Thoughts on the Asus Eee PC (and the OLPC)

Recently I had the experience of “playing” around with a Asus Eee PC 900, to be mo specific I was fixing some issues with the wireless. You can find the post here.

I always been a fan of the Asus Eee, from the time that the rumors started. Just the concept of having a very portable laptop a netbook, as a traveling replacement of the my laptop, was very attractive. Furthermore, with all the talks of OLPC, and the project not going as planned, I thought this was the answer: give every student a Asus Eee. The main issue with the OLPC, is that it tried to do a lot of things, I guess from the start,  is not possible.

I was kind of disappointed when it wasn’t sold at 200 USD, but at a higher price 300 USD. At 200, it will be at the price as some mobile phones out there, meaning it could be a true road warrior laptop. I guess they didn’t take into account distribution channels, when first teasing us with that price. Still they had sold well and now every manufacturer has a netbook in their line up. The problem I have with current offers is that they come to close to the notebook, in features or/and price. So, manufacturers and consumers need to define what is a netbook and what is a laptop and forget about the offers in the middle. If not done, the true essence of the netbook will be lost: a machine that is light and useful enough to travel with, cheap enough to replace if damage.

The picture shown above is from a article that compares the OLPC to the first Asus Eee PC. I never been closed to OLPC XO but I can tell you some things about the Asus Eee PC 900. The Eee PC can be a nice replacement of the OLPC. The keyboard might need a learning curve, because of the small key, however people learn to type email in the “crack berries”, and small keyboards are not a problem for children and their small fingers. However you have the price challenge; why not continue producing the original Eee PC 701 for educational purposes. Also they are cheap enough, and reaching economies of scale may do the trick.

The netbooks need a Operating system, so if the Eee PC will be used for educational purposes, it needs to be tailored for that. Edubuntu could be used, which is the Ubuntu distribution for the classroom. It’s free, meaning that no price increase is necessary, and trust me they will not care if its Linux, OS X or Windows, the opportunity to learn, is what they care and what we should be caring about. However there is a challenge with Ubuntu on the Asus Eee. Ubuntu needs to tailor a distro that fits and works perfectly with the netbooks. While using it, it was evident that for Ubuntu, the Asus Eee is jut another Laptop, which shouldn’t be the case. Screen space management is important with the windows system, maybe this is a task of Gnome or KDE, however it requires attention. Performance  was not an issue, although it took long time to compile the wireless drivers. The desktop environment was responsive, but  it didn’t look that smooth (again dito to Gnome and KDE).  Finally it should work without looking for drivers, fixing code, tweaking the OS, etc. Installation should and operation should be a breeze.

There… I just solve one the world problems. Yeah sure, its good to dream.

The point here is that using “off the shelf” components may be enough to solve some problems, instead of going into a journey of designing and building the perfect computer for the third world. If UNICEF decides, today we will provide kids in x and y countries with learning tools, using off the shelf components, its possible, no point on waiting and talking: execution is the key. If they don’t have electricity to run it, then here is a good excuse to use some of the war money to provide it to them. While providing the electricity, they can check and also provide them with water and Internet. Using Asus Eee PC 701 and Edubuntu could be more successful than the OLPC XO. Also, if they don’t have electricity to charge it, unfortunately they have to be excluded (temporally ,while they find a way to provide them with the electricity).

Every human being is entitled to education, health, water and electricity, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel to provide them with that, just use what we have.

Update: apparently there is already a Eee ubuntu distro: Ubuntu EEE. I will see if I can convience my classmate of installing it in his Eee. Will keep you posted..

By the way Windows 7 is also being tailored to run on this netbooks check it out here.