself as a consumer PC brand. The Chinese PC maker has found great success with the iconic ThinkPad brand of commercial laptops, a business it purchased from IBM. And now it's taking the world stage with a new line of consumer-focused notebooks called IdeaPad. There will also be a desktop line called IdeaCentre.

I guess the cat is out of the bag. "Everex has confirmed plans to ship a UMPC with a 7-inch screen, similar to competitor Asus's EEE PC. A source close to the company revealed that the device - codenamed 'Cloudbook' - will ship with the Google Apps-oriented 'gOS' Linux distribution early next year."

Like a first love or a first car, a first computer can hold a special place in people's hearts. For millions of kids who grew up in the 1980s, that first computer was the Commodore 64. Twenty-five years later, that first brush with computer addiction is as strong as ever. "There was something magical about the C64," says Andreas Wallstrom of Stockholm, Sweden."

A review of the Asus EeePC. It concludes: "The Eee PC may be targeted at children and students, but it should also entice anyone needing a compact, low cost, yet fully functional PC. It is featherweight, far easier to use than a Windows machine, starts up three times faster, and costs about a quarter of anything in its weight class."

From the WSJ: "The dream of cheap computers in the hands of millions of poor children is becoming a reality, though not exactly as its proponents imagined. For-profit competitors snatched the idea and have run with it."

ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) is the de facto standard to replace APM. As such, it's becoming increasingly important for full support on newer machines, as legacy support for APM is waning and ACPI-only machines become more common. Recently there was a flurry of commits related to ACPI, which got the attention of some people running -current with ACPI enabled kernels. In this interview we get a peek at what's been happening with ACPI and where it's headed.

"The Asus Eee PC challenges many conventional assumptions about mobile computing. The daring, diminutive device combines a svelte subnotebook form factor with a unique Linux software platform and a budget-friendly price - factors that could make this unprecedented product a mainstream marvel. Last week, my colleague Jon described the Eee PC as game-changing: a characterization that we will put to the test in this review."

"A little over a week ago, reviews of Asus's Eee PC 701 started to trickle out onto the Internet. Some of the larger publications, like CNet and LAPTOP Magazine got their hands on the unit first, but as it has become more widely available sites like HotHardware and PC Perspective have now put out their own reviews of the Eee PC. The overall verdict is fairly unanimous: the device's keyboard is a bit cramped, but in terms of price, performance, and features the Eee PC hits the trifecta. Indeed, Asus appears to have gotten so many things right with the Eee PC that it could be a game-changer in the mobile market, in terms of both hardware and software."

There's absolutely no reason you should be waiting the three-plus minutes it takes your computer to boot up Windows, says Woody Hobbs, CEO of Phoenix Technologies. And indeed, if Hobbs has his way, you may not have to endure those waits much longer. Phoenix says its new technology, HyperSpace, will offer mobile PC users the ability to instantly fire up their most used apps - things like e-mail, web browsers and various media players - without using Windows, simply by pressing the F4 button.